Exhibitions

Wan Word

January 26 - May 4, 2025

Abdul Hamid Kanu Jr., "Wan Word," 2024, digital photograph, courtesy of the artist.

“Wan word” is a Krio (the creole spoken in Sierra Leone) adage expressing agreement, unity and a harmonious decision made amongst community members.

This exhibition  brings together three artists — Kanna Anigbogu, Abdul Hamid Kanu Jr. and Don Kwan — who explore the intricate relationships between memory, cultural history and the impacts of being a part of diasporic communities.

Through black-and-white photography, digital art and the use of family archives to create mixed media works, the artists reflect on their formative experiences and cultural resilience.

Kanu’s photography documents the Sierra-Leonean communities that shaped him and that he is now reconnecting with after living abroad.

Inspired by Igbo motifs, Anigbogu draws abstract human figures that evoke the freedom and wonder of youth, challenging the notion that adulthood brings the liberation we sought in our childhood.

Using family archives, Kwan creates culturally resonant objects and images that portray intergenerational memory-making and bring untold histories of his Chinese-Canadian heritage to the foreground.

Together, these works invite us to celebrate our roots and the ways we preserve our individual and collective histories, all while sustaining culture through artistic approaches.

“Wan word” is a Krio (the creole spoken in Sierra Leone) adage expressing agreement, unity and a harmonious decision made amongst community members. This is a shared understanding that we have of self and the greater collective, which is what these artists are in pursuit of.

Curator Yanaminah Thullah is interested in how these artists’ works express what she calls diasporic nostalgia, referring to the nuanced sentiments one feels after voluntarily (or forcibly) being displaced from one’s homeland. Diasporic nostalgia is a longing for one’s homeland while reconciling belonging from afar and even when one has returned.

As Thullah observes, it may inspire efforts towards reclamation of the community of care within the diaspora and the homeland, which may or may no longer exist due to the various impacts of colonialism. Diasporic nostalgia includes oral histories and a generational nostalgia that we cling to for a land we may (or may not) be born in but a land that was long born in us.