By Tendisai Cromwell

Indulge in an African cultural experience at the Toronto Zoo. Transforming the African Savanna section of the zoo, the African Arts & Culture Festival features dance performances and art workshops. For the remainder of the festival, browse through a marketplace of authentic African goods including sculptures, hand woven textiles, handcrafted wooden masks, traditional African musical instruments and more.

Featured artists include Josephine, a West African textile artist who inherited the craft from her family members as a child. She makes batik and tie dye products to be sold at the marketplace. Thomas and Juli create West and Central African products including jewelry and hand carved wooden art. Other artists and art dealers are listed on the Toronto Zoo website.

The festival, which began July 2, will run until September 5.

For more information about artists and marketplace schedule visit: www.torontozoo.com/events/AfricanArtsCultureFestival.asp

Photo courtesy of www.torontozoo.com

By Adebe DeRango-Adem

“Without question, carnival had become a symbol of freedom for the broad mass of the population and not merely a season for frivolous enjoyment. It had a ritualistic significance, rooted in the experience of slavery and in the celebration of freedom from slavery…..Adopted by the Trinidad people it become a deeply meaningful anniversary of deliverance from the most hateful form of human bondage
-Professor Errol Hill in The Trinidad Carnival, 1972.

Originally from Guyana, Nation speaks to SWAY about the inspiration behind his debut exhibit, and his own experience of Carnival from a multitude of perspectives.

DeRango-Adem: Your debut photography exhibition at the ROM is a retrospective look at the history of Caribana (now Scotiabank Toronto Caribbean Carnival) in Toronto, and the cultural legacy behind Carnival.  What inspired you to put this exhibition together?

Cheong: I started documenting Caribana after reading the book Trinidad Carnival by Jeffrey Chock in 2007.  The images moved me so much to want to deepen my understanding of the cultural significance of Carnival and the history of all its permutations.  The intention has always been to publish a powerful book documenting Toronto’s Caribana and the history of the Caribbean families who immigrated to Toronto.  This exhibit came about after Karen Carter the ED of Heritage Toronto and Chair of Black Artist Network in Dialog (BAND) contacted me to inquire if I had any Caribana photos that could be part of an exhibit that would mark the history of Caribana from 1967 to today.

How has your work as a community activist and musician factored into your debut as a photographer?

Community activism brings me closer to the impact of social injustices that break people’s spirit or bring out the divine in them; it is these broken and divine expressions, emotional and physical expressions of liberation, resistance, transcendence, joy and innocence that I seek to record.  My music allows me to tap in to the rhythm of a space very quickly and it allows me to dance with the events unfolding around me.

Have you ever played Mas?

I’ve not yet found a local Mas Band that has produced a costume that speaks to me. After seeing Brian McFarlane’s Mas in 2009, however, I know it’s possible to have a costume with social value that I would be proud to wear. Locally, I love what Ricardo McRae is doing by preserving the jab jab tradition here in Toronto.

Despite combining archival photos and film and more recent visuals, your work seems to insist that carnival is not an archaic type of folksong fit for the archives.  Would you say this is the case?  How has carnival kept abreast of changing conditions and remained a contemporary cultural expression for those of Caribbean ancestry?

I would like to see more social and politically conscious Mas here in Toronto to keep the equally important bacchanalian spirit in balance.  I think there is a real danger of first, second and third generation Canadians of Caribbean descent losing touch with the sociopolitical expressions of Carnival.  Ras Stone, a local Trinidadian artist, is doing very conscious work that celebrates the emancipation spirit of Carnival. This year he created a float for Kiddy Carnival that was a tribute to the Marcus Garvey.  This year’s Caribana will also have a Rasta float for the very first time. These are both encouraging examples of folks keeping the conscious spirit alive.  We have a great opportunity every year to remind people of our past, to celebrate our diversity and to promote love and understanding among the many nations that celebrate Carnival, despite colour, class, creed and sexual orientation

As much as people around the world enjoy the carnival as a unique celebration of culture, there is a political dimension behind the music and performances.  How you would describe this dimension to those just learning about carnival history?

