Black Identities in Dialogue: A travelling show at the Legacy

Gallery entrance to The Chorus is Speaking. Image by Ivy Allen

by: Mina Guan, YCW Collections Intern, UVic Art Collections

Eight Black Canadian artists are the focus of the new exhibition The Chorus is Speaking: Experiencing Identities of Blackness at the UVic Legacy Art Gallery. Originally exhibited at the Campbell River Art Gallery, co-curators Jenelle Pasiechnik (Campbell River Art Gallery) and Michelle Jacques (Remai Modern) have renewed the show with additional pieces for Victoria audiences.

Artists Ojo Agi, Christina Battle, Charles Campbell, Chantal Gibson, Dana Inkster, Karin Jones, Jan Wade, and Syrus Marcus Ware, form a chorus. They are a collective voice which functions upon the strength of individual perspectives and experiences. “This is not a headless group,” writes Pasiechnik. “Each member is recognizable, distinctly heard, and valued.”

Chantal Gibson, Un/Titled, mixed media altered texts, 2019. Image by Ivy Allen

Each artist infuses their works with their positions as scholars, educators, and activists based across Canada. Chantal Gibson combines her poetic expertise with her visual arts practice. Gibson redacts harmful literary depictions of BIPOC people by smothering selected history books in liquid rubber, sealing the possibility of further racial violence.

The range of materials express the many ways of reclaiming knowledges, asserting power, and questioning oppressed and erased histories. Upon entering the gallery, you are enveloped by the voices of “The Black Breath Archive,” an auditory installation by Victoria-based artist, Charles Campbell. Featured short films by Dana Inkster, including a collaboration with author and UVic alum Esi Edugyan, uncover hidden stories of Canada’s past. On Inkster’s cinematic innovation, Jacques adds that “you often have to weave together fact and fiction to get to these stories because all of the facts have not been recorded.”

Syrus Marcus Ware, Flowers While We’re Living, graphite and watercolour 
on paper, 2024. Image by Ivy Allen.

On top of highlighting the injustices faced by Black communities, the show also expresses profound joy. Ware’s monumental graphite and watercolour portrait series, “Flowers While We’re Living,” honour the labour of social justice workers, positions which are rarely memorialized at the large-form scale that Ware creates. Imbued with care for his activist peers, his works indicate the power of collective celebration.

The curators hope that the show will “create opportunities for those [Black] community members to feel joy in being recognized and celebrated” while “leaving us with the impression that there is much to learn and many more perspectives emerging and impacting the way we understand culture on Turtle Island. [...] Where there hasn’t been room they make room; where there haven’t been books, they write books; where there haven’t been voices, the chorus is speaking.”

The Chorus is Speaking is exhibiting alongside Rooting for Reclamation. Guest-curator Madison Bridal assembles four local Black artists Nathan Smith, Kemi Craig, Aya Behr, and Fatima Tajah Olsen, in an introspective exploration of the meaning of ‘reclamation’.

Both shows run until December 7, 2024. Visiting hours are Thursday – Saturday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.