Tyshan Wright, Myal II, 2022. Collection of the artist. Photo by Steve Farmer
Tyshan Wright, Durational Performance, 2023. Photo by Steve Farmer.
Until December 9, 2023
About the Artist
Kjipuktuk (Halifax)-based artist Tyshan Wright works at the intersection of contemporary art and traditional Jamaican Maroon culture and craft. A descendant of Africans who evaded enslavement and created their own self-sustaining communities in the mountains of Jamaica in the 1600s, his work unites present with past narratives of Maroon experience in diaspora—from the Maroons’ origins in the Akan region of Ghana, to their resistance towards slavery in 17th century Jamaica, to the exile of more than 500 Maroons from Jamaica to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1796, and beyond. Wright examines the enduring cultural influence of the Trelawny Town Maroons’ time in Atlantic Canada, a region still home to many of their descendants. Using wood and natural forest products that exiled Maroons might have sourced locally to create their ceremonial instruments, he champions a resurgence of Maroon spirituality, language and material culture. A 2021-22 Artist-In-Residence Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery (NSCAD University), he was the Atlantic region nominee shortlisted for the 2022 Sobey Art Award (Sobey Art Foundation/National Gallery of Canada). His work has been presented in exhibitions and artist talks at Canadian galleries and museums including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Confederation Centre of the Arts, and the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.
About the Curator
Julie Hollenbach is queer, white-settler artist, curator, and cultural historian teaching craft histories and material cultures on unceded Mi’kmaq territory at NSCAD University. Her interdisciplinary scholarly, artistic, and curatorial work engages a queer, feminist, critical-race methodology to consider craft and material culture at the intersections of function and meaning, place and time, histories and communities, practice and tradition. Her writing has been published in popular press platforms such as Canadian Art, Studio Magazine, CRIT, and Visual Arts News, as well as scholarly publications including PUBLIC, The Journal of Modern Craft, Cahiers métiers d’art ::: Craft Journal, and Design and Culture. Her co-edited volume published in 2021, with Robin Alex McDonald titled Re/Imagining Depression: New Approaches to Feeling Bad harnesses critical theories to generate new paradigms for thinking about the depressive experience that centers the diversity of affects, embodiments, materiality, rituals, and behaviors that are often collapsed under the singular rubric of “depression.” She has curated and facilitated exhibitions and public programs at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, MSVU Art Gallery, CFAT, Union Gallery, the Mary E. Black Gallery, and the Anna Leonowens Gallery.
Kjipuktuk (Halifax)-based artist Tyshan Wright works at the intersection of contemporary art and traditional Jamaican Maroon culture and craft. A descendant of Africans who evaded enslavement and created their own self-sustaining communities in the mountains of Jamaica in the 1600s, his work unites present with past narratives of Maroon experience in diaspora—from the Maroons’ origins in the Akan region of Ghana, to their resistance towards slavery in 17th century Jamaica, to the exile of more than 500 Maroons from Jamaica to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1796, and beyond. Wright examines the enduring cultural influence of the Trelawny Town Maroons’ time in Atlantic Canada, a region still home to many of their descendants. Using wood and natural forest products that exiled Maroons might have sourced locally to create their ceremonial instruments, he champions a resurgence of Maroon spirituality, language and material culture. A 2021-22 Artist-In-Residence Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery (NSCAD University), he was the Atlantic region nominee shortlisted for the 2022 Sobey Art Award (Sobey Art Foundation/National Gallery of Canada). His work has been presented in exhibitions and artist talks at Canadian galleries and museums including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Confederation Centre of the Arts, and the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.
Bass II by Tyshan Wright, 2022. Photo: Steve Farmer.
About the Curator
Julie Hollenbach is queer, white-settler artist, curator, and cultural historian teaching craft histories and material cultures on unceded Mi’kmaq territory at NSCAD University. Her interdisciplinary scholarly, artistic, and curatorial work engages a queer, feminist, critical-race methodology to consider craft and material culture at the intersections of function and meaning, place and time, histories and communities, practice and tradition. Her writing has been published in popular press platforms such as Canadian Art, Studio Magazine, CRIT, and Visual Arts News, as well as scholarly publications including PUBLIC, The Journal of Modern Craft, Cahiers métiers d’art ::: Craft Journal, and Design and Culture. Her co-edited volume published in 2021, with Robin Alex McDonald titled Re/Imagining Depression: New Approaches to Feeling Bad harnesses critical theories to generate new paradigms for thinking about the depressive experience that centers the diversity of affects, embodiments, materiality, rituals, and behaviors that are often collapsed under the singular rubric of “depression.” She has curated and facilitated exhibitions and public programs at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, MSVU Art Gallery, CFAT, Union Gallery, the Mary E. Black Gallery, and the Anna Leonowens Gallery.
MSVU Art Gallery, Mount Saint Vincent University, 166 Bedford Highway
Halifax, NS, B3M 2J6
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario