Practice as Ritual / Ritual as Practice

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DZI..AN, “ Transition,” 2022

installation view, A Space Gallery, Toronto. (courtesy of the gallery) (photo: Selina Whittaker)

Practice as Ritual / Ritual as Practice is a group exhibition featuring the work of nine Black Women artists who participated in the historical 1989 DAWA exhibition, Black Wimmin: When and Where We Enter, the first national exhibition to address the exclusion of Black women artists from the visual landscape of Canada. The exhibition attests to and affirms the heterogeneity of perspectives and forms that constitute Black Canadian women’s art today. Featuring primarily new commissioned works, including paintings, photography, text, installation, video, and sculpture, the exhibition highlights the sustained aesthetic and everyday practices of these artists who critically challenge the structures that delineate Black women’s lives in the current moment. 

The title of the exhibition refers to an overarching theme that emerges in the artworks—one of tending to Black histories, presents, and futures—and to the labour involved in such a practice. The range of artworks and artistic approaches included draws attention to the role of knowledge gained via extra-rational modes, such as dreams and visions, in creating connections to lost knowledge, kin, and a deep desire for Black people's liberation. Spirituality, memorialization, commemoration, play, transhistorical memory, anti-Black racism, and intergenerational knowledge transfer are key themes that emerge. 

Following previous showings at A Space (Toronto) and articule (Montréal), the iteration at the Libby Leshgold Gallery will feature What is a lineage?/What is a Gathering?, a robust series of events co-produced with Artspeak Gallery and the Black Arts Centre that includes workshops, screenings and discussion events with local and visiting artists. The exhibition will also include a reading room organized by Artspeak Director/ Curator Nya Lewis that will offer visitors a chance to browse archival material, ephemera, and current publications relating to Black Women cultural production in Canada. Working in collaboration, we seek to expand the footprint of the exhibition to include narratives from the West Coast, and to mirror and honour the collective efforts—of primarily Black women artists, curators and researchers—who have brought these practices back into public view. 

Buseje Bailey works across a variety of media attempting to grasp the knowledge of the African diasporic humanity in this modern environment, and with its complexity, diversity, and vulnerabilities. Bailey explores the hybridity of her identities—Afro-Jamaican, woman, Canadian, etc.—and how she engages with each label/identity when called upon in her work. She applies the relevant medium with the awareness of exploitation, reflecting on the wider community and the implication of her work on the diaspora, of which she is a part of. Bailey’s creations rest between the transitional space of being and becoming, where one label stops and the other begins, with questions such as, “Who am I? Who they are? And who do they believe me/we to be?” at each intersection. Working with lens-based media such as photo and video, she draws inspiration from mainstream media offering that “The very media used to categorize and label… I’ve used to galvanize my reaction.”

Marie Booker’s ritual garments, textiles, regalia, performance artist designs and drawings express her affinity to nature, whilst melding in her ancestral lineage and dreamtime recollections. Since the late 1980s and influenced by her dear friend and mentor, textile artist Chloe Onari, Booker has worked with plant life to colour her garments. Booker is also a percussionist and Master Gardener. Moving her focus from djembe, dun dun set, and the krin, she is presently teaching herself the balafon as well as creating a public “kitchen garden” planted with Virginia First Nations and Enslaved African healing herbs and foods. The hues of Booker’s current work are achieved with madder and plant life from her garden and adorned with bones and found objects such as feathers and shells. Ebe Yiye! (It will get better!)

Claire Carew is an artist and poet. As a visual artist, she specializes in oil painting and sculpture. Since the 1980s, Carew has exhibited extensively including significant events such as the Romerias de Mayo festival and a solo exhibition in Holguin, Cuba in tribute to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Taking the adventurous road, Carew also travels globally; often alone seeking out beauty and remnants of times past in several countries, which she says is “Challenging at times yet rewarding.” Carew obtained her Masters of Fine Arts in San Miguel de Allende, México after successfully completing her studies at McGill University. Her paintings and sculptures are held in private collections and public institutions internationally and her poetry and art have been published in textbooks and magazines. Carew is a professional artist who continues to work in Canada and México creating visionary work to inspire many.

At the centre of DZI..AN’s practice is an inquiry: “What makes humans vibrate?” With an interest in creating powerful forms, she has been creating life-size sculptures for decades that encourage viewers to reflect on human rhythms. Working with a variety of materials, DZI..AN holds a keen interest in elements and materials such as earth, air, wood, metal and felt. Her interest in the thousand year-old medium of felting acts as a base material for these life-size sculptures, the size creating a familiar intimacy between viewers and the works. When working with metal, DZI..AN likens it to “drawing in space.”… I centre them on a balance point so they can vibrate in the wind.” DZI..AN’s environmental sculptures aim to invite viewers into the adventure of a moment, into an impression and may even stimulate the urge to whisper something to the objects as one is leaving.