TORONTO.- A birthplace; a destination; a site of violent conquest, brutality and singular beauty – the Caribbean is a region bound by numerous geographical, colonial and personal connections. This fall, the Art Gallery of Ontario invites visitors to immerse themselves in those complex histories, and the art they have inspired, in the major new exhibition Fragments of Epic Memory. Featuring a selection of images from the AGO’s celebrated Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs, alongside new and celebrated works by modern and contemporary artists of Caribbean descent, the exhibition opened to AGO Members on Sept. 1, 2021. Annual Passholders and members of the public may visit beginning Sept. 4, 2021.

Inspired by the writing of post-war Caribbean writers and poets such as Derek Walcott, Kamau Braithwaite and others, the exhibition is loosely chronological, charting the post-emancipation period and highlighting the arrival of commercial photography to the region the 1840s, alongside exceptional modern and contemporary art by artists with ties to the region. Designed as an immersive encounter with the region – its artistic imagination, history and landscape – the exhibition features paintings, sculpture, photographs and time-based media by more than 30 artists with ties to the region. Curated by Julie Crooks, it is the first exhibition to be organized by the AGO’s new Department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, headed by Crooks.

Making their debut as part of Fragments of Epic Memory is a selection of historical photographs from the AGO’s Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs including studio portraits, landscapes, scenes of bustling markets, labour, industry and tourist views. A small part of the Collection’s 3,500 images, these photographs highlight the work of a range of mainly European and American photographers who were drawn to the region. Shedding light on the monumental changes taking place in the region during the latter part of the 19th century, these photographs are a visual archive of the colonial legacies inherited by modern and contemporary artists and their descendants.

“The story of the Caribbean, the diaspora and its artists aren’t one story, but a range of histories, media, voices and lived experiences, best understood through the interplay of them all,” says Julie Crooks, Curator, Arts of Global Africa, and the Diaspora. “Toronto is also home to one of the world’s largest Caribbean communities, and the work of local artists like Sandra Brewster, Natalie Wood and Vancouver’s Charles Campbell is a significant part of the transnational story we’re telling.”




THE EXHIBITION

Bridging modernism and geography, the exhibition features artworks by Guyanese-born painters Sir Frank Bowling and Aubrey Williams. Bowling’s monumental painting Middle Passage (1970), on loan from the National Gallery of Canada, situates faint map drawings of Africa and the Americas atop an abstract sea of yellow and red paint, reminiscent of the Guyanese flag. Similarly, Williams combines abstraction and the iconography of the Carib (Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean) in his painting Carib Form (1962). These works are accompanied by paintings by Cuban surrealist Wifredo Lam and Trinidadian modernist Sybil Atteck.

More than 30 artists are represented in the exhibition, which includes photographs by Vanley Burke and Robert Charlotte, paintings by Leasho Johnson and multi-media works by Suchitra Mattai and Andrea Chung. Combining digital animation and found photographs, Trinidadian artist Rodell Warner’s series of single-channel videos bring into three dimensions the subjects captured by the colonial lens as an intervention in the representation of these people and places, one that imagines imaginative alternatives. Adjacent to these, Ebony Patterson’s multi-channel video installation and recent AGO acquisition three kings weep…. (2018), unfolds its slow and monumental reflection on performances of black masculinities.

In Paul Anthony Smith’s Untitled, 7 Women (2019) on loan from the Hott Collection, he employs a unique technique called ‘picotage’, obscuring his subjects with textural geometric patterns that mimic ornate Caribbean architectural elements.

Charles Campbell’s sculpture Maroonscape 1: Cockpit Archipelago (2019), a futuristic topographic sculpture of Jamaica’s distinctive cockpit region and its accompanying soundscape Maroonscape 2: Yet Every Child (2020), are an homage to the region where the Maroon’s sought refuge from enslavement. For Campbell, this region and its history are a model for a Caribbean city of the future—a place of resourcefulness, autonomy, community, and hope.

The exhibition concludes with a diptych by Haitian-Dominican artist Firelei Báez, entitled Adjusting the Moon (the right to non-imperative clarities): Waxing and Adjusting the Moon (the right to non-imperative clarities): Waning (both 2019). In Walker Court, the AGO’s atrium, a newly commissioned 18-foot-high mixed media sculpture by Trinidadian British-born artist Zak Ové entitled Moko Jumbie will be unveiled ahead of the exhibition’s opening.