BLACK PRAIRIES

×

Expand

Cheryl Foggo, “For Ceasar,” 2024

video still (courtesy of the Gallery)

Opening Reception: 27 September 2024 6:00 pm

Focusing on vintage and vernacular photography and other lens-based practices, BLACK PRAIRIES honors more than one hundred years of Black cultural production in the Prairies. The exhibition highlights rarely seen original glass plate negatives from the archives of early 1900s Black Manitoban photographer, William “Billy” Beal and photographs of everyday Black life in and around Amber Valley, Alberta during the 1920s to 1960s from the Frank B. Jamerson fonds. The exhibition also includes new bodies of work by contemporary lens-based Black Prairie artists, whose works present necessary dialogues, questions, and reflections on personal histories, a changing climate, and collective experiences. The exhibition will present a newly created short film by filmmaker Cheryl Foggo about the historical Black community of rural Saskatchewan, known as the Shiloh People. BLACK PRAIRIES provides space for communal grounding and reflection on the ongoing and ever-expanding continuum of Black life in the Prairies.

Featuring work by William “Billy” Beale (b. 1874) and contemporary artists Adam Bentley, Anna Binta Diallo, Cheryl Foggo, Judah Iyunade, and Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, as well work from the Frank B. Jamerson archives.