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Kept Alive Within Us

Curated by

Sally Frater

Kept Alive Within Us is a group exhibition that explores various rituals related to the everyday and the natural environment through art by those who hold cultural ties to the Caribbean. Collectively the works underscore the ways in which West African cultural knowledge and customs are embedded within the practice of daily life within this southern geography and throughout the diaspora. Highlighting how ancestral ontological ways of knowing emerge throughout daily domestic actions and encounters with the natural world, Kept Alive Within Us attests to forms of cultural resilience and survival that disrupt and resituate how the Caribbean is encountered and perceived within the West. At a moment when the Caribbean is under threat as a result of climate change and global warming, the installation illustrates how encounters in domestic, gastronomical, ecological, and spatial realms constitute ongoing acts of remembrance and resistance.

Image detail: Farihah Aliyah Shah, Along the Demerara, Young Coconut, 2017, archival inkjet print 55.9 x 83.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist

Sponsors
government of ontario logo

Organized by the Art Gallery of Guelph with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, as well as the Guelph Community Foundation Musagetes Fund

Artists

Samantha Box
Sandra Brewster
Andrea Chung
Giana De Dier

Deborah Jack
Ésery Mondésir
Las Nietas de Nonó
Sharon Norwood

Farihah Aliyah Shah
Nyugen E. Smith
Kara Springer


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