FRANCAIS

2014 CONFERENCE MATERIALS & DOCUMENTATION

 

 

PROGRAM

This conference consisted of both closed working sessions and public events. It opened with one and a half days of closed working sessions designed to provide opportunities for artists, educators, curators, scholars, and cultural workers to engage in intensive and critical collaborative discussions about the current state of blackness and the challenges and strategies employed to increase visibility. There was an emphasis on developing networks of engagement and knowledge exchange while developing methodologies and practices that advise the future of black Canadian artistic production and teaching. Saturday afternoon and evening were free of charge and open to the public. Saturday afternoon and evening were free of charge and open to the public. These sessions consisted of a keynote lecture, panel presentations, and a closing address. 

Saturday afternoon and evening were free of charge and open to the public. These sessions consisted of a keynote lecture, panel presentations, and a closing address.


Panel Discussions & Speakers YouTube Playlist 

Proceedings from the Conference (PDF Link)

 


Sandra Brewster Installation view. It's all a blur..., May 4 - June 24, 2017 at Georgia Scherman Projects. Work shown: Untitled, Photo-based gel wall transfer, 2017. Photo: Shawn Sagolili

It’s all a blur… is a series of gestural portraits made with photo-based gel transfers. Brewster uses the medium as a metaphor for movement or change from one place to another, specifically in reference to the migration of her parents and their peers who left Guyana for Toronto in the late 1960s. Inspired by the preciousness of old photographs and their relationship to time and memory, the series mimics and somewhat exaggerates the physicality of those photographs by revealing the imperfections left by creases, tears, and folds.

 

PROGRAM FOR PUBLIC PANELS SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22


Welcome remarks: Andrea Fatona, Assistant Professor, OCAD U and Sara Diamond, President, OCAD U | 2:00 pm

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Art Galleries and Educational Institutions’ Engagement with Black Communities | 2:15 – 3:15 pm

Panelists: Lillian Allen, Julie Crooks w/ Dominique Fontaine, Pamela Edmonds, Michelle Jacques

Moderator: Betty Julian

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Revisiting Representations of the Female Black Body | 3:15 – 4:15 pm

Panelists: Erika DeFreitas, Olivia McGilchrist, Abdi Osman, Rema Tavares

Moderators: Heidi McKenzie & Ellyn Walker

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Break | 4:15 – 4:30 pm

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Making and Building upon Black Diasporic Histories Inside and Outside of the Academy | 4:30 – 5:30 pm

Panelists: Wayde Compton, Honor Ford-Smith, Charmaine Nelson, Sheila Petty

Moderator: Camille Isaacs

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Keynote Address: ‘Conditions Critical’: Anti-Blackness, the Canadian Artworld and Future Collectivities | 5:45 – 6:45 pm

Rinaldo Walcott, Associate Professor, OISE/UT

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Closing Remarks | 7:00 pm

Andrea Fatona and OAC Representative

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Public Reception in the Marilyn Brewer Community Space | 7:30 – 9:00 pm

 

Jérôme Havre, Domesticated, 2011.

 

