In the 1960s, Africville was demolished by the municipality under the pretense of urban renewal. This act of destruction and the displacement of its residents was the ultimate embodiment of generations of systemic and overt racism against Black people in Nova Scotia.

Almost twenty years after the last Africville home was demolished, Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) collaborated with the Africville Genealogy Society, the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, and the National Film Board to develop the exhibition and symposium Africville: A Spirit that Lives On and the NFB documentary, Remember Africville. The exhibition explores the story of Africville and toured across Canada, showing in several prominent institutions

Marking the 30th anniversary of the 1989 exhibition, the collaborators reconvened with the addition of the Africville Museum (established in 2010 following the Africville Apology), to reactivate the gallery space to remember and celebrate the vibrant community that once was

The exhibition is composed of three major components: archival materials from the original exhibition, visual artworks and literary works, and scheduled performances and presentations. The archival materials include symposium transcripts, newspaper articles, publications, and films. The artworks and literary works, some recalled from the original exhibition and others newly added, comprises photographs, paintings, mixed media works, poems, films, and media-based installations.

The performances and presentations took place on and off site, chosen and organized by the Africville Genealogy Society, the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia and the Africville Museum. MSVU deliberately extended freedom to its collaborators for agency and self-determination over the programming that would take place in the space

Through the combination of these three components and exhibition strategies, Africville: A Spirit that Lives On – A Reflection Project creates a potent space for difficult conversations and social justice

Upon entering the gallery, I was greeted with audio recitations of poetry by Martha Mutale. Her three poems set the tone for the rest of my time with the exhibition. Her words were powerful, unapologetic, thoughtful, and heartfelt

The National Film Board documentary Remember Africville was next. The film spoke to the injustice and wounds that were still open twenty years after Africville’s destruction. There was a considerable collection of archival newspaper clippings with headlines and articles, speaking to racism and oppression that could have been published today.

As I moved through the gallery, I couldn’t help but feel the outright sense of loss communicated in the works by Africville’s former residents and descendants. They spoke of stolen identity, estrangement from the past, and imposed indignity. Many of the works, however, also embodied joy

The underlying message across the entire exhibition was grounded in cultural pride and resilience. Irvine Carvey proudly states that when asked where he is from, he always answers “Africville.”

Projected on the far wall of the gallery were three short films by Cyrus Sundar Singh, highlighting the yearly Africville Reunion in connection to the yearly Owen Sound Emancipation Festival. His documentaries highlight many people working to preserve the story and legacy of where they came from

Coinciding with this exhibition in the MSVU Mezzanine Gallery was a solo painting exhibition by award-winning emerging artist Letitia Fraser. Fraser spoke on the panel of How We Build: On Craft and Blackness, one of this exhibition’s official events presented by MSVU Art Gallery, Visual Arts News, and Nocturne: Art at Night. Interdisciplinary artist NAT chantel, who also took part in the panel discussion, performed in the exhibition space in November

How We Build: On Craft and Blackness panel discussion. Left to right: Sobaz Benjamin, Letitia Fraser, Juanita Peters, NAT Chantel, moderated by Francesca Ekwuyasi

As a visitor, I found myself very moved by this exhibition. My own experiences with racism as a mixed-race African Nova Scotian were brought to the forefront of my mind. I encountered my biological surname on the list of Africville families, and I was left to wonder if there might have been a community for me there if Africville still existed.

Poet and artist Sylvia D. Hamilton’s multimedia installation of images, objects, and sound is heard and carried throughout the powerful exhibition Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax, which inspired the title of the group show.

The creation of this exhibit occurred within a specific socio-cultural context that involved the Royal Ontario Museum and the Black communities of Toronto in the wake of some controversy. The exhibit’s three curators Dr. Julie Crooks, assistant curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Montreal-based independent curator, Dominique Fontaine, and Dr. Silvia Forni, Curator of African Arts and Culture at the ROM, came together in 2015 to develop a three year project with the aim of repairing the relationship between the ROM and Toronto’s Black communities. Their goal was to carve out space for Blackness in a historically colonial and anti-Black museum. Here We Are Here: Black Contemporary Art is the provocative and moving culmination and closing exhibition of the years-long project.

I am moved not only by the subject matter—Hamilton’s installation examines the histories of African Canadians from both a personal and collective lens, from the Transatlantic slave trade to Canadian slavery, to the imposed otherness and anti-Blackness African Canadians experience contemporarily—but also by the visceral experience that it provides.

On three massive swaths of fabric suspended from a wall titled “Naming Names,” is a list of three thousand African descended people, some of whom were enslaved and others free. The effect of this massive list of names is chilling. Hamilton’s voice echoes on a loop, soft with emotion as she reads the names and ages, which evokes both a sense of calm and deep sadness in me.