The old calypso’s like Sparrow’s 1959 Paye up to David Rudder’s 1988 Panama and Ella Andall’s 2007 Black Woman are a small examples of the type of consciousness that lives in Calypso music.  Soca is party music that should not be ever confused with the musical tradition that preserves the place of the African Griot that survived the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Calypso was initially used a social outlet that would give rise to a national theatre predicated on a sense of collective memory.  How does photography allow for a passing on of memory? Are photographs performances themselves, in the sense that they re-enact and re-call history?

Photographs are a static record of a moment in time that exemplifies humanity or nature at its best, worst or most mundane.  It’s an art form that preserves important moments that trigger deeper and more fluid, complex memories.  Our collective experiences and memories are the makings of history, and a photo can remind us of those important, perhaps transformative moments.

Toronto’s Carnival: Festival Photographs from 1967 to Today runs between July 16th and August 1st in the Hilary and Galen Weston Wing, Level 2. It is part of the duo-location exhibit, also featuring at The Gladstone Hotel until July 31.  In this exhibition, Cheong’s contemporary work captures and communicates the myriad of experiences that have been a part of the Carnival experience in Toronto from its roots in 1967 to today.

Further Reading:

• CARIBANA: African Roots and Continuities – Race, Space and the Poetics of Moving –An essay by M. NourbeSe Philip which traces the history of Toronto’s Caribana, it’s model in Trinidad, it’s African origins and it’s raison d’etre. This genre crossing “essay” includes poetry, has fictional characters like a short story and is written in the rhythm and language of the Trinidadian demotic.

Alia Toor

Magic Squares: The patterned imagination of Muslim Africa in contemporary culture. From the collection of Islamic African artifacts with work by contemporary artists Hamid Kachmar, Jamelie Hassan, Alia Toor and Tim Whiten at The Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto.

By Anya Wassenberg

Magic Squares is an imaginative exhibition that begins with the “magic square” concept and then looks at its application and added meaning in African Muslim cultures and beyond, including the responses of four contemporary artists to the magic square concept as the intersection of design, belief and art.

Popular games like Sudoku and Kenken are based on the magic square, which originated in China about two thousand years ago.  It is believed that it migrated to Africa via Muslim traders on the old Silk Road back through the Middle East and then Western and Northern Africa, as those regions converted to Islam in the 10^th century. Here, the abstract mathematical concept combined with the long established weaving arts native to an area with an abundance of materials like cotton, silk and wool, and resulted in a mesmerizing expression of design.

Africans added a talismanic meaning. Magic squares, called “hatumere” were talismanic prayer papers which were sewn into clothing. Sometimes the piece of clothing itself would be adorned with symbols or phrases. The art of calligraphy and its use in decoration is a distinctive feature of Islamic design, often combined with geometric patterning on architecture, ceramics and textiles. One of the pieces on display is a cloth that was woven to commemorate the mosque at Touba, Senegal, central to the Mouride Sufi brotherhood. The pattern features rows that alternate an image of the mosque with script that says “There is no other God but Allah”, all of it over a checkerboard patterned background.

West African garment, 20th century

The exhibition contains many examples of blankets or wrappers, garments that cover the body literally from birth into old age and then act as a shroud when it’s finally laid to rest. In wraps from the Ewe people of Ghana, the Djula of Cote d’Ivoire, the Yoruba and Hausa of Nigeria and more, the geometric grid or checkerboard pattern comes to life in colour and cloth.

The majority of them are strip-woven, a technique common to much of the African continent. The looms are handheld and produce narrow bands of cloth which are then sewn together to create the larger pieces that form garments and blankets. The process allows the magic square patterning and alternating checkerboard effect to come naturally as the bands of cloth are assembled. Some involve strictly linear or geometric designs, while others include rounded elements and flourishes along with lettering.

The techniques used to create the patterns are amazingly intricate. In the Yoruba culture of Nigeria, the cloths are called adire. Here, the patterns are produced by stitching, stenciling, or treating plain cloth with a paint resistant substance. The cloth is then dyed with indigo. One example featured lettering that had been hand stitched through two layers before dying, the result a shimmering and teasingly inscrutable pattern of letters in deep blues. Garment fabrics often involve a basic stripe consisting of geometric checkerboarding as a background to embroidery at a neckline or sleeve.