DAY 1  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2014

    • is an assistant professor in the Criticism and Curatorial program at OCAD University in Toronto. She was the former curator of contemporary art at the Ottawa Art Gallery, and has worked as the programme director at Video In, Vancouver, Co-Director of Artspeak Gallery, Vancouver, and Artistic Director of Artspace Gallery, Peterborough. Fatona is equally concerned with the pedagogical possibilities of art works produced by ‘other’ Canadians in articulating broader perspectives of Canadian identities. At its core, her curatorial practice is concerned with creating spaces of engagement – inside and outside of the gallery walls. Some examples of her curatorial projects are: Queer Collaborations (1993), Across Borders (1995/6), Cadboro Bay: Index to an Incomplete History (1999), The Attack of the Sandwich Men (2001), a national touring exhibition entitled, Reading the Image: Poetics of the Black Diaspora (2006-2008), Fibred Optics (2009-10), Will Work for Food (2011), and Land Marks (2013-14).
    • is a Canadian artist, writer and videomaker whose works have been exhibited in Canada, the US, Scotland, and Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In June 2014, a retrospective of her work will be exhibited at A Space Gallery in Toronto. Karen Miranda has been published and cited in several books and publications, including Caribbean InTransit Arts Journal, The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts (Cleis Press) and The Art of Reflection: Women Artists’ Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century (Columbia University Press). Her creative projects ride on the confluence of pop culture, spirituality and the underground. Formerly, she was the founding editor of At the Crossroads: A Journal for Women Artists of African Descent, editor of MIX magazine, and a weekly host on CKLN Radio. She holds a Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from York University. karenmirandaaugustine.com
    • holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from York University. She is a recipient of numerous grants to develop projects. Her work has been published in Of Note Magazine, The Walrus, Small Axe, Chimurenga Magazine , Mix Magazine and NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art, among others. Recent exhibitions include Mohammeds, Alice Yard, Port of Spain, Trinidad, 28 Days, Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto; Serious Play, SPACE, London, England; (Re)Visions, The Print Studio, Hamilton; Listen Installation, Robert Langen Gallery, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo; Fortune Tellers, Five Myles Gallery, New York; and Fleeting Face, A Space Gallery, Toronto. Sandra’s practice also includes work as an arts educator / community arts facilitator, and she has coordinated numerous exhibitions involving local artists. Sandra recently completed an artist residency at Alice Yard in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. sandrabrewster.com
    • is a Jamaican born multidisciplinary artist, writer and curator working out of Kingston Jamaica and Victoria, British Columbia. He has exhibited throughout North America, the Caribbean and Europe, representing Jamaica and Canada in events such as Jamaica’s National Biennial; the Havana Biennial; Infinite Islands: Contemporary Caribbean Art, organized by the Brooklyn Museum in 2007; and Contemporary Jamaican Art, circa1962 | circa2012, held at the Art Gallery of Mississauga in 2012. Campbell is also a regular contributor to ARC Magazine, a Caribbean arts journal and in January 2014 begins his post as Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Jamaica. Campbell holds an MA in fine art from Goldsmiths College University of London and a BFA from Concordia University. charlescampbellart.com
    • is a multi awarding Nova Scotian filmmaker and writer whose films have been widely screened in Canada and abroad. When she worked at NFB’s Studio D she co-created New Initiatives in Film (NIF), a program for women of colour and First Nations Women. Hamilton’s work engages personal/collective history and memory, themes that are embedded in her films such as Black Mother Black Daughter, Portia White: Think on Me, and The Little Black School House. Her poetry appears in Other Voices, The Dalhousie Review and The Great Black North. Her multi-media installation, Excavation: A Site of Memory was mounted at the Dalhousie University Art Gallery in October 2013. She teaches part-time at the University of King’s College in Halifax.
    • is a writer and curator currently based in New York City. She is currently the Associate Director of a commercial gallery in the Chelsea district.
    • is a PhD Candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). Her research considers hip-hop as a means of solidarity between black and Indigenous communities, and how this can be articulated into culturally relevant pedagogy. Hudson is an Artist Educator who has been working and exhibiting in Toronto for the past 15 years. Currently, Hudson teaches in the Faculty of Design at OCAD University, where she recently conceptualized and developed a course on the influence of hip-hop on design.
    • teaches courses on contemporary art, media art, ethnocultural and global art histories, international art exhibitions and curatorial studies in the Department of Art History. Her main fields of research are in contemporary Asian art and Asian Canadian art with a particular interest in recent media art, theories of representation, and the relationship between remix culture and place identity. Dr. Jim received her MA (1996) from Concordia University and her PhD (2004) from McGill University. Her doctoral dissertation addressed urban metaphors in Hong Kong media art in relation to questions of place identity, history and spatial culture. Her MA thesis examined the 1989 “Black Wimmin: When and Where We Enter,” the first exhibition in Canada devoted entirely to the work of Black women artists.
