Participatory Arts and Food Production in Manitoba

204,310. That’s the number of views as the algorithm watched us slide into the Kenaston Walmart under a bruised prairie sky, dodging rogue carts and capitalist fatigue. Inside: shelves like altars, stacked high with shrink-wrapped offerings too expensive to pray for. Celery with a side of existential dread. Tomatoes behind glass like relics. We stood under flickering fluorescent prophecy, debating oat milk versus rent.

Artists don’t hoard brushes anymore—we hoard coupons. We thrift meals between gallery installs, carve meals out of markdown bins like modern-day cave painters, scavenging meaning in barcode hieroglyphs. There’s a poetry in peeling clearance stickers, a politics in the dance of price match and pause. Big box stores loom like sleeping titans, their bellies full of unreliable abundance. We no longer trust them. Many of the smaller mom and pop stores are long gone now.