Michèle Pearson Clarke | Quantum Choir

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Michèle Pearson Clarke, "Quantum Choir," 2022

Courtesy of the Gallery.

In gallery one, is a new work by the renowned Toronto-based, Trinidadian artist, writer, and educator, Michèle Pearson Clarke (b. 1973). And in our second gallery, the burgeoning American artist and educator, Alanna Fields (b. 1990) will be presenting a suite of recent works culminating in her first exhibit in the country. This is also the first time both artists are being brought into proximity in an exhibition context. Among the variable concerns they take up, at their root, both artists’ works are invariably engaged in black and queer subjectivities through expanded photo-adjacent practices. This intergenerational pair approaches photographic explorations from a historical outlook (Fields) as well as queer expression in contemporary life today (Clarke). Clarke, who is a seasoned photo artist and filmmaker, has expanded her repertoire within the medium over the years, and this exhibition takes that further. For the first time, Clarke’s work has spatially transformed the exhibition space with objects, painted walls, and a built architectural apparatus for an enveloping four-channel video. As with her ongoing commitment to creating an encouraging space for grief, vulnerability, and the attendant unease, this new exhibition titled Quantum Choir, makes such states of vulnerability not only possible but welcomed in a tender collective embrace. The artist brings together a choir of four including herself–all masculine presenting women–to confront their fears, ingrained shame, and insecurity around their singing voice. Through their solidarity, they uphold a padded landing for each other’s vulnerability. 

Fields on the other hand is a student of queer history. She enlivens intimate traces of Black queer lives from found vernacular photographs predominately taken between the 60s and 90s. Through her dignifying attention, she awakens a different consciousness of a past often narrowly narrated by the burdens of societal marginalization, stigmatization, and hard-fought battles for equal rights. Under the title, Audacity, Fields’ exhibition focuses on body language, gestures, and sartorial elegance that characterizes the Black queer lives who transcended the recessive demands of heteronormative hegemony. Fields’ photographs are illustrative, painterly and tactile. On their surfaces, the artist delicately layers with wax, glitter, and colour bands, affording the found photographs—the spirited lives and histories they testify—an activated life in the present. 

Clarke and Fields’ work is grounded in a sustained archival practice. While Fields tasks herself with extensive searches into the past, Clarke accumulates hers as a result of living into the future. Fields finds queer affinity and kinship through her inquiries in reversed time. And Clarke shows us the fruits of leaning on that very kinship as she moves through the world. Together, they emphasize archival practice as a social necessity, keeping alive an ever-unfolding intricate tapestry of queer history across generations. 

Michèle Pearson Clarke’s work has been included in exhibitions and screenings at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Royal Ontario Museum, Lagos Photo Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Maryland Institute College of Art, ltd los angeles, Ryerson Image Centre, and Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography. From 2016-2017, Clarke was artist-in-residence at Gallery 44, and she was the inaugural 2020-2021 artist-in-residence at the University of Toronto’s Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. Clarke’s writing has been published in Canadian Art, TransitionMagazine, Momus, and The Toronto Star and in 2018, she was a speaker at the eighth TEDxPortofSpain. Most recently, Clarke served as the second Photo Laureate for the City of Toronto (2019-2022), and her work was added to the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. Clarke holds a Master of Social Work from the University of Toronto, and in 2015 she received her Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Media from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson), where she is an Assistant Professor in Photography in the School of Image Arts.