    • is a photographer whose work investigates the complexities and constraints involved when discussing the subject of race, gender and history; specifically questioning the multitude of factors that influence these so-called terms. She attended the Carleton University school of Journalism before completing a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology, Geography and Anthropology in 1996. She completed her Honours dual degree in Art and Art History at the University of Toronto and Sheridan College in 2009. Recent exhibitions of her work can be found in Toronto, ON; Halifax, NS; San Francisco, CA; Sacramento, CA and Detroit, MI. In 2012 she received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.
    • received in MA (2001) and Ph.D. (2009) in Critical Studies from the School of Cinematic Arts of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His doctoral dissertation is the first comprehensive examination of the history of documentary film in Africa in the colonial era. He is also currently Undergraduate Supervisor in Film Studies at Carleton University. His writings in both academic and journalistic outlets have appeared in Framework Journal, Ecce Journal (in Japanese), The Africa Report, and Ecrans d’Afrique/African Screen. He is currently working on publishing his dissertation, and preparing a monograph on the cinema of Med Hondo.
    • is a Toronto-based media/performance artist and cultural producer. She is the founder of Outerregion, an Afrofuturist performance company producing intercultural experiences that disrupt the expected and engage the public in unusual ways. She co-founded Year Zero One, an electronic media arts organization specializing in public digital art and she has participated in and presented collaborative projects, community engagements, performance and digital interventions in various countries including: Canada, the United Kingdom, Senegal, Australia, Cuba, Germany and Mexico. Her most recent works bring hidden and erased histories and geographies to life through walks, media productions, educational presentations and participatory events. camilleturner.com
    • is a French-Canadian art historian. Recipient of a BFA in Art History from Concordia University in Montreal (2012), she became during the course of her undergrad studies particularly concerned about the “space” allowed to artists of Caribbean and African descent within Canadian art institutions. Consequently, as a new M.A. student in the Criticism and Curatorial Practice program at OCAD U, she aims to explore the multiplicity of experiences that relate to the theorization of a Canadian black feminist discourse within the arts. The dichotomy between Black and White has generated essentialist identities wherein the black female body has historically been subjugated to marginalization and oppression. Via her research Wallen seeks to take a second look at identity politics and see how it pertains to art and cultural ideologies. More specifically, she wishes to grasp the socio-political contexts from which stereotypes and “colorism” have become recurrent themes within art productions of women artists of Caribbean and African descent.
    • writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. His latest book is After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region (Arsenal Pulp, 2010). He has also been an anti-racist activist and a black community advocate in Vancouver for over twenty years. He is the director of the Writer’s Studio and the Southbank Writer’s Program at Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies. waydecompton.com
    • is a Trinidad-born, Toronto-based video artist and cultural critic. He joined the faculty of OCAD U in 2003 and teaches courses in Integrated Media, Criticism and Curatorial Practice, and Art and Social Change. Richard has exhibited his work and lectured in Europe, Asia, Australia and across North America. He is a winner of the Bell Canada Award for video art and the Toronto Arts Award for Media Art. Before coming to OCAD U, he coordinated the Centre for Media and Culture in Education at OISE/UT. richardfung.ca
    • is French artist based in Canada. He completed his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His work interrogates issues of identity, territory and community through the representation of nature. That is, the manner in which it is presented and yet can be more readily perceived through our cultural filters. According to him, “nature is deliberately altered in order to deceive us and keep order.” He develops in his creation reflexive spaces through immersive processes. He looks for ways to do this through presentation, creation of situations, or setting the stage with his sculptures and extending it to the public who take part “in the show.” Since 2001, he has exhibited his works in Europe, Africa and North America. He is represented by the Donald Browne Gallery in Montreal.
    • is a descendant of the Alabama and Kentucky born Black Prairie pioneers of Amber Valley and Campsie, Alberta. She is a Toronto based interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited internationally in numerous film festivals and galleries. She has received several grants in support of her artistic practice. Current works have been shown at the Images Festival of Film, Video & New Media, the Art Gallery of Peterborough, and the Art Gallery of York University. Her commissioned eighteen-minute performed oral history sum of the parts: what can be named has shown at the Kassel Documentary Film & Video Festival, the Oberhausen Film Festival, and the Nasher Museum of Contemporary Art at Duke University. Bowen is currently working on a major solo exhibition about the Ku Klux Klan and its migration into Canada entitled Invisible Empires for Spring 2013 at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) in Toronto. deannabowen.ca
