Black Artist Union
June 1st, 2018 - February 29th, 2020
Work by Oreka James
Project Description written by Anique Jordan
As a responsive gallery committed to artistic excellence, community learning and experimentation, we are experimenting with an autonomous programming model inviting a young and emerging artist collective to ¨take over¨ the gallery for 2018. As a small yet well-established gallery we are in an ideal position to reflect to the Toronto art world what it could look like to think of the artist-run centre as a lab where artists can creatively respond to the local environment by creating new work, exhibitions and programming born exclusively of their collective visioning. We are experimenting with this shift to imagine what are the possibilities when power - and in this instance, the resource of physical gallery space - is redistributed and put squarely in the hands of the artists.
We will be working with the Black Artist Union (BAU)- a collective of 10 Toronto based emerging black artists who have been making headway in the local art community. Formed in 2016 to assist in the exhibition of artists and creators of the African Diaspora, the BAU collective consists of artists: Philip Saunders, Oreka James, Tim Yanick Hunter, Curtia Wright, Aaron Jones, Flimon Yohannes, Nathan Olokun, Ekow Stone, Sylvia Limbana, and Destiny Grimm.
Using our art-as-education mentorship model, we will support the Black Artist Union to develop programming that will advance the member’s artistic and professional skill sets and use those experiences as a way to generate public programming that highlights the concerns facing young artists of colour.
Currently, the programming structure for 2018 consists of 3 major exhibitions that explore themes selected by BAU. The BAU are interested in presenting programming that focuses on black experiences of self-care, livelihood and the internet. These three exhibitions will be paired up with public programming that extends these themes into pedagogy creating shared learning opportunities with communities that may not have access to the same resources. For example, the exhibition about livelihood will be paired with a studio-based skills workshop, the exhibition about being black on the internet will be paired with a video screening, and the exhibition about self-care will be paired with community conversations and workshops. Understandably, this structure/content is subject to change as we are working to be responsive to the needs of the BAU and community.
We also recognize the importance of archiving the relationship-building strategies we encounter for posterity. To capture and document the learnings coming from this year of gallery “take over” Whippersnapper will be commissioning the work of a local arts writer/researcher to document and archive the experiences of the artists, the public and the gallery with the end goal of learning what ways we can push the limits of what a gallery is capable of and what local artist-run centres can do.
This program is supported by Ontario Trillium Foundation, Toronto Friends for the Visual Arts, Musagetes Foundation and Ontario Arts Council.