Saddening, as well as enraging, is the display of racist iconography, “How They See Us,” curated in the nearby display case. ‘Tar Baby’ dolls, The Story of Little Black Sambo, and a bunch of locks tied in a red ribbon which sits beside a pair of small hammered metal child shackles are disturbing. The image of the child shackles stays with me even as I write this. I don’t know that I can ever be desensitized to objects and images that speak to the plight of enslaved people, particularly children. With forthrightness and some tenderness, Hamilton’s work demands that we face this truth of history, that we sit with it.

“In The Passage” shows a poem projected against a video of the ocean, we hear Hamilton’s voice speaking to how the experience of being enslaved and taken away from home and going through the Middle Passage might have felt. As a whole, Hamilton’s piece is graceful and deeply touching. In spite of the harsh subject matter, there is an undeniable and compelling sense of pride and dignity in the manner in which she handles each aspect of this work.

Charmaine Lurch’s large-scale charcoal drawings “Cartography of Being, Belonging, and Grace,” are paper maps of a Black femme figure (her daughter), both familiar and warm. As a Black woman living in the diaspora, themes of belonging are of particular interest to me. These drawings strike an internal chord. The charcoal lines are bold and heavy-handed, and the model depicted moves between fluid and casual. In an excerpt from Katherine McKitrick’s “Dear Science and Other Stories and Demonic Grounds” she writes: “a young girl can legitimately take possession of a street, or an entire city, albeit on different terms than we may be familiar with.” Her poetics embody the bold and casual tones of the drawings and speak to the preciousness and precarity of Black girlhood.

Across from Lurch’s work, taking up the entire length of the wall, is Sandra Brewster’s “Hiking Black Creek,” who describes the larger than life photograph of the artist’s parents on a hike as a “poetic meditation on the emotional labour of belonging.” As a recent immigrant, I am intimately familiar with the emotional labour of belonging and am taken by the intimacy and simplicity of this work. Treading along familial lines, much like Lurch, Brewster subtly, yet sharply conveys a profound idea with this old photograph taken during the couple’s first year in Canada together. The large-scale image is spread over large panels and washed in warm sepia and grey tones. The colours red and yellow across their long-sleeved shirts have been added to the black and white image. The two figures in the photograph smile for the camera. Further ruminating on the theme of belonging, the work shirks ideas of Blackness and Black culture as homogenous, and the sheer size of the image (as well as the smiling faces), give me a sense of being watched over with care.

The sounds of Michèle Pearson Clarke’s video installation, “Suck Teeth Compilation” meets me before I see it, offering a sense of utter glee. The video compilation depicts Black people of varying ages, genders, sizes, and sexes, staring into the camera head-on and sucking their teeth. The familiar hiss indicates disgust, annoyance, anger, and frustration, as their faces are filled with contempt and the void left by patience long lost.

The people in the video are also incredibly beautiful—some are relentlessly cool, and others have an idiosyncratic aesthetic. The hissing sound of teeth sucking and their accompanying sighs create a chorus of dismissive waves, disinterested glares, and bored eye rolls that create a choreographed expression of disdain at the state of anti-Blackness in Canada. These are gestures that I know well—gestures that I and millions of brown people across the globe employ as modest tools of resistance. In the final scene, instead of teeth sucking, a woman kisses the toddler she holds in her arms, as well as the little girl sitting on a stool beside her. She kisses the children and they all smile.

From a distance, Chantal Gibson’s “Souvenir,” which features two walls of spray-painted collector spoons, looks like massive swaths of black eyelet lace, which are elegant and intricately detailed. “Souvenir” illustrates the erasure of the distinct histories and identities of Black people in Canada. At a closer look, it is clear that each spoon is shaped differently and varies in size, yet the artist’s choice to spray paint them all black and arrange them uniformly provides a striking visual representation of forced sameness.

Accompanying Gibson’s “Souvenir” is a video and photobook portraying ghost-like impressions leftover from spray painting 2,000 souvenir spoons. This work provides a sharp juxtaposition between “Souvenir,” and the diversity of Blackness displayed in Michèle Pearson Clarke’s video “Suck Teeth Compilation.”

Bushra Junaid’s “Sweet Childhood” creates a stunning and sophisticated portrait of Black children by overlaying period ads for sugar and molasses on a stereoview of children in a Caribbean sugarcane field from 1903, which draws attention to the trade between Newfoundland and the Caribbean, a history that I only learned of through this piece. Junaid deftly weaves together layers of history that point to the dynamic of producer and consumer—producer being the Global South/historically marginalized peoples, and consumer being the Global North/historically colonizer—that still exists today.