The use of a grid to contain the patterning is symbolic of a culture that valued the rule of order and reason over chaos, a theme that’s taken up by Hamid Kachmar, one of the contemporary artists in the show, in his piece Tiswingimin. Hamid is himself from South Morocco, and not surprisingly, his is the piece that most resembles the work of the African artisans, consisting of 20 squares in two rows decorated with henna and saffron in a variety of very intricate patterns. It has a hypnotizing effect, glowing in reds and ochres even as the energy of the patterning is contained within its geometry. The title means “meditations” in Amazigh.

The hunter’s coat from Mali, c. 1960 to 1970

North Africa has long been noted for producing skilled leatherwork, and the magic square pattern appears in Tuareg leather piecesfrom Algeria that use embellishments like incising, embossing, braiding, tussling and dying. Other embellishments, like knotting, can also have spiritual meaning, as in the hunter’s coat from Mali on display. It’s made of cotton and decorated with amulets, mirrors and knotted cords, each element having a specific function and talismanic meaning.

With a larger focus on Islam in Africa, and along with simply viewing the objects on display, the exhibition includes opportunities for a more diverse sensory experience, with stations where you can touch embroidered materials, listen to music inspired by Islam, (including Toumani Diabaté, Nawal and Oumou Sangare, among others,) read supplementary materials and even smell Bint el Sudan perfume, popular at Sudanese weddings.

This touches on only a small fraction of the show which covers a whole floor of the Museum, including the artistic responses of Jamelie Hassan, Alia Toor and Tim Whiten.

The Magic Squares exhibit is on display until November 20, 2011 www.textilemuseum.ca

By Tendisai Cromwell

Beautifully crafted Zimbabwean stone sculptures adorned a cobblestone Distillery District street on July 8 and 9. The exhibit showcased the works of 30 artists whose sculptures embodied Zimbabwean family life, femininity, nature, animals, and spirituality. Grouped by theme and artist, 150 impressive sculptures were displayed atop chopped tree trunks and distributed all throughout Trinity street.

The exhibit, curated by Fran Fearnley, owner of ZimArt, draws upon a Zimbabwean tradition of displaying sculptures outdoors.

“Stone is a natural material so to be able to show it outside somehow brings it back to the roots of where it all comes from,” Fran explains.

Zimbabwe itself means ‘House of Stone’ and is home to a World Heritage Site of stone ruins emanating from the Great Zimbabwe civilization.

“Stone is part of the fabric of the country,” Fran says explaining that the emergence of a rich artist tradition of stone sculpting is of little wonder in a country where stone is an abundant natural resource.

Zimbabwean artist Lewtin Mugavazi was on site crafting a sculpture live. Curious onlookers approached Lewtin to watch her

Letwin Mugavazi

bring life to stone and offer her words of praise.

Growing up in a family of artists, Lewtin has been sculpting for 19 years and inherited her artist skills from her elder brothers. In a craft dominated by men, Lewtin is a refreshing face as a female sculptor. For this reason, Lewtin explains that women are the inspiration for many of her works.

“I was inspired by women’s lives in Zimbabwe. In all my sculptures I celebrate the life of a woman.”

Lewtin will return to Zimbabwe after spending three months in Canada as a resident artist with ZimArt, offering sculpting workshops at the gallery.

She says that her works have been well-received by the international community and contribute to a positive image of Zimbabwe.

“People are appreciating that there is something good which comes out of Zimbabwe through the artworks which we do.”

The exhibit was well-attended and there was a palpable air of intrigue and excitement about the sculptures.

“I think in seeing this work you see dignity, you see tenderness, you see such a celebration of life. For me that’s something I’m much more conscious of when I’m in Zimbabwe” Fran says.

With the exception of traveling exhibits, these sculptures are permanent fixtures at the Rice Lake Gallery located in Rice Lake, Ontario, 90 minutes east of Toronto.

