Dialogue: A Gesture in Two Directions
Fall 2020
Chroma
Available from September 15 to December 14, 2020
Though we have been planning this issue since the fall of 2019 (and, arguably, have been dedicated to this work for most of our careers), we were aware that Chroma would be viewed within the longue durée of Black artists, curators and writers who have worked against their marginalization to establish their own cultural spaces while continuously engaging with this country’s shifting cultural and social imaginaries. More recently, the twin pandemics of systemic racism and COVID-19 have brought to the fore societal inequities that touch all sectors of life and work. The loss of a “normal” has created the potential for rapid, dramatic change. These two realities formed the environment in which Chroma was developed and assembled. —Yaniya Lee and Denise Ryner, co-editors
Features
Groundations
For Tau Lewis, sculpture is an always unfolding conversation between progenitors and peers, the past and the possible
Monochrome and Matter
A 1967 artscanada roundtable on the subject of “black” revealed the consequent tensions between the aesthetics of abstraction and the politics of race
Black History Decades
For the better part of 40 years, David Woods has been an archivist and advocate for the overlooked artistic contributions of Black Maritime communities
Fade into Place
From our fall issue, Denise Ryner speaks on Vancouver artist Stan Douglas and the anonymity of the working body
Porch Light, A Window
How a neighbourhood storefront became a gathering place for Vancouver’s Black creative community
Spotlight
Making Throughlines
A national survey of artists whose work layers collaboration, inheritance and collective memory
Artist Project
Cover Artwork
dusk settles (NourbeSe behind the veil)
Photograph, dimensions variable, 2019
This Issue
Excesses and Refusals
In this introductory essay for the Fall 2020 issue of Canadian Art, Chroma, co-editors Yaniya Lee and Denise Ryner write about some of the origins of, and hopes for, this project
Contributors
Preview
Interviews with Camille Turner, Curtis Talwst Santiago, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Charles Campbell, Aisha Sasha John and Michael Fernandes
Keynote
Terrain of Struggle: Notes on Black Study in Canada
Six educators—Deanna Bowen, Afua Cooper, Katherine McKittrick, Charmaine A. Nelson, Dori Tunstall and Rinaldo Walcott—speak on ethically writing Black culture into the curriculum
Poetry
untitled folder (for CS)
Legacy
In the Atmosphere
On January 20, 2021, Jill Biden highlighted a Robert S. Duncanson painting at the US inauguration reception. Find out about Duncanson’s years in Montreal and connections with Canadian artists in this story from our Fall 2020 issue, “Chroma”
Dialogue
Touching the Ground
The sea and its horizons bring both respite and reminders of violence. For poets Imani Elizabeth Jackson, M. NourbeSe Philip and S*an D. Henry-Smith, the sea is an end, and also a beginning
Reviews
Other Places
A new collection edited by Deanna Bowen reflects on under-recognized voices from Canadian media arts and the sovereignty of reclaiming one’s image
Brontez Purnell
In this project, the artist, writer, arthouse film director and frontman of the punk band The Younger Lovers exuded candid pathos and humour over Zoom
What Carries Us
At The Rooms, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Afro-diasporic histories challenged a provincial self-portraiture
Dana Michel
With gestures of discovery, Michel asked, “How might I locate my sexual identity within a multitude of complementary and seemingly contradictory identities?”
The Chiffon Trenches
André Leon Talley spent most of his working life alone, “the only person of color in the upper echelons of fashion journalism.” His memoir offers glimpses of the costs of admission into the world of glamour
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