{"id":19051,"date":"2020-02-19T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T17:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=19051"},"modified":"2020-02-26T11:13:29","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T19:13:29","slug":"a-grammar-of-loss-explores-the-actualities-of-decolonization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/02\/19\/a-grammar-of-loss-explores-the-actualities-of-decolonization\/","title":{"rendered":"A Grammar of Loss<\/em> explores the actualities of decolonization"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liquid black rubber drips off the pages of White Man\u2019s Africa<\/i>, a book written in 1899. This record of white supremacy in Africa is no longer readable, and that\u2019s the point. Along with many other altered and redacted works, this piece in Chantal Gibson\u2019s upcoming exhibit at Open Space explores what it actually means to decolonize.<\/p>\n

Gibson is multimodal, just like her work. She is an award-winning educator, a highly respected artist, and a genre-bending writer. Her deeply moving book of poetry, How She Read<\/i>, examines the representations of black women in Canadian culture.<\/p>\n

A Grammar of Loss<\/i> takes its name from the first section of How She Read<\/i>. Through the use of cloze activities\u2014the blank spaces in words used to teach children how to read and spell\u2014Gibson points out that when learning to read, we begin with loss. The exhibit expands on another exhibit and residency Gibson presented last year, How She Read: Confronting the Romance of Empire<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A sample of Chantal Gibson\u2019s art, on display at Open Space until March 28 (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen I left that residency, I left with some questions about\u2026 what does it actually mean to decolonize?\u201d says Gibson. \u201cI started thinking about how ideology works.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gibson explores the lessons we learn as children, both the curriculum and the cultural lessons that are imparted through that process. Whether intended or not, our classrooms include a lesson about our identities and what our place in the world is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are a young black girl reading texts that don\u2019t contain any representation of you, or the representation of black people is really pejorative or racist, or we see old books that contain very sexist or misogynist imagery, we take that in,\u201d says Gibson. \u201cThat\u2019s also what we learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using the liquid rubber, Gibson communicates in her art the stickiness of these insidious ideologies. Some of the texts she uses can never again be opened\u2014on one hand, that can feel uncomfortable, but that\u2019s the nature of redaction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI imagine maybe this is what it\u2019s like when the Black voice gets to speak,\u201d says Gibson. \u201cThere\u2019s something about redaction that has this privilege, even redacting of who understands\u2014who gets to read what.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Gibson is exploring in A Grammar of Loss<\/i> is understanding what\u2019s meant not only in the exclusion but also in the letting go of certain books in the process of decolonizing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some books\u2014there\u2019ll be a few books in the show\u2014that I don\u2019t think need to be read again,\u201d says Gibson. \u201cI think we\u2019re good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibson\u2019s 2018 installation Souvenir<\/i> is featured in A Grammar of Loss<\/i>. This work was commissioned by the Royal Ontario Museum for Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art<\/i>, the first show of its kind. It\u2019s a collection of 2,000 souvenir spoons painted black. The spoons represent the complicated realities of Black people in Canada. Everyone\u2019s story is unique, but Black people have been homogenized.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, when you see 2,000 Black hanging bodies [they] bring up a long kind of shared history of Blackness,\u201d she says. \u201cWorking with black paint, black ink, and now this liquid rubber, it is a rhetorical device.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The pieces in these exhibits are meant to be visually appealing, but this art is designed to be evocative and thought-provoking.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason I\u2019m making art [is] because I\u2019m trying to find a way to communicate something that means a lot to me,\u201d says Gibson. \u201cEven with my book of poetry, every one of those poems is just a sculpture, but there are some things that we just cannot communicate in words.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Grammar of Loss:\u00a0Studies in Erasure
\n<\/i>Friday, February 21\u00a0to Saturday, March 28
\nFree or by donation,\u00a0Open Space
\nopenspace.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liquid black rubber drips off the pages of White Man\u2019s Africa, a book written in 1899. This record of white supremacy in Africa is no longer readable, and that\u2019s the point. Along with many other altered and redacted works, this piece in Chantal Gibson\u2019s upcoming exhibit at Open Space explores what it actually means to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-february-19-2020"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19053,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19051\/revisions\/19053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}