    • is an arts advocate, dj and scholar. Mark is co-founder of Nia Centre for the Arts and the Canadian hip hop archive northsidehiphop.ca. Currently a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Regina, Mark’s research interests include; Afrodiasporic theory and culture, Canadian hip hop cultures, afrosonic innovations and youth community development projects. Mark’s current and recent projects include: The T-Dot Pioneers Trilogy, Control This! and B-Sides and Other/ed Kinds of Humans. His recent publications appear in the Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, Antipode Online and The Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies.
    • has been making performances and other artwork in Canada since the late 70s. She was a member of the notorious satirical feminist performance ensemble, The Clichettes, throughout the 1980s and has maintained a unique performance practice internationally, most recently performing in Singapore and Indonesia. As one of the founders of the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, held biannually in Toronto, she supports emerging local artists and has brought many international artists to Toronto for the first time. She is interested in the multiple histories of performance, re-performance, and the effects that performance art has had on and in contemporary art and new media. She is a Professor in the Integrated Media Program at OCAD U and is currently working on the second volume of Caught in the Act: performance art by Canadian women.
    • is an Alberta-based media artist and cultural producer originally from Ottawa, Ontario. Inkster has taught at the post-secondary level; worked in development supporting cultural institutions; and has produced and directed media spanning the genres of experimental video art to broadcast television since that late 1990s. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and presented in festivals, nationally as well as internationally. Her practice experiments with conventions of the documentary genre to reveal how storytelling, the imagination, and the truth conspire. Inkster is concerned with the degree to which autobiographies or narratives are invented when personal, familial, and historical information is absent or has been erased – an experience shared by diasporic Black cultures and distinguished by dislocation, adaptation and resilience.
    • is an interdisciplinary, intercultural artist with a practice rooted in drawing and combining sculpture, traditional and experimental printmaking, performance and micro-activism. She holds a BFA from the Ontario College of Art &Design in Toronto and an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University, Montréal. McIntyre’s work explores animism, ritual, the invisible, the imagined, the agreed upon, balance and the powerful allure of the asymmetrical. Reoccurring themes include the power of perception, popular culture, race and gender. For more information and to see McIntyre’s current projects please visit annajmcintyre.com and dontarguewithghosts.blogspot.com
    • is a Trinidad-born photographer and filmmaker who lives and works in Toronto, Canada. Her recent photography projects include It’s Good to Be Needed, on view in the group exhibition That’s So Gay in July 2013, and Diplomatic Communication, presented at Axe Grinding Workshop at The Tate Modern in May 2012. Currently Michèle is on the board of directors for both the Feminist Art Gallery and Gallery 44, and she is pursuing an MFA in Documentary Media Studies at Ryerson University. michelepearsonclarke.com
    • is a researcher, writer, curator and editor living in Toronto. She is co-author of We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History, co-editor of Talking About Identity: Encounters in Culture, Language and Identity with Carl James and recently has curated exhibitions entitled “…and still I rise” in Hamilton, Ontario, on the experience of African-Canadian workers in the twentieth century.
      • is Director of the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto. Verna was formerly Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Musée d’art de Joliette and the Curator of the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University. Committed to building bridges between visual art and the public in a multi-disciplinary context, she is interested in a variety of artistic practices, especially those that explore issues connected with questions of migration, identity and diasporas.
    • is a visual artist, community activist, researcher, youth-advocate and educator. He is the Program Coordinator of the AGO Youth Program, Art Gallery of Ontario. As a visual artist, Syrus works within the mediums of painting, installation and performance to challenge systemic oppression. Syrus’ work explores the spaces between and around identities; acting as provocations to our understandings of gender, sexuality and race. His work has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), Gladstone Hotel, ASpace Gallery, Harbourfront Centre, SPIN Gallery and other galleries across the city. His work has been reproduced in FUSE Magazine, The Globe and Mail, THIS Magazine, Blackness and Sexualities amongst others. syrusmarcusware.com