For more information about exhibits, ZimArt and the Rice Lake gallery please visit the website: www.zimart.ca

Letwin Mugavazi Profile: www.zimart.ca/artist_bios/Letwin%20Mugavazi.pdf

Tendisai Cromwell is a freelance writer and editorial intern for swaymag.ca.

PHOTO BY CJ CROMWELL SIMMONDS

By True Daley

This fall, internationally acclaimed choreographers, singers and entertainers will descend on more than 20 northwest Toronto schools to introduce students to dance, drama and song. These experts will lead free after-school classes through the youth arts project Just BGRAPHIC (JBG), in partnership with the Toronto District School Board.

Although the Jane and Finch neighbourhood is plagued by myriad social issues, founder Kayode Brown says that when he was a teen, the arts helped him to keep things in perspective. “We really didn’t have the means to have the best clothes or the latest gadgets,” he says. “We relied on listening to the radio, dancing in the hallways and making up skits with our friends at school. Those were ways of freeing our minds and getting out of the mental jail that can hold you sometimes at Jane and Finch. I grew up with Jully Black, Jae Blaze and my brother Luther Brown. I saw what the ability to dream had done for them.”

The successes of his peers inspired Brown to pursue a career in graphic design. His company, B Graphic Design Group, launched in 2006, landing contracts with Lady Gaga, Jamie Foxx, Nike, BlackBerry and Shawn Desman, among others. Two years ago, Brown decided to use his success to impact his old stomping grounds through pilot projects for the Just BGRAPHIC initiative.

PHOTOS BY CJ CROMWELL SIMMONDS

Surprisingly, his motivation to give kids in high-needs communities a creative outlet and artistic mentors was met with resistance.

According to Brown, Jane and Finch not only has a stigma that comes from the media but also from some community leaders. “They feel that these kids aren’t really going to amount to anything so they just do things halfway,” he says. “That’s just poison. The kids that we’ve had are between Brookview and Oakdale. People from Jane and Finch understand the dynamics between top and bottom side Jane. In theory, they’re not supposed to get along. The perception is that these kids are not supposed to be the best kids.”

Brown pushed through the skepticism and proved his adversaries wrong. Since then, the JBG team has been delivering creative and interactive workshops that are keeping youth engaged and communities connected. At times, students, teachers, principals, and even janitorial staff members, find themselves participating in in-group performances and building school morale in ways they would have never imagined.

These experiences have kept Brown focused on the task at hand. “Everybody might sing in the shower, but to sing in front of the whole school, that’s a different thing — especially if you’re not a natural singer. That’s what Just BGRAPHIC is all about. We take youth out of their element. We say: ‘Be who you are and be graphic. Just express yourself without any limitations.’”

Adrian Hayles' Miles Ahead mural

By Anya Wassenberg

Adrian “Sawtay” Hayles may well be the most visible visual artist in Toronto. You’ve certainly seen his work if you’ve ventured into Kensington Market over the last few years, where his large scale outdoor murals add to the neighbourhood’s eclectic vibe.

In his most recent, a fluid composition called Miles Ahead, Miles Davis and his trumpet sprawl across the second floor of Natural Foods, with the tune emerging like flames from the end of the horn. It won’t come as a surprise to learn that you’ll often hear the strains of jazz coming from his studio. Completed over a recent Sunday afternoon into the evening, the piece represents his largest mural project yet, but only the latest commission in a growing artistic practice.

Adrian studied design at Humber College, but credits teaching staff at the now defunct Donovan Collegiate in Oshawa for first lighting the way to a creative career. “They encouraged me to develop the skills, to express myself visually.”

After graduating in 2000, he spent 4 ½ years designing for an online avatar video game aimed at children, continuing in the same vein for another few years when he moved on to inventing various characters and props for many of the cartoons you’ll find on YTV.

After striking it out on his own 2 ½ years ago, he began to explore where his finely honed drawing skills could lead him, including (among others) gallery shows, teaching life drawing classes under his own Behind The Front Studio name, Nuit Blanche events and naturally, a burgeoning reputation for building enhancement and outdoor art in Toronto.

