ExhibitionsPractice as Ritual / Ritual as Practice
September 29 - December 14, 2024
Barbara Prézeau Stephenson in collaboration with photographer Radu Juster, "Braids," 2020-2022, video stills. Photos by Guy L'Heureux, courtesy of articule, 2023.
Critically challenging the structures that delineate Black women’s lives in the current moment.
Practice as Ritual / Ritual as Practice presents the work of ten Black women artists who participated in Black Wimmin: When and Where We Enter (1989). This first nationally-touring exhibition to address the exclusion of Black women artists from the visual landscape of Canada was presented at Houseworks Café in Ottawa, in March 1989.
Practice as Ritual / Ritual as Practice attests to and affirms the heterogeneity of perspectives and forms that constitute Black Canadian women’s art today. The exhibition features primarily new, commissioned works, including paintings, photography, text, installation, video, augmented reality and sculpture. It highlights the sustained aesthetic and everyday practices of these artists, who critically challenge the structures that delineate Black women’s lives in the current moment.
The title of the exhibition refers to an overarching theme that emerges in the artworks—one of tending to Black histories, presents, and futures—and to the labour involved in such a practice.
The range of artworks and artistic approaches included draws attention to the role of knowledge gained via extra-rational modes, such as dreams and visions, in creating connections to lost knowledge, kin, and a deep desire for Black people’s liberation. Spirituality, memorialization, commemoration, play, transhistorical memory, anti-Black racism, and intergenerational knowledge transfer are key themes that emerge.
Here are biographies of the artists.
Curated by
Andrea Fatona
Artists in the exhibition
Buseje Bailey, Marie Booker, Claire Carew, Grace Channer, DZI..AN, Khadejha McCall, Mosa McNeilly, Chloe Onari, Barbara Prézeau Stephenson, Winsom Winsom
Credits
This is a Diasporic African Women Artists (DAWA) Legacy Collective exhibition that originated at A Space (Toronto). It is circulated by the Art Gallery of Hamilton and supported by The Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora at OCADU.
