Mass Arrival (2013) is a performance art, installation and new media project, conceived by artist, Farrah Miranda. Preferring to work collectively, Miranda formed the Mass Arrival Collective: Farrah Miranda (artist) Graciela Flores-Mendez (legal worker), Tings Chak (artist-architect), Vino Shanmuganathan (law student), Nadia Saad (social worker).
Marking the arrival anniversary of the MV Sun Sea, the ship that brought 492 Tamil migrants to Canada, the group staged a mass arrival of their own. Two-hundred self-identified white people descended into one of Toronto's busiest intersections aboard, a satirical canvas replica of the MV Sun Sea. The flagship store of the Hudson's Bay Company, North America's oldest corporation, served as the backdrop for the performance. Passersby were handed leaflets that asked, "How does this arrival of white people make you feel?" Audiences were encouraged to post responses on social media, using the hashtag massarrival.
In the dominant imagination, the term, mass arrival signifies dark-skinned invaders, defiantly packed into rusty freighter ships, willfully violating the territorial integrity of Canadian borders. Emanate from this picture are themes of visibility and invisibility; themes of historical erasure and assertion; and the question, who has the moral legitimacy to decide who belongs in the settler colonial nation state? It becomes clear that while some (white) arrivals form the basis of national creation stories, others form the basis for fear, hysteria, and the tightening of border control.