 

 

DAY 2  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2014

    • is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London, UK. She has taught survey courses on African art as well as art of the African diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Ontario College of Art and Design and York University. Most recently she lectured on African Photography at the University of Toronto. Prior to her academic career in art history, Crooks worked at the National Film Board, where she was instrumental in developing innovative programming around culture and identity. She also worked on the Planet Africa film program, one of the most successful programs of the Toronto International Film Festival. Crooks’ current research is focused on historical photography from West Africa.
    • is a visual and media arts curator originally from Montreal, Quebec. She received her BFA and an MA in Art History from Concordia University. The former co-editor of KOLA, a Black literary magazine based in Montreal, she is interested in developing and curating projects that focus on the creative production of African diaspora artists, and in work that deals with contemporary issues surrounding the ideologies of race, gender, cultural identity and representation. Edmonds is the former Program Coordinator of A Space Gallery, Toronto, and curator at the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Ontario.
    • is chief curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and was previously acting curator of Canadian art and associate curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. From 2002 to 2004, Jacques was director of programming at the Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax. She holds a B.A. (Honours) in art history and psychology from Queens University and an M.A. in art history from York University.
    • is a curator of contemporary art and art professor at OCAD University in the photography program. Her multi-disciplinary practice concentrates on the aesthetic, cultural and critical interrogation of still and moving images, cross-cultural perspectives, and the current issues on the ideologies of gender, race, difference(s) and representation(s). In 1988, Julian began her visual arts career as Administrative Coordinator/Director of A Space Gallery (Toronto); was founding member of the New Initiatives in Film program at Studio ‘D’ for Aboriginal Women and Women of Colour at the National Film Board of Canada was a delegate to the 1991 UNESCO cultural development conference in Vienna, Austria; authored the Cultural Equity Report (1992) for the Toronto Arts Council; and served two three-year term appointments on the board of the Ontario Arts Council. In 1999, Ms. Julian was on the founding national advisory board for Prefix Photo magazine and became a member of the curatorial council of the public gallery Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art in 2000.
    • received her PhD in Art History from the University of Manchester, UK in 2001. Her research and teaching interests include postcolonial and black feminist scholarship, critical (race) theory, Trans Atlantic Slavery Studies and Black Diaspora Studies. Her work examines Canadian, American, European and Caribbean art and visual culture. The author of five books, she has made ground-breaking contributions to the fields of the Visual Culture of Slavery, Race and Representation and Black Canadian Studies.
    • is a scholar, theatre worker and poet. She was educated in Jamaica at St Andrew High School and after studying theatre began teaching at the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston. She became co-founder and artistic director of Sistren (Sisters), a theatre collective of mainly working-class Jamaican women that works in community theatre and popular education. Currently Sistren continues to carry out community performance and education in Kingston, Jamaica. Ford-Smith was also a member of the Groundwork Theatre Company, created in 1980 as the repertory arm of the Jamaica School of Drama; it became an autonomous company in 1987.
    • is the Founder of Mixed in Canada, a national cultural resource centre for mixed-race identified Canadians. She is also an artist whose work has shown in several exhibitions both nationally and internationally; and is 1/3rd of 3MW Collective, a group of three mixed-race identified women who use visual art as a vehicle to deconstruct mixed-race identity. Rema has been invited to speak at the University of Toronto’s “Spaces of Multiraciality: Critical Mixed Race Theory” course, Ontario Public Services, CBC Radio, as well as delivering workshops to children and youth for various schools and organizations.
    • is a curator, writer and researcher based in Toronto, Canada. Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates art history, cultural and postcolonial theory to look at how artists and curators engage in processes of unsettling the nation-state. Her projects have been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Prefix Institute for Contemporary Art, Mercer Union: A Centre for Contemporary Art and Videofag. Her writing has been published in C Magazine, FUSE, The Journal for Curatorial Studies, Public, Magenta Magazine, Studio and Sketch. Ellyn is currently an MFA candidate at OCAD University in the Criticism and Curatorial Practices program.
    • is a Toronto-based emerging conceptual artist. She explores the influence of language, loss and culture on the formation of identity through performance, relational exchanges, photographic documentation and textile-based works. DeFreitas is a graduate of the Masters of Visual Studies program at the University of Toronto and has exhibited projects in artist-run centres in Canada and the United States. Recent exhibition sites include A Space Gallery, Gallery 44, Propeller Centre for Visual Arts in Toronto, the Houston Museum of African American Culture, performances with the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, and a residency at Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA) in Winnipeg. erikadefreitas.com
