One wonderful thing about being an artist is the absolute broadness of the world, the millions of opportunities for muse. However, an art lover will often not think about what the art world lacks, or what it might be needing. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is currently hosting an exhibition whose theme is entirely about that.
While Black: A forum for speculation on what the gallery can’t hold, which runs until October 22, is an eye-opener for those who want to both view and learn from beautiful art at the same time.
“The exhibit is based around the boundaries that galleries set in how they decide what work is or is not included, which is often to the detriment of people of colour, Black people in particular,” says exhibition co-curator Charles Campbell. “The nature of how artwork is defined, in a way—we invited artists to respond to that question, what the gallery cannot hold. Instead of the curators making that decision, we’d put it out to artists as an idea of, okay, what are the parts of Black life, Black production or politics… Whatever they wanted to define or what they feel isn’t held by the gallery or that maybe the gallery can’t adequately accommodate what was and what was not in there. The challenge, then, was building an exhibition around those ideas, what the gallery couldn’t rather than what the gallery could do.”
When the curators put forth the While Black challenge, they were flooded with artists’ responses.
“The responses ranged from ideas for utopian parks that also kind of considered the politics and history of Black life and slavery,” says Campbell. “We had looked explicitly at museum collections—what was in there and what was not in that space. The absence of representation from Black artists was literal documentation. We received images of families and childhood. As opposed to other exhibitions that might try to feature Blackness… we are trying not to define it by any one thing. We are trying to open up the dialogue.”
Campbell says the ideas for the exhibition really started formulating in December of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd.
“It was specifically around seeing the statement of solidarity come ahead of cultural institutions, you know, across the world, but across Canada in particular,” says Campbell. “Myself as a Black artist and curator, with Michelle Jacques and Denise Ryner—Michelle Jacques actually initiated the project—we looked in terms of how institutions had failed to support Black curators in the past, and we decided to kind of flip it, and say, how are we bigger than the institutions?”
While Black has been touring across Canada, providing information and asking questions.
“It’s been such an amazing response,” says Campbell. “What’s been really satisfying is we’ve been collecting members of the Black community together to talk about these issues and work through them ourselves, and we’ve been able to envision a future that’s actually more supportive and more fulsome in how it works with Black artists and curators.”
Campbell says that he’s seen positive change since becoming part of this project.
“Actually, a lot of things have shifted since we started,” he says. “I think there is a new visibility of Black artists on the scene, specifically in Montreal, where there is such a vast community of artists and Black artists, some from Haiti, some the African continent, and they’ve been working for a very long time in relative obscurity. Things had happened to turn around, definitely by the time we held this forum, but what had not happened was an opportunity for the Black community to actually get together itself and discuss what was happening, and how to take advantage of those opportunities.”
While Black: A forum for speculation on what the gallery can’t hold
Until Sunday, October 22
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
aggv.ca