Exhibition on view - February 24 - May 21, 2023.

As We Rise presents an exciting compilation of photographs from African diasporic culture. With over one hundred works by Black artists from Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain, the United States, South America, as well as throughout the African continent, this volume provides a timely exploration of Black identity on both sides of the Atlantic.

As Teju Cole describes in his preface, “Too often in the larger culture, we see images of Black people in attitudes of despair, pain, or brutal isolation. As We Rise gently refuses that. It is not that people are always in an attitude of celebration―no, that would be a reverse but corresponding falsehood―but rather that they are present as human beings, credible, fully engaged in their world.” Drawn from Dr. Kenneth Montague’s Wedge Collection in Toronto―a Black-owned collection dedicated to artists of African descent―As We Rise looks at the multifaceted ideas of Black life through the lenses of community, identity, and power. Artists such as Stan Douglas, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Barkley L. Hendricks, Texas Isaiah, Liz Johnson Artur, Seydou Keïta, Deana Lawson, Jamel Shabazz, and Carrie Mae Weems, touch on themes of agency, beauty, joy, belonging, subjectivity, and self-representation. Writings by Isolde Brielmaier, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Mark Sealy, Teka Selman, and Deborah Willis among others provide insight and commentary on this monumental collection.

Hardcover
184 pages
November 2021

Dana Claxton
Hand Tooled (4 Ellen), 2020
C-print
Framed

Image size: 24” x 19 ⅕”
Framed size: 24 ¾” x 20 ¼”
Edition of 25
$1,500.00 CAN

Delivery of the art, if required, must be arranged by the purchaser and will be at the purchaser's expense.

The self-portrait by Dana Claxton reveals the vibrant role that belongings play in identity formation and representation. Here, heirlooms and personal affects form—or de-form—the silhouette of Claxton’s body, literally composing her identities. Hand Tooled (4 Ellen) is both intimate and idiosyncratic, drawing from the artist’s personal collection of handbags made by Indigenous Mexican artisans. Claxton becomes a cultural carrier, embodying the knowledge contained within these storied objects.

Dana Claxton (b. 1959, Yorkton, Saskatchewan) is a critically acclaimed international exhibiting artist. She works in film, video, photography, single- and multi-channel video installation, and performance art, investigating Indigenous beauty, the body, the socio-political and the spiritual.

Her work has been shown globally in exhibitions and film festivals, and she has received numerous awards including the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2020), the Scotiabank Photography Award (2020), the VIVA Award, the Eiteljorg Fellowship, the Hnatyshyn Award, and the YWCA Women of Distinction Award. In 2018, she had a solo survey exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Her new body of work premiered at the inaugural edition of the Toronto Biennial of Art, Toronto ON. Claxton is Head and a Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory with the University of British Columbia.

She is a member of Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations located in SW Saskatchewan and she resides in Vancouver, Canada.