Artistic Responses - Vancouver, 2022
SFU Galleries
October 13 — December 9, 2022
This is the fifth presentation of the archival materials in It’s About Time, and includes new commissions from dance artist Justine A. Chambers, visual artist Ceilidh Munroe, poet and scholar Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, with a graphic response by Adriana Contreras.
Additional public programming includes community responses to the exhibition from dance artist Isaac Gasangwa, spoken word artist Teeanna Munro, and Spotlight Presentations by dance artists and scholars, Miss Coco Murray and Emilie Jabouin.
It’s About Time was originally commissioned by Dance Collection Danse (2018) and further developed in partnership with The Mitchell Art Gallery (2020). Partners: SFU School of Contemporary Arts; Mitchell Art Gallery; MacEwan University; Dance Collection Danse Gallery.
Adriana Contreras and Justine Chambers
In-Gallery Digital Drawing and Performance.
Commissioned graphic response to four hours of oral history interviews conducted by Seika Boye with Justine Chambers about her dancing life.
Ceilidh Munroe
Aint She Something? In-Gallery textile installation.
Aint She Something? attempts to translate the movement of dance, something that is distinctively difficult to document, into a printed object.
PRESENTATION RECORDING COMING SOON
Coco Murray and Emilie Jabouin
Riding a Tidalectic Wave. In-Gallery spotlight presentation.
Using the symbolism of Kamau Brathwaite’s tidalectic, an alternative historiography to linear models of colonial progress, Murray briefly unpacks their journey of claiming her Black Canadian presence, lived experience, community arts practice, and entrepreneurship informing academic activities that amplify African diasporic dance styles in the Toronto dance sector.
Isaac Gasangwa
Those who forget the past are deemed to repeat it. Online video response.
Oil, fabric and pressed flowers on canvas. Courtesy of the artist Commissioned response to archival exhibition, It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900-1970.
Otoniya J. Okot Bitek
N for Nude. In-Gallery poem and sculpture.
A poetic response to: Colour Palette Guide for Mixing Makeup to Achieve Accurate Ethnic Representation from Stage Makeup by Richard Corson, 4th Edition (Archives of IT'S ABOUT TIME: Dancing Black in Canada 1900-1970). This response, provisionally titled "N for Nude" will comprise an audio and visual representation based on an original poem in progress.
Teeanna Munro
The Harlem Nocturne. Online video response.