Love is the Antidote Exhibition
Wildseed Centre / Gallery
Aug 29, 2024 — Sep 27, 2024
Love is the Antidote is a gathering of works by artists in the second cohort of Wildseed’s Black Artist Fellowship. After a year of shared tears, exposed vulnerabilities, and soaking in the pure magic of connection with other Black creatives, we sit in collective gratitude in awe of our healing and symbiotic growth. From this root, as the fire and greed consuming the world spread across our handheld screens, we conceived of a collection of work that reminds us of the power of Black creativity and experimental practice as life force. Co-curated by fellows Berlin Reed and Ra’anaa Yaminah Ekundayo, Love is the Antidote is a display of the unyielding strength of Black expression in community, with works by Courtnay McFarlane, Ra’anaa Yaminah Ekundayo, Chason Yeboah-Brown, and Rae RazWell.
Love is the Antidote runs August 29th – September 27th at Wildseed Centre for Art & Activism in Toronto, ON. To extend this experience to the entire Wildseed community for the year, Love is the Antidote playlist will fill the gallery space with crowd-sourced jams that mend hearts exhausted by the incessant burning and building of bridges required to thrive in this world. This list will remain active for the length of the project, and pour from the speakers during the opening party on August 29th, 2024. Find it here and add your most heart-rising tracks!
The opening reception date will held on August 29, 2024 beginning at 6:00 PM and ending at 9:00 PM. Admission is free.
Notes for Access: Love Is The Antidote runs from August 29th, 2024 to September 27th, 2024. The exhibition’s opening and closing events will be ASL interpreted, childcare and food will be provided. All further details on program and building accessibility can be found on our website.
We are grateful for the support of the Ontario Arts Council.
RSVP Here
For press inquiries, please contact media@wildseedcentre.com
Location: Wildseed Centre
Pictured: Detail shot of Nansii Korkor Fataba by Chason Yeboah-Brown
About The Artists and Artwork
Nansii Kokor Fataba
Nansii Korkor Fataba is an ancestor and trickster spirit, created to act as a protector, healer, teacher, and mother to those who need covering and guidance. She embodies elements of fauna, flora and human and speaks to everyone who calls her name; be mindful in doing so because the answers you seek may not always be the ones you receive.
Social Media: @knotnaked @craftychas
Regard is a Vessel
Selections from See Me Yah, a Black queer digital archive project.
This project’s title is inspired by a line from writer and scholar Christina Sharpe’s talk entitled, What Can A Vessel Be? In delivering her essay contemplating the vessel and its myriad forms. Sharpe posited that regard is a vessel.
I remembered this line when thinking about this project, which regards three Black queer individuals Angela Robertson, Junior Harrison and Douglas Stewart, whose personal archives contributed significantly to my 2019 exhibition documenting the activism in Toronto’s Black 2SLGBTQI+ communities in the 80’s and 90’s, Legacies in Motion: See We Yah! The follow-up digital exhibition, See Me Yah, explores these informal archivists as individuals through their personal journeys to self-knowledge and queer community. In November 2021, they shared their stories, their embodied archives, through video interviews with me. Later in that session, the Toronto-based photographers Brianna Roye and Jah Grey, took their portraits. This project continues my practice of engaging in collaborative creation with other Black, queer artists. As the online platform to house this content is readied, I thought it opportune to remix and exhibit some of these creative assets, utilize these images and words in this Black Arts Fellowship context, and in so doing share my immense regard and love for the artists with whom I worked and the folks pictured.
“But you can also look at other people who are in a similar position to you with something like regard. And regard is not spectacle, it’s not a gaze. It is a kind of mutuality. I really wanted to think about that kind of mutuality as a kind of practice and ethic that we extend to each other, and that we might extend to each other, that says, I see you. That is a powerful counterforce to anti-Black violence. Even if it doesn’t shift the violence itself, it is a counter to encounter someone else’s regard”
Christina Sharpe (2023) ‘A Kind of Mutuality: Christina Sharpe on the Importance of Regard’ interviewed by Maris Kriezman, The Maris Review podcast, May 11, 2023
Social Media: @guineps (Instagram, X), @blklgbtqarchivesto (Instagram), Courtnay McFarlane (Facebook)
ILY’s L0V3, PO$!+!V3, & $PR!NKL!NG
ILY’s L0V3, PO$!+!V3, & $PR!NKL!NG is a project that aims to spread positivity and good vibes to society, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic and the lifestyle changes we’ve experienced. The project involves repetitive art that serves as a reminder that it’s okay not to be okay sometimes. I was inspired to create this project after witnessing Black Deaf individuals signing ILY (I Love You) during goodbyes. This moment made me realize that it’s okay to be different and that we are all the same.
My goal is to use this project to promote activism and raise awareness for the Deaf community and mental health. I hope that ILY’s L0V3, PO$!+!V3, & $PR!NKL!NG will inspire others to be more aware of their emotions and cherish their own ILY moments. Unlike my previous works, which were mostly contemporary art, this project is more deeply focused on mental health, contemporary art, new media, and visual language.
The project consists of nine paintings created with acrylic paints, oil pastels, and acrylic markers. The paintings are characterized by repetition, volume, colour, typography, contrast, and icons. The central element of the paintings is the I Love You in American Sign Language, which is repeated in various loud colours and skin tones, typography, and symbolism. Plus, the canvas has augmented reality that interacts with the artwork.
Through this project, I aim to show that even silence can be loud and that L0V3, PO$!+!V3, & $PR!NKL!NG are essential components of our lives.
Social Media: @rae.rezwell
Ra’anaa Yaminah Ekundayo: Curator
Chrysalis
Like a delicate butterfly emerging from its cocoon, Chrysalis invites bravery in shedding one’s protective veil. A physical representation of unmasking to fear no longer, nor acknowledge the gaze, this work is a metamorphosis of character, asking what lies underneath if we dare to break free from the world’s impositions and embrace our true selves.
Social Media: @raanaa_yaminah
Social Media: @blackgastronomics
- Organizer(s)
- Rochelle Ellar
- Fellowship Coordinator
- Rochelle@wildseedcentre.com
For press inquiries, please contact media@wildseedcentre
