Stanley Wany
An emotional exhibition pays tribute to those who defied slavery.
Stanley Wany, “For those who Chose the Sea,” 2022, installation view at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (photo by Karen Asher)
On the Veloz, a slave ship that brought Africans to South America, the space between decks was divided into narrow compartments just 39 inches in height. Some 336 men and boys were crammed into 800 square feet, while 226 women and girls occupied another 288 square feet. We know this because it was recorded by Irish clergyman Robert Walsh in the second volume of Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829, part of his campaign to abolish slavery.
Montreal artist Stanley Wany used these dimensions to create his immersive multimedia exhibition, For those who Chose the Sea, on view at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg until Jan. 21. At the exhibition’s centre is a wooden structure that reimagines these compartments. Viewers can enter them, but must hunch down to do so. Even when you are alone, the structure feels cramped.
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Stanley Wany, “For those who Chose the Sea,” 2022, installation view at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (photo by Karen Asher)
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Stanley Wany, “For those who Chose the Sea,” 2022, installation view at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (photo by Karen Asher)
Wany, an artist of Afro-Caribbean descent known for his graphic novels, including last year's Helem, is interested in the psychological impacts the horrific voyages inflicted on millions of people between the 15th and 19th centuries. While he based the installation on historical facts, he wants viewers to connect emotionally. Interacting with the structure, it’s easy to imagine the fear, anger and despair these people must have felt at losing their freedom and being forced to endure such squalid and inhumane conditions.
Stanley Wany, “For those who Chose the Sea,” 2022, installation view at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (photo by Karen Asher)
On the far wall, a video shows the ocean off Virginia at a place formerly known as Point Comfort, where enslaved Africans first came ashore in 1619. The entire gallery is enveloped by the sound of the ocean, visible through an opening at one end of the structure. For Wany, the ocean is a link to Africa, the continent’s history and the ancestry of its diaspora.
Stanley Wany, “For those who Chose the Sea,” 2022, installation view at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (photo by Karen Asher)
For those who Chose the Sea is an homage to the people who jumped overboard to an almost certain death. Wany, describing the choice as one of courage and defiance, asks: “What would it take for somebody to actually do that?” He observes, as well, that some cultures see death not as an end, but as a return to one’s ancestral roots.
Stanley Wany, “For those who Chose the Sea,” 2022, installation view at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (photo by Karen Asher)
The show includes a triptych of mixed-media drawings of people from the African diaspora. The first image reimagines the last hours of a man who chose the sea. His mirrored figure simultaneously looks back to a distant ship, at the viewer and forward to the next image, which shows frothy water filled with the masks of his ancestors and the faces of those who chose the sea before him.
The final drawing reflects contemporary life, showing people juxtaposed with a high-rise housing project, where residents live stacked one above another much as their ancestors did on slave ships. The show’s curator, Catherine Sinclair, in an online video tour of the exhibition, says the drawing evokes the continuing oppression that Black people face.
“By showing the correlation between these spatial and hierarchical systems, Wany provokes and supports a diversity of emotional, intellectual and physical reflections about diasporic conditions, and the residual effects of violence and harm,” she says.
Wany’s drawings sit heavily on the paper. The tactility of the paper, with its scratches, crinkles and ink stains, is palpable. In the darkened room, its emotional heft reflects the overwhelming heaviness of this deeply moving exhibition. ■
Stanley Wany, For those who Chose the Sea, at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg from Oct. 7, 2022, to Jan. 21, 2023. Curated by Catherine Sinclair, chief curator at the Ottawa Art Gallery.
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Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art
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