Fresh Arts, Visual Arts: histories and legacies

Renowned artist, activist, and academic, d’bi.young anitafrika, is celebrated for transformative theatre practices advocating social justice. A nonbinary African-Xaymacan-Tkarontonian womxn, their work, including the acclaimed Sankofa, Orisha, and Ibeyi Trilogies, demonstrates an unwavering commitment to Black queer feminist theatrical forms while rupturing colonial-systemic oppression. Accolades include three Dora Awards and twelve nominations, a KM Hunter Theatre Award, a Global Leader in Theatre and Performance Award from Arts Council England and most recently a Siminovitch Prize Playwriting Finalist Award. Beyond writing, as Founding Artistic Director of Watah Theatre, d’bi.young has mentored hundreds of emerging playwright-performers into industry leaders. They conceived The Anitafrika Method, a decolonial praxis, nationally and globally applied in spaces like Soulpepper Theatre and Ubuntu! Decolonial Arts Centre. Presently a PhD candidate, d’bi.young is completing their first monograph on the transformative pedagogies of Black womxn theatre-makers in Northern Turtle Island.

Image credit: d’bi .young anitafrika. Photography: Ocean Morisset.

Pamila Matharu (they/them) is a settler of Panjabi, Indian descent (Jalandhar and Bhanolangha – village of Kapurthala district, pre-partition Lahore), born in Birmingham, England, and arrived in Canada in 1976, based in Tkarón:to/Toronto – Treaty 13 territory. Approaching contemporary art from the position of critical pedagogy and using an interdisciplinary and intersectional feminist lens through counter-archiving, their work culminates in a broad range of forms including installation art, social practice, and experimental media art. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Leonard + Bina Ellen Gallery at Concordia University, (Montréal), Artexte (Montréal), Optica (Montréal), Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston, ON), Or Gallery (Vancouver), One Archives at USC Libraries (Los Angeles), MOCA Toronto, Art Gallery of Burlington (Burlington, ON), Durham Art Gallery (Grey Bruce, ON), Cooper Cole at ART TO (Toronto), A Space Gallery (Toronto), Art Gallery of York University (Toronto), and Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto). Matharu’s first group exhibit abroad, The World That Belongs to Us is upcoming at The New Art Gallery Walsall, in the UK. They hold a BA in Visual Arts, and a Fine Arts B.Ed. from York University.

Winsom Winsom (1945; she/her) child of the Universe with lineage of the Maroons, Arawak and Spanish grounded in Maroon Land of the Cockpit Mountains and now Canada. Winsom does not separate her life and art: her life is her art, her art is her life. Winsom’s work interprets the elements, land, animal, and human presence from the context of the Afro-centric value system where spirituality is central as “respect for the elements guides human passage.” Through a variety of media such as painting, sculpture, film and installation connections are established between different levels of existence through symbols in line and colour. Winsom’s current imagery can be ascribed directly to the Ancient African religion of Ifa and the Ashanti which have mediated the relationship between the land of the living and the dead with an organic living structure.