From Gordon Shadrach’s life-size painting depicting the multiple facets and identities of a contemporary Black Canadian woman, to Esmaa Mohamoud’s sculpture titled “Untitled (No Fields),” examining the commodification of Black male bodies in North American sports culture, this exhibit touches on a multitude of aspects of Blackness. It speaks from the history of enslaved people, to slavery’s afterlife of anti-blackness, immigration narratives, and the desire for belonging.

Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art’s scope is far-reaching, ranging from deep sadness to lighthearted. Many pieces share themes of commodification, a longing for belonging, shedding light on history, and resistance against erasure.

This is merely the beginning.

There needs to be more room for Black narratives in the art world. Yes, it’s a great step for the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia to have an entire exhibit dedicated to Black contemporary art, yet this as an exception needs to change. It is imperative that showing the work of BIPOC artists, historic and contemporary, becomes the norm, particularly in a city like Halifax, with its history of Black resilience.

Image: Visual Arts News’ Research Coordinator Chris Shapones, Moving Forward, Looking B(l)ack panelists Jade Peek, Lucie Chan, Pamela Edmonds and Bria Miller, and panel facilitator Sylvia Hamilton. Photo credit: Susie Shapones

We no longer want a seat at the table. Pamela Edmonds was clear when she expressed the feeling that she and others in the black artist community are full.

Through time, black artists have played the role of guest at an intimate dinner party. They have made it onto the eclectic “invite list” sent out by those that inhabit the mainstream framework. They have been welcomed at the door. A card reading “reserved” has even been placed at the head of their dinner plate. They have been forced to mingle and make small talk – to endure the prying questions and to speak as an authority on the recent race issue in the news. All the while, black artists are aware that their presence has made some of the other guests uncomfortable.

In October, Edmonds sat with with fellow panelists Lucie Chan, Bria Miller, and Jade Byard Peek at the North Memorial Library in Halifax. These black and Afro-indigenous women are visual and performance artists, as well as curators. They are preparing their own table, a space where black Nova Scotians can create and explore the complexities of their existence through art. The name of the event, “Moving Forward, Looking B(l)ack,” comes from Pamela Edmonds’ exhibit of the same title. It speaks to the progression of black art in Canada set against a historical backdrop. Sylvia Hamilton, acclaimed documentarian, facilitates the discussion.

The movement forward for black contemporary artists is one of self-definition. “It’s an ask,” says Chan.

Black artists are asking to be trusted with their own narrative and to not have to respond to the one created for them. Contemporary art is considered self-referential, Edmonds suggests; however, black contemporary artists constantly have to explain themselves to be accepted into the dominant framework. Their work is often defined as activism, without their consent — as Miller adds, merely because it is presented from their own worldview. Black existence in itself is perceived as an act of resistance to the mainstream. The tension between integration and intervention for black artists is at the centre of this discussion.

“Art is one of those spaces that we’ve been kept out of,” Edmonds says. “We’re not supposed to be there: it’s classist, it’s elitist, yet it is bible to our survival.”

“Don’t tell us we’re not here, because we’ve always been here,” remarks Hamilton.

“It’s about connecting with the diaspora and our own histories as black Nova Scotians” — Jade Peek

Jade Peek graduated from the art history program at NSCAD University, an experience she recognizes as a privilege, but also a source of frustration. The absence of black contemporary artists, especially black femme and black queer artistry, in educational institutions is jarring. To that end, her work in community focuses on healing, pedagogy, space and representation. Like Bria Miller, who is a native of Yarmouth and organizer of art workshops for black youth, accessibility of art education is essential to her.

As a black and Mi’kmaq woman of transgender experience, Peek uses her body in live performance to explore themes of racism and trauma. Her piece Fried, performed at Queer Acts in Halifax, indicates the manipulation of the black femme body to be accepted by western standards. Sitting before an audience, Peek straightens her hair in front of a mirror while an audio soundtrack of harassment and racist commentary plays in the background. Her collaborative projects, We are the Griots and SankoFest, are spaces where black artists can exist without explaining themselves — their own table. They present a dialogue between the then and now, the past context to contemporary black art and existence.

“It’s about connecting with the diaspora and our own histories as black Nova Scotians,” says Peek.

To mark the progression of contemporary black artistry is to witness the move from a focus on making black pain visible to white audiences to an exploration of black aesthetic and stylization; moving outside the confines of slavery narratives to the possibilities of Afropunk and Afrofuturism, the recognition that black survival is art and creation in itself.At the same time, it is necessary to recognize as James Baldwin did, that “history is not the past,” but a conversation in the present. Homage is due to black artists that played their given role so that those now would not have to.

The way forward is by going places where black artists have not gone before and that means respectfully, (or not so respectfully), excusing oneself from the table to begin planning one’s own dinner party.