Reading the Image: Poetics of the Black Diaspora

Group show at Thames Art Gallery, Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University, Yukon Arts Centre. 2006
Date: 28 July, 2006 until 10 September, 2006
Curator: Andrea Fatona
Organiser: Carl Lavoy, and Thames Art Gallery, Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, et al.

Reading the Image: Poetics of the Black Diaspora was an important group exhibition that brought together four artists from “the Black Diaspora” and sought to locate practices and debates within a specific context of Canadian Black cultural politics. The exhibition, curated by Andrea Fatona, featured Deanna Bowen, Christopher Cozier, Michael Fernandes and Maud Sulter. The exhibition was a collaboration between a number of galleries in Canada, venues to which the Reading the Image toured from mid 2006 through to the end of 2008. A particularly poignant aspect of the exhibition was that one of the exhibiting artists, Maud Sulter, died during the latter stages of the Reading the Image tour.

One of the most significant curatorial strategies of the exhibition was to bring together artists from different parts of the world, exhibiting them alongside Canadian-born/Canadian-based practitioners.

The exhibition’s catalogue represents a hugely important document of diasporic art practice in Canada. As such, it takes its place alongside several other publications, one of the most notable being African Canadian Art and Culture, an issue (10.1) of the International Review of African American Art.

[Introduction by Adrienne Shadd, Laying Groundwork for Survival: African Canadian Theatre in Vancouver by Celeste Insell; Standing Tall Walking Proud: Black Arts in Nova Scotia by Charles Sanders; The Creation.. of the African Canadian Odyssey by Nkiru Nzegwu; Haitian Artists in Canada: Tradition Defining the Future by Hazel Da Breo; Archie Alleyne: Life is an Evolution by Katherine Walker Alleyne; A Cinema of Duty: The Films of Jennifer Rodge De Silva by Cameron Bailey; Poetic Voices from the Diaspora: Interview with Ahdri Zhina Mandiela. Artwork by: Khadejah McCall; Bob Brooks; June Clack-Greenberg; Grace Channer; Ronald Bastien; Stan Douglas; D’Avertige; Emmanuel Pierre Charles; Roland Jean; Miles Davis.]

Reading the Image: Poetics of the Black Diaspora was also characterised by the broadness of the art practices it represented, from photography, mixed media, and assemblage sculpture, through to installation.

Andrea Fatona was, as mentioned, 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