{"id":24312,"date":"2023-09-20T09:00:01","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T16:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=24312"},"modified":"2023-09-22T11:34:25","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T18:34:25","slug":"while-black-examines-black-representation-in-art-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2023\/09\/20\/while-black-examines-black-representation-in-art-world\/","title":{"rendered":"While Black<\/em> examines Black representation in art world"},"content":{"rendered":"

One wonderful thing about being an artist is the absolute broadness of the world, the millions of opportunities for muse. However, an art lover will often not think about what the art world lacks, or what it might be needing. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is currently hosting an exhibition whose theme is entirely about that.<\/p>\n

While Black: A forum for speculation on what the gallery can\u2019t hold<\/i>, which runs until October 22, is an eye-opener for those who want to both view and learn from beautiful art at the same time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Spatial Esk’s\u00a0Afro Space<\/em> series is being shown in the While Black<\/em> exhibit (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe exhibit is based around the boundaries that galleries set in how they decide what work is or is not included, which is often to the detriment of people of colour, Black people in particular,\u201d says exhibition co-curator Charles Campbell. \u201cThe nature of how artwork is defined, in a way\u2014we invited artists to respond to that question, what the gallery cannot hold. Instead of the curators making that decision, we\u2019d put it out to artists as an idea of, okay, what are the parts of Black life, Black production or politics\u2026 Whatever they wanted to define or what they feel isn\u2019t held by the gallery or that maybe the gallery can\u2019t adequately accommodate what was and what was not in there. The challenge, then, was building an exhibition around those ideas, what the gallery couldn\u2019t rather than what the gallery could do.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the curators put forth the While Black<\/i> challenge, they were flooded with artists\u2019 responses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe responses ranged from ideas for utopian parks that also kind of considered the politics and history of Black life and slavery,\u201d says Campbell. \u201cWe had looked explicitly at museum collections\u2014what was in there and what was not in that space. The absence of representation from Black artists was literal documentation. We received images of families and childhood. As opposed to other exhibitions that might try to feature Blackness… we are trying not to define it by any one thing. We are trying to open up the dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Campbell says the ideas for the exhibition really started formulating in December of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was specifically around seeing the statement of solidarity come ahead of cultural institutions, you know, across the world, but across Canada in particular,\u201d says Campbell. \u201cMyself as a Black artist and curator, with Michelle Jacques and Denise Ryner\u2014Michelle Jacques actually initiated the project\u2014we looked in terms of how institutions had failed to support Black curators in the past, and we decided to kind of flip it, and say, how are we bigger than the institutions?\u201d<\/p>\n

While Black<\/i> has been touring across Canada, providing information and asking questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been such an amazing response,\u201d says Campbell. \u201cWhat\u2019s been really satisfying is we\u2019ve been collecting members of the Black community together to talk about these issues and work through them ourselves, and we\u2019ve been able to envision a future that\u2019s actually more supportive and more fulsome in how it works with Black artists and curators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Campbell says that he\u2019s seen positive change since becoming part of this project.<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, a lot of things have shifted since we started,\u201d he says. \u201cI think there is a new visibility of Black artists on the scene, specifically in Montreal, where there is such a vast community of artists and Black artists, some from Haiti, some the African continent, and they\u2019ve been working for a very long time in relative obscurity. Things had happened to turn around, definitely by the time we held this forum, but what had not happened was an opportunity for the Black community to actually get together itself and discuss what was happening, and how to take advantage of those opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Black: A forum for\u00a0speculation on what the gallery can\u2019t hold
\n<\/i>Until Sunday, October 22
\nArt Gallery of Greater Victoria
\naggv.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One wonderful thing about being an artist is the absolute broadness of the world, the millions of opportunities for muse. However, an art lover will often not think about what the art world lacks, or what it might be needing. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is currently hosting an exhibition whose theme is entirely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24313,"comment_status":"closed","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":[4,295],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-september-20-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24312","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=24312"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24332,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24312\/revisions\/24332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}