Estuaries Panel Discussion
Join us for a panel discussion organized in conjunction with the new exhibition Estuaries with Sylvia D. Hamilton, Joana Joachim and Thandiwe McCarthy.
This panel discussion is made possible with support from the Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University.
Dr. Joana Joachim is Assistant professor of Black Studies in Art History and Social Justice at Concordia University. Her research and teaching interests include Black feminist art histories, Black diasporic art histories, critical museologies, Black Canadian studies, and Canadian slavery studies. Her curatorial projects include Estuaries presented at the Owens Art Gallery (2024) and Blackity presented at Artexte (2021). Her current book project examines practices of self-preservation and self-care among Black women in contexts of slavery under the French by considering both historical and contemporary artworks. She earned her PhD in the department of Art History and Communication Studies and at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University. Dr. Joachim obtained her master’s degree in Museology from Université de Montréal and her BFA cum laude from University of Ottawa. In addition to the special issue of RACAR, “salt: For the preservation of Black diasporic visual histories” co-edited with Pamela Edmonds, Dr. Joachim’s writing has appeared in books, journals and magazines including Routledge Companion to African Diaspora Art edited by Eddie Chambers (forthcoming October 2024), History, art and Blackness in Canada, Manuel Mathieu: World Discovered Under Other Skies, Canadian Journal of History and C Magazine.
Sylvia D. Hamilton is a multi-award-winning Nova Scotian filmmaker, artist and writer known for the documentaries Portia White: Think on Me, The Little Black School House and Black Mother Black Daughter, among others. She is the author of the poetry collection, And I Alone Escaped to Tell You, a finalist for the Nova Scotia Masterworks Award and the 2015 League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her latest collection titled Tender was a finalist for the League of Canadian Poets 2023 Pat Lowther Award and the winner of the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia Maxine Tynes Poetry Award. Other awards include the 2019 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media and the Documentary Organization of Canada’s 2021 Luminary Award.
Thandiwe McCarthy is a 7th generation African Canadian spoken word poet, writer, and public speaker. After a residency at Arteles, Finland, Thandiwe has begun focusing on his writing practice. As the culture correspondent for Maritime EDIT magazine, he highlights Black community leaders and artists. He has delivered keynotes for the Atlantic Public Libraries Association, the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design’s 2024 graduation and has lectured on leadership at Saint Thomas University. He was a Co-founder of the New Brunswick Black Artists Alliance and Emancipation Celebration event and he has played a key role in helping to recognize August 1st as Emancipation Day in New Brunswick. His Canada Council funded project the “Still Here Initiative” celebrates fifteen generational Black New Brunswick families and will launch a national art exhibition and globally distributed book in July 2025.”
About the Exhibition
Estuaries form when freshwater rivers meet the ocean and become slightly salty. The Atlantic is the saltiest of the five ocean basins. John Owens, eponym of the Owens Art Gallery, was a successful shipbuilder, as was his executor, Robert Reed. Using funds from Owens’ estate, Reed worked with artist John Hammond to develop a teaching collection now housed at the Owens. The Maritimes, like the rest of Canada, profited from shipbuilding and colonial economies linked to transatlantic slavery. Meanwhile, Black histories were systematically washed away. Estuaries floats in the space between these facts, musing on Black diasporic peoples’ relationship to the ocean.
Related Programming
Vernissage
Friday 4 October, 5:30 – 7:30 pm, at the Owens
Poetry Reading with Sylvia D. Hamilton and Amatoritsero Ede
Friday 4 October, 4:00 – 5:30 pm, in Tweedie Hall, Wallace McCain Student Centre at Mount Allison University
This exhibition was made possible thanks to funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the New Brunswick Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture. It received special support from the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax), the Centre for Canadian Studies (Mount Allison University), the Department of English (Mount Allison University), and the Faculty of Fine Arts (Concordia University).
Image: Gary Weekes, SYBELLA 180, Sail from Beachcomber, 2024, photographic prints on signature cotton, canvas, aluminum, grommets, medium-density fiberboard (MDF) 61 x 48.3 cm. © Gary Weekes, 2024
