NOVEMBER 2019 | Director's Picks
Check out a few exhibitions, both local and international, that have been on our radar in this month’s Director’s Picks. Be sure to click on an image for more details.
Crossing Night: Regional Identities x Global Context | MOCAD, Detroit
October 25, 2019 - January 5, 2020
Crossing Night: Regional Identities x Global Context presents work that addresses the concerns, thoughts, and desires of contemporary artists from the Southern African region as they grapple with the legacy of post-colonial structures. Regional Identities x Global Context is the second iteration of Crossing Night, an exhibition series organized by the A4 Arts Foundation—a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the creative arts in southern Africa. With an emphasis on transition and transformation, Crossing Night explores how local politics, urban landscape, and place shape the personal identities that define regional culture. The exhibition will feature photography, video, sculpture, and installation works. For this exhibition, MOCAD and A4 Art Foundation are proud to partner with The Wedge Collection—one of Canada’s largest, privately owned contemporary art collections focused African diasporic culture and contemporary Black life.
Crossing Night: Regional Identities x Global Context is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in collaboration with the A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town and is curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator, Josh Ginsburg, Director at the A4 Arts Foundation and Jova Lynne, Ford Curatorial Fellow at MOCAD.
Image: Binelde Hycran, Cambeck, 2011, video still. Courtesy of The Wedge Collection
God of Gods: A Canadian Play | Art Museum (University of Toronto), Toronto
a project by Deanna Bowen
September 4 - November 30, 2019
curated by Barbara Fisher
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
For her exhibition at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at Hart House, internationally renowned, Toronto-based artist Deanna Bowen revisits The God of Gods (1919), a play written and directed by Carroll Aikins (1888-1967), founder of the first national theatre in Canada and artistic director of Hart House Theatre (1927–29). Aikins’ play, staged at Hart House in 1922, projected the horrors of war into a loose adaptation of Romeo and Juliet — using ‘native’ motifs. Deanna Bowen’s film is a conversation by Indigenous artists and writers John G. Hampton, Peter Morin, Lisa Myers, Archer Pechawis, and cheyanne turions.
Jalani Morgan: 9 Bats | University of Toronto Scarborough
Doris McCarthy Gallery
September 24 - November 30, 2019
The culmination of Jalani Morgan’s summer residency at the DMG, ‘9 Bats’ explores mythology, representation, and heroism through the creation of the character of Devon C. Jones, a young baseball player destined for greatness. Devon’s otherworldly story elevates the everyday and highlights the importance of Black mentors, heroes, and of being witnessed.
Large-scale photos shot on the baseball diamonds of Scarborough allude to Devon’s hidden, mystical experiences that empower him to achieve. An interactive installation invites visitors to experience the power of the altered state of play.
Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel | National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
November 8, 2019 - April 5, 2020
Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel, the second exhibition in the National Gallery of Canada’s series of presentations of contemporary international Indigenous art, features works by more than 70 artists identifying with almost 40 Indigenous Nations, ethnicities and tribal affiliations from 16 countries, including Canada.
Àbadakone animates both galleries and public spaces with art in all media, including performance art, video and commissioned installations, complemented by a dynamic program of workshops, performances, film screenings, talks, and more.
Building on themes of continuity, activation, and relatedness, this exhibition explores the creativity, concerns and vitality of Indigenous art from virtually every continent. Àbadakone is led by National Gallery of Canada curators Greg A. Hill, Christine Lalonde and Rachelle Dickenson, with consulted curators Candice Hopkins, Ariel Smith and Carla Taunton, as well as a team of advisors from around the globe.
image: The Ultrabeam 2017, isiShweshwe (Three Cats Cotton) fabric, glass beads, tulle and cotton thread,
Human Stories: Circa No Future | NOW Gallery, London (UK)
October 4 - November 17, 2019
NOW Gallery presents the first UK solo exhibition by West Indian photographer Nadia Huggins.
The fourth iteration of Human Stories will navigate the boundaries between land and sea through a collection of filmic and photographic works captured on the island of St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Huggins captures intimate scenes of a group of adolescent males, documenting a choreography of bodies underwater. The work traverses an irradiated border between deep submergence and spectral surfaces. Framed by dramatic coastal landscapes, the work reveals both a youthful camaraderie and spirit whilst exposing an undercurrent of vulnerability in her subjects.
Huggins continues to explore the context of people and the sea with newly commissioned works that will be presented for the first time in the UK.
The show will immerse and overwhelm the viewer, contemplating the power and expanse of the ocean juxtaposed against communities who are most affected and nurtured by it.
To accompany the exhibition, NOW Gallery has commissioned a series of critical essays by writers Melanie Archer and William Abbott.
image: installation view, Human Stories: Circa No Future, NOW Gallery
The Light Grows The Tree | Aurora Cultural Centre, Aurora, ON
August 31 - November 23, 2019
Light Grows The Tree is a group exhibition that documents a community of Black artists, writers, curators and collectors in Toronto. Taken by four photographers over two months, these portraits bring visibility to the Black arts community. Curator Liz Ikiriko states, “Just as a tree needs light to grow, this community requires attention to focus and develop. In this first chapter, Light Grows The Tree begins the process of acknowledging those who have been the life force of Black arts in Toronto.”
Curated by Liz Ikiriko
Photographs by Yannick Anton, Liz Ikiriko, Ebti Nabag and Dainesha Nugent-Palache.
Jae Jarrell | Art Gallery of York University & Toronto Biennial of Art, Toronto
September 11 - December 1, 2019
Curated by Candice Hopkins and Tairone Bastien
Jae Jarrell is co-presented by the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) and the Toronto Biennial of Art. Additional work by Jarrell is on view at 259 Lake Shore Blvd. E. as part of the Biennial. Visit torontobiennial.org for details.
Jae Jarrell made her first Revolutionary Suit in 1969. Constructed of grey tweed, the suit featured a bright yellow suede bandolier stitched along the edge of the jacket. Running from shoulder to hip, the slots of the bandolier are filled with either brightly coloured wooden pegs or pastels: ammunition for creation or for revolution. As Jarrell noted in an article in Jet Magazine in 1971, the bandolier was not simply a fashion accessory: “We were saying something when we used the belts. We’re involved in a real revolution.” From the beginning of her practice, Jarrell merged art and design with Black liberation politics. A part of the Toronto Biennial of Art, this exhibition gathers together sculptures, original designs and archival material spanning nearly fifty years of Jarrell’s radical practice. Jarrell began working professionally in the early 1960s on Chicago’s South Side, creating designs that deliberately disrupted the boundaries between fashion and sculpture. She debuted her first collection in the spring of 1963, opening her first retail store the next year. Her store—Jae of Hyde Park—was a means of self-determination: “You call your shots in business. You set the tone.” By the late 1960s, her practice was directly responding to the activism of the era and aligned with the Black Arts Movement and, in 1968, Jarrell together with her husband Wadsworth Jarrell, Jeff Donaldson, Barbara Jones-Hogu, and Gerald Williams, founded AFRICOBRA (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists). The influential collective came together in response to “a lack of positive representation of African American people in media and the arts,” with a goal to “develop a uniquely Black aesthetic that conveyed the pride and power of their communities.”
image: Jae Jarrell in studio