Curator, Developing Historical Negatives
Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto, ON, May 3–June 1, 2019
Deanna Bowen, Morris Lum, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, Krista Belle Stewart, and Hajra Waheed
Developing Historical Negatives examines the strategies artists use to harness the affective dimensions of the colonial photographic archive. Probing histories of migration and assimilation, and stories of resistance, fugitivity, and escape, the works commissioned for this exhibition use photography’s imaginative potential to illuminate difficult histories, and to question how images can act as tools of knowledge transfer between generations.
Taking its title from the work of colonial anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler, the exhibition reorients attention away from the glossy, state-sanctioned photographs of “official” histories to the space of photographic production—the darkroom—where inverted, grainy impressions reveal the tenuous grounds of how histories are formed. In these new works incorporating collage, digital manipulation, reenactment, and translation, Canadian artists Deanna Bowen (Toronto), Morris Lum (Toronto), Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn (Stockholm), Krista Belle Stewart (Vancouver/Berlin), and Hajra Waheed (Montreal) interweave family narratives with state histories to picture transnational experiences of belonging and unbelonging, sovereignty and unfreedom. Importantly, these artists’ works do not seek to insert missing narratives into the historical record, but to expose the presence of racialized subjects who were always and already there, waiting to be “developed” into public sight.
Presented in partnership with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, and in dialogue with An Archive, But Not An Atlas, curated by Liz Ikiriko at Critical Distance Centre for Curators.
Public Programming:
Opening Reception
Friday, May 3, 2019, 6–8 pm
Brunch Talk with participating artists Deanna Bowen, Morris Lum, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, and Hajra Waheed
Saturday, May 4, 2019, 12–2 pm, The Commons at the 401 Richmond St West building
Reading Groups with An Archive, But Not an Atlas
Saturday, May 18, 2019, 1-3 pm at Gallery 44
Saturday, May 25, 2019, 1-3 pm at Critical Distance
Two out-loud reading groups held in conjunction with An Archive, But Not An Atlas, curated by Liz Ikiriko at Critical Distance Centre for Curators, examined excerpts from Tina M. Campt’s Image Matters (2012) and Diana Taylor’s The Archive and the Repertoire (2003) in relation to the themes of embodiment, gesture and the “thinginess” of photographs in both exhibitions.
Adjacent workshop: Developing Agents—Working in and with Photographic Archives
Wednesday, May 22, 2019, 6–9 pm, Gallery 44
Photographic archives are unusual spaces where knowledge is ordered and histories are narrated. While many artists and writers work with archival materials, few of us have any formal training in information sciences or archival research. This workshop aims to develop a glossary of terms for working in the archive, integrating ideas taken from readings, case studies from local archives, and examples from contemporary photographic practice. Participants are encouraged to bring in-progress work and research questions to workshop with the group and as we collectively consider the strategies—both practical and theoretical—that we can deploy when engaging with archival materials.