    • is an independent curator, consultant on contemporary art, media arts and arts management. She is Founding Director of aposteriori, a non-profit curatorial platform – researching, documenting, developing, producing and facilitating innovation in diverse contemporary art practices. Since 1998, she has curated and organized several contemporary art events in Canada and abroad. Her curatorial projects include “Images, Imageries, Imaginaires” – International Photography Exhibition of the World Festival of Black Arts and Cultures, 2010, Dakar, Senegal; “Forms and topographies: African Cityscape in flux”, 2009, Thessaloniki Biennale, Greece. In 2012, concerned about contemporary issues in visual arts, media arts and new artistic practices, she launched Modulation, a multi-year project devoted to rethinking collaborative modes by creating exchanges between the contemporary art scenes of countries in Africa and Canada. She is a member of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT). Dominique Fontaine lives in Montreal.
    • is an Assistant Professor of English at OCAD University, specializing in postcolonial, Caribbean, and diasporic literatures. Her SSHRC-funded doctorate examined identity construction in Black Canadian literature. Her current research considers the Black diaspora in interwar Europe, and aging in West Indian literature.
    • is a Jamaican-French visual artist who’s alter-ego Whitey explores physical expressions of emotional states in the search for cultural identity. She troubles her post-colonial white Creole female identity by remapping it within the tropical picturesque through photographs, performances and multi-layered videos. Born in Kingston, Jamaica to a French mother and a Jamaican father. She grew up in France and was educated in the UK. In 2010 she completed her Master’s in Photography at the London College of Communications and, in 2011, she returned to Kingston to work at the National Gallery of Jamaica (NGJ) and lecture in Photography and New Media at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. Her work has been shown in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, Brazil, the U.S., the U.K., and France. Most recently she won the Trinidad & Tobago film festival and ARC Magazine New Media Prize. oliviamcgilchrist.com
    • is a Toronto-based ceramic artist, arts journalist and curator. Currently completing her MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice at OCAD U, Heidi has over twenty years’ experience as a manager and producer in the not-for-profit arts sector and holds an MA in Comparative European Cultural Policy (Warwick 1994). She has presented her work in relation to body and race with Subtle Technologies, TechnoScience Salon, Toronto International Art Fair.
    • is a Somali-Canadian multidisciplinary artist whose work focuses on questions of black masculinity as it intersects with Muslim and queer identities. Osman’s video and photography work have been shown in Canada and internationally in both group and solo exhibitions. He holds an MFA in Documentary Media from Ryerson University, and B.A. in African Studies from the University of Toronto. His photographs are also in private collections and the Art Bank of the Canada Council for the Arts. Abdi was a 2010 artist-in-resident at the McColl Centre for Visual Arts in Charlotte North Carolina. Most recently in 2012, he was a fellow at The Interdisciplinary Center for Culture and Creativity (ICCC) at the University of Saskatchewan.
    • is an industrial designer and visual artist. Born in Bridgetown, Barbados, she currently lives and works between Toronto and Detroit. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of the body and industrial modes of production through sculpture, photography and designed objects. Springer completed a B.Sc Honours in Life Sciences from the University of Toronto concurrent to a B.Des. in Industrial Design from the Ontario College of Art & Design. In 2007, she received her M.A. in New Media and Contemporary Technology from the École nationale supérieure de creation industrielle in Paris. Her work has been exhibited at the Frankfurt Museum of Applied Arts, Germany (2006), Politecnico di Torino, Italy (2006), Cultural Centre of Belém, Portugal (2006), and the Jamaica Biennial (2014).
    • is Associate Professor, Humanities, Social Sciences, & Social Justice Education, OISE/UT. His research and teaching is in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies with an emphasis on queer sexualities, masculinity and cultural politics. A secondary research area is multicultural and transnational debates with an emphasis on nation, citizenship and coloniality. As an interdisciplinary scholar Rinaldo has published on music, literature, film and theater among other topics. All of Rinaldo’s research is founded in a philosophical orientation that is concerned with the ways in which coloniality shapes human relations across social and cultural time.

 

Conference Photographs by Ella Cooper.

 

 

 

DEDICATION

This site is dedicated to Ayanna Black (1939-2009).

Ayanna Black was a fierce defender of Black Canadian culture and its production and dissemination. She believed we as Black Canadians have stories to tell about ourselves and relentlessly created spaces in which we could celebrate our joys. Black was a co-founder of Canadian Black Artists in Action (CAN BAIA).

All material that appears on this website is used for the purposes of academic research and critical study. If you have any questions or concerns about the resources on this site, please contact us.

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