Stanley Wany | For those who Chose the Sea

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Stanley Wany, "For those who Chose the Sea, Panel 3"

Photo Courtesy of: Catherine Sinclair

Opening | Friday, October 21, 6:30 - 9:30 pm

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, the transatlantic slave trade was an enforced and horrific voyage for millions of human beings. African peoples were shackled in the lower decks of ships, and transported like cargo by European slavers to the Americas. The effects of trauma as a result of enslavement extend through the generations, and have since become rooted in the collective psyche of descendants of the African diaspora.

Quebec-based artist Stanley Wany engages with the legacy of enslavement which permeates his identity. For those who Chose the Sea traces connections between conditions aboard slave ships and the effects of social stratification on the living relatives of the African women and men who were taken.

Wany’s multimedia installation combines immersive video footage of the Atlantic Ocean, a sculpture alluding to the confining spaces in which human beings were stored below decks on slaving ships, and mixed-media works on paper alluding to lost identities, histories and ancestors through dreamlike washes of black in which figures emerge and recede.

A disproportionate number of African-diasporic community members live in high-rise housing projects, stacked in apartments one on top of the other, similar to the lower decks of slaving ships. By showing the correlation between these spatial and hierarchical systems, Wany provokes and supports a diversity of emotional, intellectual and physical reflections about diasporic conditions, and the residual effects of violence and harm.

Artist and Curator Talk with Stanley Wany and Catherine Sinclair | Saturday, October 22, 2 pm