November 22nd - December 3rd 2022

Galleries 2 and 3

after this explores the activation of critical remembrance relating to histories, stories, and lived experiences in the context of the complex conditions of a white supremacist settler colonial state. Working in a range of media, the artists demonstrate multiple approaches to remembering otherwise. Showcasing interventions into dominant historical narratives and incursions into ancestral and personal stories through acts of resilience, intentionality and activism, after this features accomplished local and national artists who bring distinct lived experiences and histories to the urgent task of casting a critical lens on the question of what is remembered, by and for whom and how.

Curated by Leah Decter, Tania Fuentes Villa, and Carla Taunton

List of artists featured:

Lan “Florence” Yee

Joshua Lue Chee Kong

Emily Davidson

Letitia Fraser

Ursula Handleigh

Megan Kyak-Montieth

Carrie Allison

Colleen McIsaac

Jordan Hill

Michelle Sylliboy

Shauntay Grant & Tyshan Wright

Presented by CMA and the Centre for Inter-Media Arts and Decolonial Expression

https://theanna.nscad.ca/exhibitions/carla-taunton-and-leah-decter-faculty-curators-after

Award-winning author and interdisciplinary artist Michelle Sylliboy (Mi’kmaq/L’nu) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised on her traditional L’nuk territory in We’koqmaq, Cape Breton. Her published collection of photographs and L’nuk hieroglyphic poetry, Kiskajeyi—I Am Ready won the 2020 Indigenous Voices Award. In 2021, she received the Indigenous Artist Recognition Award from Arts Nova Scotia. In 2022, she was long-listed for the Sobey Art Award. As a PhD candidate in Simon Fraser University’s Philosophy of Education program, she focuses on the artistic promotion of her original written komqwej’wikasikl language, and she works as an assistant professor at StFX University.

Lan “Florence” Yee is a visual artist and serial collaborator based in Tkaronto/Toronto and Tiohtià:ke/ Mooniyang/Montreal. They collect text in underappreciated places and ferment it until it is too suspicious to ignore. Lan’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art (2021), the Art Gallery of Ontario (2020), the Textile Museum of Canada (2020), and the Gardiner Museum (2019), and many others. Along with Arezu Salamzadeh, they co-founded the Chinatown Biennial in 2020. They obtained a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from OCAD U.

Joshua Lue Chee Kong (b.1988) is an interdisciplinary artist, archivist and researcher from Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. His work focuses on Caribbean narratives around creolization and the way it has shaped the social fabric of the Caribbean region. He studied at Savannah College of Art and Design where he received his BFA in graphic design and his MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies of Art, Media and Design from OCAD University. Joshua has participated in artist residencies at Red Gate Gallery, Beijing in 2015 and at Vermont Studio Centre, Vermont in 2017. At Medulla Art Gallery, Trinidad, he has had two solo exhibitions titled Moulded Memories in 2014 and Paradise in 2016. His work had been published in Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, ANNO book, See Me Here: A Survey of Contemporary Self-Portraits from the Caribbean, The Draconion Switch e-magazine and two of his photographic images appeared on the cover of the August 2012 TIME magazine.

刘贵强 (生于1988年) 是来自特立尼达和多巴 哥西班牙港的跨学科艺术家、档案家及研究家 。主要从 事于加勒比对于克里奥尔化的叙事及 其塑造加勒比地区社会结构的方式。 他曾就读于在萨凡纳艺术设计学院，取得平面 图形设计艺术学士学位并在安大略艺术设计 (OCAD) 大学 获得他的艺术媒体和设计跨学科硕士学位。刘贵强曾于2015年在北京红门画 廊以及2017年在佛蒙特艺 术中心参与参加艺 术家驻地活动。曾于2014及2016年在特立尼 达的梅杜拉美术馆，举办过两次个人艺 术展，分别名为 “Moulded Memories” 和 “Paradise”。

他的作品已发表在《Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas》、ANNO 书籍、《See Me Here: A Survey of Contemporary Self-Portraits from theCaribbean》、《The Draconion Switch 电子杂 志》，他的两 幅摄影作品曾入选在2012 年 8 月《时代》杂志封面。

Emily Davidson is a white settler artist based in Kjipuktuk in Mi'kma'ki (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Her current research / creation focuses on the entangled relationship of print media in historic and ongoing colonization of Indigenous lands across Turtle Island and interrogates the role printers played in Transatlantic Slavery in the territories that became Canada. Emily graduated from NSCAD University in 2009 (BFA, Interdisciplinary) and is a current MFA candidate at NSCAD University where she is a recipient of the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master’s Program in Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Emily is a Research Assistant for Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson, director of Slavery North (UMass Amherst).

Ursula Handleigh (she/her) is a Tkaronto Scarborough-born artist and educator of Filipino mixed-ancestry working within expanded photography, moving image and alternative processes of image making. While challenging traditional methods of documentation, Handleigh’s practice explores questions of identity and how the roles of memory, ancestral knowledge and storytelling can be used to reconstruct archives and preserve histories. In support of her research, Handleigh has received grants from SSHRC and Canada Council, participated in numerous residencies and exhibited widely at galleries including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Handleigh holds an MFA from NSCAD and a BFA from OCADU.

Colleen MacIsaac (they/she) is an interdisciplinary artist of settler descent, working across theatre, drawing, illustration, animation, comics, and performance. Currently a candidate in the Master of Fine Arts program at NSCAD, they are also the co-chair of Theatre Nova Scotia and the artistic producer of The Villains Theatre. The winner of the Halifax Mayor’s Award for Emerging Theatre Artist the Bhayana Foundation Invisible Champion Award, and the Helen Hill Animated Award, Colleen has worked as a research assistant with the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery, and is currently a research assistant with CiMADE (the Center for Inter-Media Arts and Decolonial Expression).

Carrie Allison: I am a nêhiýaw/cree, Métis, and mixed European descent multidisciplinary visual artist based in K’jipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki (Halifax, Nova Scotia). I grew up on the unceded and unsurrendered lands of the Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam) Nations. My maternal roots and relations are based in maskotewisipiy (High Prairie, Alberta), Treaty 8. I hold a Master in Fine Art, a Bachelor in Art History, and a Bachelor in Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. I was the 2020 recipient of the Melissa Levin Award from the Textile Museum of Canada and was long listed for the 2021 Sobey Art Award. My work has been shown in Canadian Art, Elle Quebec, Esse and Visual Arts News.

Jordan Hill is a Canadian (T’Sou-ke Nation) multimedia artist currently residing in Halifax. His work alludes to a growing problem within contemporary culture where the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred. How do we navigate a manipulated world where truth is incredibly difficult to locate? Through the intersection of digital and physical environments, he questions the relationship between the notion of both real and virtual subjects. Jordan’s work aims to intervene normalized social and spatial assumptions we make upon being introduced to spaces, and in what ways we allow the artificial to undermine our own intuition.

A 2021-22 Artist-In-Residence Fellow for NSCAD University’s Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery, Tyshan Wright is the Atlantic region nominee shortlisted for the 2022 Sobey Art Award. His mixed media representations of Jamaican Maroon ceremonial objects have been acquired by the Nova Scotia Art Bank and exhibited at Canadian museums and galleries including the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Shauntay Grant is an award-winning author, poet, playwright and multimedia artist. A former poet laureate for the City of Halifax, she “creates artworks that are engaging and accessible, but also challenging, rigorous, and informed by deep research (The Royal Society of Canada).

Image credit: Memory Piece by  Lan “Florence” Yee.