Andrea Fatona

Andrea Fatona was the curator for Reading the Image: Poetics of the Black Diaspora. The exhibition was a collaboration between the following galleries in Canada: Thames Art Gallery, Chatham, Ontario; Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia; The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario; Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, Quebec; and Yukon Arts Centre, Whitehorse, Yukon. The exhibition featured work by Deanna Bowen, Christopher Cozier, Michael Fernandes, and Maud Sulter. Fatona is now Curator of Contemporary Art at Ottawa Art Gallery. 

Within her catalogue introduction (Connecting Across the Gaps: Experiencing the Black Diaspora), Fatona states “The exhibition Reading the Image: Poetics of the Black Diaspora is a gesture towards continuing … black transnational dialogues… Its inspiration is also derived from two additional sources. First, it emerges out of the many conversations  I have had over the past two years with artist Deanna Bowen about her work and the complex ways in which the movement and migration of the black body, beginning with the slave trade, are articulated in visual artworkls produced by black artists in the Anglophone world. These discussions led to a period of research and development that was jointly undertaken by Bowen and me. Out of this synergy, the exhibition took its shape…

Reading the Image: Poetics of the Black Diaspora brings together the works of artists Deanna Bowen (Canada), Christopher Cozier (Trinidad and Tobago), Michael Fernandes (Canada), and Maud Sulter (Scotland). The exhibition is comprised of (sic) photography, video, and installation works. While the works are not aesthetically linked, the artists represent common issues, and the medium each artist employs allows for self-conscious expressions of embodiment, subjectivity, and agency…”

»  Reading the Image: Poetics of the Black Diaspora

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2006