It's About Time: Dancing Black in Canada | Conversations with the Curator

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About

It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900 – 1970 and Now is an exhibition that illuminates the largely undocumented dance history of Canada’s Black population before 1970, with responses from contemporary performing and visual artists reflecting on how the archival resonates in this moment, and in Alberta.

Join curator Seika Boye in conversation with local visual artists Braxton Garneau and Preston Pavlis, who each created artworks in response to the archive. Listen to Garneau and Pavlis discuss the processes in creating their respective pieces and reflection on their participation in this project.

Braxton Garneau is a multimedia artist living in Edmonton, Alberta. He received a diploma in Fine Art from MacEwan University in 2017 and will be graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Alberta in 2020. Through research-based practice, Garneau’s work responds to his ever-evolving relationship with his Caribbean culture. His practice engages with the Caribbean’s dynamic mix of cultures, its diasporas, and its socio-political realities, all of which are constantly transforming themselves. Informed by personal experience, ethnography, and structural anthropology, Garneau’s practice translates his own analyses into paintings, prints, and installations.

Preston Pavlis is an artist based in Edmonton, Alberta. Pavlis completed his Diploma of Fine Arts at MacEwan University in 2019. Pavlis was selected as the winner of the BMO 1st Art! prize for the province of Alberta in 2019. Currently, he is interested in the fusion of painting and textiles as a means to explore narrative, form, and colour. His work is an attempt at traversing liminal bridges by way of poetic association and metaphor. The resulting works become charts for time, memory, and feeling.

Links

• Learn more about the exhibition: macewan.ca
• More in the conversation series: macewan.ca

Organizer

Mitchell Art Gallery

The John and Maggie Mitchell Art Gallery is a public gallery committed to presenting art exhibitions, programs, and publications that feature diverse artistic and curatorial perspectives committed to critical discourses in contemporary art. The gallery supports interdisciplinary, experiential learning for the public and for the university community. Located in the heart of downtown Edmonton in MacEwan University’s new Allard Hall, the Mitchell Art Gallery programming also serves the local community through emphasizing safe, collaborative and relevant opportunities for learning and visual literacy development. Gallery initiatives reinforce the MacEwan University mandate through innovative approaches to program delivery and community development. The gallery supports opportunities for students to develop academic, practical and leadership skills to support their futures as artists, cultural workers, and lifelong critical thinkers.