Another recent piece adorns a restaurant in the Baldwin Village area near the AGO. “I haven’t actually had a chance to actually eat there,” he admits with a laugh.  Still another decorates the corner of The Bellevue Diner building in Kensington Market. That neighbourhood seems like the ideal locale for the free flowing spirit and rhythm of his paintings.

While the concept is a great one, the logistics of an outdoor mural can be another story. There are a few unique challenges inherent to the process of getting what seems like a good design on the page up onto the side of a building.

“Nothing was projected,” he says, meaning he was eyeing and adjusting the scale of all the drawing’s elements as he painted on the wall. “It was hard to get it accurate.”  The side of a time weathered building is also a vastly different surface than a prepared canvas or even an interior wall. Miles Ahead works with the angle of the building. “It plays with the canvas,” he explains, “the irregularities, the flattened spaces.”

Next up, Adrian’s work will be part of “Retro Revisited: Exploring the Anthropology of KICKZ Culture & Wearable Art” at the Arta Gallery in the Distillery District. The multi-disciplinary group show, which runs from June 27 to July 1, explores KICKZ culture – a look at the phenomenon of athletic footwear as art, commerce and cultural icon. From buildings to shoes, Adrian’s work looks at culture at street level.

See more of Adrian Hayles work at adrianhaylesproductions.com. KICKZ www.artagallery.ca/exhibition/future

Anya Wassenberg is a longtime freelance writer with a specialty in arts and culture. Check out her blog www.artandculturemaven.com

Trey Anthony Studios & Manifesto presents

August 11 – 21, 2011

“LOOK.AT.ME”

ART SHOW.

“LOOK.AT.ME” is a multi-dimensional show that will be shown

inside the Enwave Theatre for the run of ‘da Kink in my Hair,

including the opening night. This off-stage production features

works from a wide range of artists that come together to

produce a powerful collaboration of stories.

Exploring through a variety of art mediums, each piece is to delve

into the survivals, the evolutions, the souls, the depths, the

inspirations, the love, the struggles, and the triumphs of

a Black Woman.

Be a part of  ‘da Kink History!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

• Painters • Illustrators • Photographers • mixed-media ARTISTS

• NEW MEDIA Artists • EMERGING & ESTABLISHED ARTISTS

All interested candidates should provide:

1.) Artist bio and full name/artist name

2.) 3-5 samples of the work you are interested in displaying

3.) Your email & phone number

submissions due: June. 06. 2011

PLEASE SEND YOUR SUBMISSION TO:

[email protected]

MANIFESTO wants the world to see what you got!

We are looking for artists of all kinds. Cross-disciplinary, Installation artists, Illustrators, Fashion designers, Painters, Film-Directors, Photographers, New media artist, Emerging and Established artists!

Apply today to exhibit in the 5th Annual Manifesto Festival of Community & Culture happening this September in Toronto. We look forward to meeting you.

THEMANIFESTO.CA/SUBMISSIONS/VISUAL

check out the Manifesto submissions:
themanifesto.ca/submissions1love

By Geena Lee

An image is worth 1,000 interpretations, and for photographer Michael Chambers, it’s also worth fighting for.

Described as the quintessential artist, Chambers is credited with redefining the perception of Black Canadian art. “I had to swim against the tide,” he says of his style. According to Chambers, this often meant challenging stereotypical symbols attached to the concept of Blackness. “In my images, I didn’t go for the upright fist, the barbed wire, etc. I chose to create my own symbols.”

One such example is Chambers’ infamous 1995 piece Watermelon, which depicts a watermelon precariously balanced on the nude buttocks of a Black woman. The image sparked a maelstrom of outrage and debate, with many deeming it offensive. “I knew that it would be controversial. Friends tried talking me out of it, but I just couldn’t walk away from it.”

While popular opinion at the time judged his use of the watermelon as derogatory, Chambers saw it as symbolic of redefining Blackness in the midst of balancing stereotypical images. “On one hand, we’re being told who we are, and on the other we already know who we are,” he says. “My point was that there was no way you could balance something round on something round. I was only able to get two shots before it crashed to the ground. The surface was a moving, living, breathing being.”

