Moving Forward, Looking B(l)ack: A Panel Discussion featuring women who curate, create, and activate.

Friday, October 13, 2017 at 6:30pm
Halifax North Memorial Library, 2285 Gottingen Street, Halifax
Doors open at 6pm. Refreshments will be served.

Presented by our partners, Visual Arts Nova Scotia this panel features Black/ Afro-Indigenous/ African Nova Scotian women: Pamela Edmonds, Lucie Chan, Jade Peek, and Bria Miller discussing their practice and experience in the visual arts in Nova Scotia, in a conversation facilitated by Sylvia Hamilton.

Despite there being many talented Black artists and curators in and from Nova Scotia, resources, access to and public knowledge about their contributions to Nova Scotia’s visual arts are limited. This panel hopes to build on and celebrate the knowledge of Black/ Afro-Indigenous/ African Nova Scotian women who are creating, curating and activating in the visual arts.

This event comes out of archival research done by Research Coordinator, and Nocturne Programming Committee member, Chris Shapones for the 40th anniversary of Visual Arts Nova Scotia, which has existed and published Atlantic Canada’s only visual art magazine, Visual Arts News, for 40 years.

The title for the panel “Moving Forward, Looking B(l)ack” is from Pamela Edmonds’ Black Body: Race, Resistance, Response (Halifax, 2001).

The organisers would like to acknowledge that the event is being hosted on the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq peoples.This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship” which Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) and Mi’kmaq peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725. The treaties did not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognized Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) title and established the rules for what was to be an ongoing relationship between nations.

The organisers would also like to acknowledge the Land Titles Clarification Act that was passed in 1963 finally giving ownership of thirteen specific communities within Nova Scotia land to families of Black Loyalist that was promised by the crown in the 1800’s in return for their military service.

Special thanks to our funders and sponsors: Nocturne, Halifax Libraries, NSCAD University: Division of Art History and Contemporary Culture, and the Province of Nova Scotia.