Preston , 2007. Designed by David Woods and quilted by Laurel Francis. Pieced, appliquéd, machine- and hand-stitched, hand-dyed quilt with photo transfers, 1.47 x 1.32 m. Images on quilt courtesy the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia.
Saturday, October 3, 3–4:30 p.m. ADT / 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m. PDT / 2–3:30 p.m. EDT
Nova Scotia
Join us for a conversation focused on the overlooked histories and current work being done by Black artists, curators and thinkers in the Maritimes. This event will feature an introduction to the backstory of the Chroma issue by guest editors Yaniya Lee and Denise Ryner, followed by a conversation between curator, artist and cultural organizer David Woods and art and culture journalist Kelsey Adams. For the better part of 40 years, David Woods has been an archivist and advocate for the artistic contributions of Black Maritime communities. Kelsey Adams has worked with Woods to chronicle his pedagogy and advocacy around recentring local Black creative practice and history to tell a complex story of Black Canada and its links to the global African diaspora.
Kelsey Adams is an arts and culture journalist from Toronto. Her writing explores the intersection of music, art and film, with a focus on the work of marginalized creators. She has written for the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, CBC Arts, The FADER and C Mag.
Yaniya Lee is a writer and editor interested in the ethics of aesthetics. Lee was the 2019–20 researcher in residence at Vtape. She works as senior editor-at-large at Canadian Art and teaches art criticism at the University of Toronto.
Denise Ryner is director/curator at Vancouver’s Or Gallery, and is a research fellow at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Her curatorial, research and writing interests include place-as-agent in exhibition-making and the cultural production of transnational counterflows of the 19th and 20th centuries.
David Woods is a largely self-taught multidisciplinary artist and arts-organization leader from Dartmouth, NS. He was the organizer of Nova Scotia’s first Black History Month (1984) and the founding organizer of several arts and cultural organizations including the Cultural Awareness Youth Group of Nova Scotia (1984) and the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia (1992). Woods has curated pioneering exhibitions of African Nova Scotian art such as “In This Place” (1998) and “The Secret Codes: African Nova Scotian Quilts” (2012). His current research focuses on African American art pioneer Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828–1901), who is greatly revered in the United States but largely unheralded in Canada—the country of his birth. Woods is also writing a history of Black art in Nova Scotia from 1888 to the present.