It started out in December as a seeming joke by then president-elect Donald Trump over dinner with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago. Rather than Trump imposing steep tariffs on goods incoming from his northern neighbor, Trump proposed, why shouldn’t Canada just become the 51st U.S. state? That apparent jest—and it certainly seemed like a joke to many Americans—and everything that has followed has given rise to the first instance of a cultural boycott of the United States, be it by just one man. Whether there will be more to come is an open question.

“The United States is no longer a country that Canadians can trust, and I feel it would be unpleasant and wrong to mount a show in the U.S. at this time,” Toronto artist Alan Belcher announced on Facebook yesterday, explaining that he is canceling his show “Since 1957,” which was slated to open May 2 at the respected nonprofit Hallwalls, in Buffalo, New York.

“In Canada, we are taking the U.S. threat of annexation and the forced redrawing of our border seriously as an extremely dangerous reality,” Belcher added. “This has very little to do with the current tariff war, except for the fact that Washington plans to weaken Canada with economic warfare before executing a Russian-styled takeover.” 

Hallwalls. Courtesy Hallwalls.

Belcher heaps praise on Hallwalls, but said that “to go through with the exhibition would seem self-serving, and inappropriate, and somehow even traitorous given the severity of the situation my nation finds itself in.”

Born in Toronto in 1957 and still living there, Belcher has had solo exhibitions around the globe, from London’s greengrassi and Le Consortium in Dijon, France to Marlborough Gallery and Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. He’s appeared in group shows like Gianni Jetzer’s “Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (2018), Michelle Grabner’s FRONT Triennial in Cleveland, Ohio (2018), and Marcia Tucker’s “Labor of Love” at New York’s New Museum (1996). He was co­-founder and director (with artist Peter Nagy) of Gallery Nature Morte in New York’s East Village from 1982 to 1988.

Writing for Artforum in 2018 on the occasion of a show at New York’s LMAKgallery, Jeff Gibson noted that “Toronto-based artist and East Village legend Alan Belcher seems to share [my] fascination for photographic transposition and dimensional confusion, which, in his hands, open the commerce of imagery to pointed usurpation, poetry, and critique.

“Given that contemporary art increasingly manifests—wittingly or unwittingly, ironically or not—as a catalogue of competing brands,” Gibson wrote, “the artist’s decades-long double-dealing in the currency of the product pitch would now seem more relevant than ever.”

Alan Belcher, Carbonara (2024). Courtesy Galerie Eli Kerr, Montréal.

“Since 1957” was to have focused on recent work having to do with edible materials, Belcher explained by phone, influenced in part by Nouveau Realiste artists like Piero Manzoni and Daniel Spoerri. The description of Carbonara (2024), for example, reads, “carbon drawing on canvas, with imported pancetta stagionata, egg yolks (including double yolk), pasta water, pecorino romano, Agricola Due Leoni olive oil, and black pepper.” Basic (2024) consists of “butter on toasted canvas.”

“I’ve always had certain works that have used food,” he said. “I used that as a loose sort of lasso for everything. Food as a vehicle. The thing is, my materials have always been the concept. The materials spoke of what the work is saying. The materials are the recipe. Maybe the list of works is like a menu. And everything is about food! Tariffs and the price of eggs! People are more worried about the price of eggs than anything else!”

Alan Belcher, Basic (2024). Courtesy Galerie Eli Kerr, Montréal.

Ironically, Belcher actually has one at least one body of work, collectively called “Nafta” (2018–19) after the North American Free Trade Agreement, that, according to his description on his website, “seeks to function within the contemporary trade and tariff disputes between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico (USMCA).”

If Belcher’s words about a U.S. takeover of Canada seem alarmist, they are shared by no less than outgoing Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, who said that Trump’s supposed reasoning for the tariffs—as a lever to get Canada to crack down on (basically fictitious) illegal migration and to stem the (nearly nonexistent) flow of fentanyl into America—is a pretext.

“What he wants is to see,” Trudeau said, is “a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us.” Trudeau, according to insiders, is not exaggerating; sources tell the New York Times that Trump told his counterpart that he “[does] not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary.” Trump offered no explanation for his rejection of the 1908 treaty, noted the Times. Adding insult to threat, Trump has repeatedly called Trudeau “governor,” and instructed his staff to follow suit. 

Hallwalls, for its part, is fully in support of Belcher’s decision, and its director sees it in a broad context of political statements.

The Canadian and American flags fly side-by-side outside in Thunder Bay, Ontario. (Photo: Joey McLeister/Star Tribune via Getty Images)

“This is a very big deal, maybe the first of many to come across our country involving Canadian artists scheduled to show at American art spaces and museums,” Hallwalls executive director Edmund Cardoni said in an email. “I totally support Alan Belcher’s decision, his reasoning, his integrity, his self-sacrifice, and his kind words about Hallwalls.

“I regret that my country has joined the shameful ranks of such past and present world regimes as apartheid-era South Africa and Israel,” he said, “as a country artists feel bound by conscience—and, in this case, also patriotism—to boycott.”

One of Western New York’s most prominent alternative contemporary art venues, Hallwalls was founded on Buffalo’s west side in 1974 to show new work by local and visiting artists. It was established by a group of artists including Charles Clough, Robert Longo, and Cindy Sherman, who, the institution’s website noted, “carved an exhibition space out of the walls of the hall outside their studios in a former icehouse.” Over its 50 years, it has hosted exhibitions by artists such as Vito Acconci, Lynda Benglis, Chris Burden, and Betty Tompkins.

“It’s been a pivotal organization for contemporary art overall,” said Buffalo-based curator Claire Schneider, who was an associate curator of contemporary art at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (now the Buffalo AKG Art Museum) from 1998 to 2008, in a phone conversation. “I’m impressed by how vital it is in each decade and how it morphs and changes to meet the art and the times. So many people come to their events; they do so many kinds, plus rich collaborations; and how often they have shown national figures before they become megastars. Their support of artists is really tremendous.”

Courtesy Hallwalls.

Hallwalls even happens to be the subject of a current exhibition: “5 X 10: 50 Years of Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 1975–2025” is on view through April 7 at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. “Hallwalls has never stopped being a hotbed of contemporary cultural activity for local audiences, a resource and launching pad for ‘area artists’ (including university and college art students and faculty), a presenter of artists from all over the world, and a major influence on the art world nationally and internationally,” says the AKG museum’s description of the show.

“Ask any curator and they’ll have a list of artists they admire and respect and want to work with. By dint of circumstances, it takes a while to get to,” said curator John Massier in a phone conversation. “Alan was in a big group show here in 1984. I’ve respected his work and him as an artist and a person for a long time. I was really excited to be working with him.

“It’s a first,” said Massier, “but we are in unprecedented times.”

Belcher expects that these unprecedented circumstances will only get worse.

“One thing to recognize is,” said Belcher, “this is really just the start of things. I’m looking at the next five to 10 years. Things are going to get more complicated and worse and worse. I’m doing something at the infancy of this whole situation. Honestly a lot of people keep talking about ‘It’s only four years, and what about the midterms,’ but I think everyone’s elections are going to be hacked from now on, so I don’t see things getting fixed.”