“They all dreamt of each other that night, as was natural…“*
MOCA has invited artist and writer Lisa Steele to organize a series of talks and screenings that intersect, interact, or just plain act up with the lively resonances that exist between the iconic contemplations of Chantal Akerman and the deeply, contemporary investigations of Basma Alsharif.
Anique Jordan speaks about her work as an artist, a curator and a writer in Memory, Urgency, and Performing the Archive.
Award-winning artist, writer and curator, Anique Jordan, looks to answer the question of possibility in everything she creates. Working for over a decade at the crossroad of community economic development and art, Jordan’s practice stems from and returns to the communities that inform it. As an artist, Jordan’s work plays with the foundations of traditional Trinidadian carnival and the theory of hauntology challenging historical narratives and creating, what she calls, impossible images. She works across temporalities bringing historical data towards a contemporary analysis. This work creates space to reinterpret the archives offering a new and speculative vision of the future. Principally interested in Canadian histories which speak to Black Canada, women, working class communities and explores the relationships between Black and Indigenous peoples, Jordan’s work ultimately questions the authority of the Canadian state. Jordan is the founder of Black Wimmin Artist, a network of over 100 artists which recently organized The Feast- a gathering of 100 Black women and gender non-conforming artists held at the AGO.
In 2017 Jordan was awarded the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist of the year award, she recently completed a 2017-2018 artist residency at the University of the West Indies (Trinidad and Tobago) and is the 2018-19 Osgoode Hall Law School Artist-in-Residence.
Toronto based Lisa Steele works in video, photography, film and performance as well as writing and curating on video and media arts. Her videotapes have been extensively exhibited nationally and internationally and some of Steele’s best known work has focused on the female body and its depiction in film. With long-time collaborator Kim Tomczak, she co-founded Vtape; and is a recipient of the YWCA Woman of Distinction Achievement Award and the “Long Haul” Untitled Art Award, and, with Tomczak, the Governor General’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in Visual and Media Arts.
The event is free to attend, but does require registration. Please sign up in advance to ensure your spot.
Museum admission is required for entry to Chantal Akerman and Basma Alsharif’s exhibitions, which can be purchased online or at the museum.
View all Female Voices programming.
*The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf, 1915.
