black art in Canada

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is one of the few places that comes to mind when I think of beautiful spaces in Toronto.  This photo is of the golden mosaic ceiling of the museum’s foyer—which is now closed because a more modern (monstrous) entrance was recently added to a different side of the building.  The ROM currently has two exhibits featuring black artists—part of their “Season of Africa”—and I viewed both with my cousin while I was in Toronto.  I wasn’t expecting much—I’m not sure how many black artists have had their work shown in the museum, but I certainly never saw any in the 20 years I lived in Canada.  I’ll lead with what I liked: El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa.  This Ghanaian artist makes fabulous, intricate tapestries out of copper wire, bottle caps, and foil from discarded liquor bottles.  You know I love anything that glitters, so these installations really worked for me; I love the idea of taking something of no value and transforming it into something not only valuable but meaningful.  I didn’t notice any other black visitors at the museum while we were there (that’s what I do in Toronto; I count black people), but a college class was touring the exhibit and it was good to see so many people appreciating African abstract art.  This large piece is called Straying Continents, and made me think about the black diaspora and just how tenuous our connections to one another can be.  In Toronto, most black people identify as either Caribbean or African; it’s not like the US where there’s a large, dominant group of domestic blacks who set the terms of racial discourse.  I think this might be changing for younger black Canadians who seem to consume a lot of music, films, television, and other narratives from the US.  I expected to see evidence of this in the other black exhibit at the ROM: Position As Desired/Exploring African Canadian Identity: Photographs from the Wedge Collection.  My friend Rosa asked me to get a copy of the exhibit catalog for her, and that’s the only reason I put my money down; maybe Rosa has the required distance from Canada to assess the exhibit objectively.  But I was there, and I saw how problematic the curation was—an exhibit *about* positioning placed images of black Canadians at the very BACK of the Gallery of Canada, surrounded by vintage furniture.  Seriously.  When we asked for directions to the exhibition, a tiny white woman said, “Go ALL the way to the back.”  And that’s where we found I think 3 walls with photographs of black people, and then you turned a corner and there was one more wall (more of an alley, really) that purported to show a survey of black photography in Canada—with 6 images?  The exhibit starts with this striking image (Sign) by Eritrean photographer Dawit L. Petros; on the opposite wall is a beaver pelt and various bits of porcelain.  At first, my cousin and I weren’t even sure the two displays were meant to be read together (hence there was no disruption of the original collection, which was the curator’s intent).  The text next to the photograph says Petros is playing with a Renaissance image by Dürer…but that image isn’t presented so that the viewer can make her own comparison (a strategy used effectively with Kehinde Wiley’s portrait in the foyer of the Brooklyn Museum).  I agree with Globe & Mail reviewer R.M. Vaughan:

My only suggestion for improvement is that the ROM remount this show in a bigger space, with more works from the artists and their peers.Nobody would miss a couple of dinosaurs for a month or two.

That’s not my only suggestion, but the exhibit doesn’t really work in that space and when limited to that size.  But then I’m an angry black woman, and I tend to view anything related to black folks in Canada through a lens distorted by disappointment.  The little that’s offered simply isn’t good enough.  A while ago I posted a list of MG/YA novels by black authors in the US; well, now I’m going to make a list of MG/YA novels by black authors in Canada.  I bet I won’t get to 3.  Notisha said she went to Canada’s big chain bookstore and asked the clerk for black books and got a blank stare.  Oh, Canada…

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