Minor Miracles for a New Place is a work created for People of Goodwill, a long term project by Postcommodity and the Guelph Black Historical Society at Heritage Hall in Guelph, Canada. Centered by an heirloom wooden angel that may or may not be capable of performing some minor miracles, it inhabits the strange and sometimes humorous moments of disjunction that happen when one culture intersects with another, the moments where incongruent realities exist together unresolved within the same space.

For one day the angel and its powers, whatever those might be, were offered to the community, giving participants the opportunity to consider what they would ask for if they could request a minor miracle. The question intentionally set up the miraculous as both possible and impossible—perhaps an impossible possibility—and created a moment to consider that which is beyond our control.

Minor Miracles for a New Place is simultaneously a survey of what is imagined as almost possible in Guelph, and an act of collectively welcoming this object into a new cultural context by supposing its power is something real. It uses the object’s disjunctive presence in Canada, where it is at odds with a tendency to pinpoint exact causes and control future outcomes, to create a space where multiple contradictory realities can co-exist.