 | Sunday, January 30, 2022 | |  | Sunday, January 30, 2022 | | Hi, art lovers! | | | To introduce this week’s newsletter, I’m turning things over to CBC’s Lucius Dechausay. Begin transmission!
Of all the things lost in the pandemic, the thing I miss the most right now is travelling. So when I received a message from CBC’s Black on the Prairies team asking whether I’d be interested in producing a video in Edmonton with the epically talented Titilope Sonuga, I might have eagerly raised my virtual hand faster and higher than ever thought possible.
The final piece, entitled Arrival, is a poetic celebration of the gifts, talents, history and legacy that immigrants bravely carry with them like luggage as they forge a new path in an unfamiliar, and at times hostile, environment. It honours Sonuga’s journey to Canada, my own family’s arrival in the 1970s — and marks the legacy of Black pioneers who made the Prairies their home.
In 1998, when a young Sonuga arrived in Edmonton with her Nigerian family, the weather was harsh. It was “the coldest day of my life,” she jokes. All these years after her family first touched down, she is a celebrated artist, award-winning author, mother of two beautiful children, and the poet laureate of Edmonton. This video is an empowering reflection on that first experience in Canada.
Filmed in November, alongside the North Saskatchewan River, the project was halted a few times, and due to rising COVID numbers in Alberta, I was ultimately unable to fly there to shoot in person. But on a snowy –12 C day, I was able to work with local filmmakers Asim Overstands and Vince Raquel to remotely see this journey through. —Lucius Dechausay, senior video producer
The video went live last week. Find it on the Black on the Prairies: Place Edition website, and while you’re there, make sure to explore the rest of this new interactive project. | | |  | Firelei Báez | | Meanwhile in Toronto, things are beginning to open up again. The AGO’s back in operation as of Feb. 1, and you’ll find these works by Firelei Báez inside the exhibition Fragments of Epic Memory. | | | | |  | @eddy.firmin/Instagram | | And if you can’t wait that long to experience art in the great indoors, the Gardiner Museum will be reopening even earlier. They’re set to welcome visitors back as of Jan. 31. Eddy Firmin is one of the artists they have in their collection, but this particular work was photographed at the Maison de la culture Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in Montreal. | | | | |  | Intangible Forms | | You had me at lasers. Here’s a peek at Intangible Forms, a “kinetic laser performance and installation” created by Shohei Fujimoto. It’s appearing in Montreal to April 12. | | | | |  | CBC Arts | | | | | Here it is — a cinematic tribute to the Black communities who’ve built a life on the Prairies. | | | | |  | The Hibernation Project | | | | | Bored? Restless? This Calgary duo discovered how to get the most out of the dreariest time of year. | | | | |  | Sundance Film Festival/Ava Benjamin Shorr | | | | | | | Framing Agnes interrogates how trans stories are told, and by whom. | | |  | @incandescentcloud/Instagram | | I spoke to the Calgary-based duo last week for this article about the Hibernation Project. It’s a sort of “art marathon” they do every year, a project that helps charge their creative batteries so they can keep on making electrifying works like this one. (This is Cloud, by the way. It’s been travelling the world since Caitlind and Wayne created it in 2012.) | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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I’m Leah Collins, senior writer at CBC Arts. Until next time! | | | | | |