Watermelon had multiple layers of meaning that took years to be fully appreciated. For instance, Chambers shot the image from an angle to create a silhouette reminiscent of the African continent. “Many people didn’t get that until 10 years later,” he says.

Chambers grew as an artist during that tumultuous period in his early career. “I discovered myself at that time, and realized I had a tool I could use to tell stories and make statements that could empower people,” he says. As his work gained popularity and went on to be lauded and displayed worldwide, Chambers witnessed how various cultures had differing interpretations of his art. His piece The Boat received an interesting analysis in Japan. The image of an enslaved woman embarking on a transatlantic voyage by boat covered in what looked like white dust from an explosion, prompted Japanese audiences to recall Hiroshima’s bombing. This reading confirmed Chambers’ thoughts that “Black images are not specific to Black interpretation.”

A recent Harry Jerome Award recipient, Chambers is working with several magazines in Canada and overseas, and has expanded his creative range to include film when he took on the role of creative director and stills photographer for A Linc in Time and The Making of a Judge. He is also featured in the upcoming PBS film Through a Lens, Darkly. With his work exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum, and a one-man show planned for the fall at the Savoy Wakefield Gallery, Chambers continues his contribution to the Canadian art world.

Reflecting on the current state of Black art in Canada, Chambers observes, “There’s less fear; with fear comes restraint, hesitation, sometimes denial and editing one’s thoughts and expression. There are a lot more Black Canadian artists now and I’m admiring just about everything I’m seeing from them.”

After having exhibited around the world, Anatsui arrives in Toronto for a retrospective of this work for his first solo show in Canada.  His sculptures are doused in West African culture and flush with historical references.

When I Last Wrote to You About Africa will be featured at the ROM’s Season of of Africa exhibitions until January 2.  For details, click here.

]]> http://swaymag.ca/2010/10/el-anatsuis-when-i-last-wrote-to-you-about-africa-at-the-rom/feed/ 1 http://swaymag.ca/2010/10/18-year-old-camille-gordon-creatively-making-an-impact/ http://swaymag.ca/2010/10/18-year-old-camille-gordon-creatively-making-an-impact/#comments Fri, 01 Oct 2010 16:26:57 +0000 swaymag http://swaymag.ca/?p=4783 By Takara Small

If she wanted them to, Camille Gordon’s words could move mountains.

The 18-year-old high school student doesn’t sound like your typical teenager. Instead of boys and celebrity gossip, her conversation is peppered with inspirational phrases like “nothing worth doing is easy” and talk of volunteer work that will see her well into old age. She also tends to shy away from self-praise. “I was always so busy during school that I missed out on a lot of social events,” she says. “I don’t want to blow off my friends, but helping others is obviously more important.”

The Brampton, Ontario native is an active volunteer in her community and has amassed dozens of accolades for her work. But Gordon doesn’t believe the word ‘activist’ — which has been heaped on her for volunteer work such as sandwich runs for the homeless — is best suited to describe her. “You have to sacrifice a lot if you’re going to be an activist,” she says. “I don’t feel like I’ve sacrificed a lot. Time, yeah, but that’s it. In the future, I’d like to be an activist. But right now, I don’t think I’ve lived up to that name.”

If Gordon isn’t an activist yet, her newest endeavour has her well on her way to becoming one. Gordon, along with fellow students from St. Augustine Secondary School, created a series of small-sized canvases emblazoned with artwork that were sold to raise money for charity and captured the attention of many admirers, including the media. The success that Gordon is experiencing did not come as a shock to her cousin Allison England. “I wasn’t surprised,” England says. “She cares more about everything else than she does about herself. As long as I can remember, she’s been doing inter community work.”

The inspiration behind her recent attention-grabbing idea started six months ago when Gordon applied for a government grant called SpeakUp. She used her award money to make the inspirational paintings that raised twice the amount of the initial grant. “I always have new ideas,” she says. “It’s great that the government provides ways for youth to get involved and help the community. I will be applying for more grants.”

It was Gordon’s painting of a woman rowing into obscurity away from an abusive situation, with baby in tow, that recieved the most attention. The piece will be sold to help Gordon pay her tuition costs at the Ontario College of Art & Design.

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