The diverse experiences of BIPOC people in Kingston were front and centre for almost a month during a recent exhibit at the Window Art Gallery.
Co-curators Sarah Jihae Kaye, BFA ’24 and Meenakashi Ghadial, BFA ’23 and ConEd ’24, curated their debut exhibition Close to Home: BIPOC Experiences of Family Exhibition, at the Window Art Gallery on Feb. 1. The exhibit features personal family anecdotes from artists of all disciplines and includes four current Queen’s Fine Art students.
Close to Home presents contemporary and traditional works, videos, and sculptures which explore themes of family, decolonization, and intergenerational experiences of pain and suffering. Alongside a diverse range of perspectives, the art includes various mediums and textures to create the overarching theme of family.
“It’s mainly about pain and loss. There’s some joy as well, but there’s a fleeting feeling to all these spaces and a fleeting sense of space,” Ghadial said in an interview with The Journal.
A Kingston resident for the past five years, Ghadial said the predominantly white community in Kingston made her feel disconnected from other artists.
“I hadn’t seen a call like that [for BIPOC artists] in Kingston yet. Personally, as someone who has been trying to take every opportunity I can, I wanted to see a BIPOC space. It does have a different energy to it,” Ghadial said.
Last July, she started to think of ways to create a BIPOC space where artists could share their identities. With the help of the Executive Director of the Kingston School of Art Maddi Andrews, ArtSci ’19 and MA ’21, Ghadial and Kaye found the exhibition space they were searching for.
Kaye said she wanted to focus on the intimacy of family and felt it was essential to recognize artists from diverse backgrounds who carry unique narratives and perspectives.
“When you’re in Canada, there are a lot of pieces centred around ideas of immigration and the diaspora.”
Artists looked at their own histories when creating their art, and Kaye wanted to focus on images from family documents, such as old photos, diaries, and journals. The intergenerational gaps BIPOC individuals experience when growing up in Canada often inform how immigrants and children of immigrants approach their work.
Kaye spoke about two videos featuring death. Despite the morose theme, it isn’t a sad exhibition. The exhibition presented the reality of intergenerational families and what loss means.
“There’s not something broken we’re trying to fix. It’s something we’re trying to acknowledge and make space for. The whole point of the show is to make space for people to share their stories, not be pitied,” Ghadial said.
The concept of family enabled the artists to share personal and vulnerable moments with a large audience to contextualize their identities.
“A lot of the narratives that are shown and represented in the exhibition reflect this underlying longing for this kind of space, especially in a predominately white city. We really wanted to dedicate this space for artists to express their stories authentically,” Kaye said.
Kaye said one of the biggest challenges in curating BIPOC art is ensuring a balanced representation of experiences in a large community. Kaye and Ghadial originally put out a call for artists to find a diverse range of voices in the exhibit.
The exhibition is run by a not-for-profit organization, which made it challenging to find artists who were both willing to share their stories and had the time to work with Kaye and Ghadial.
“Each artist was chosen for their ability to contribute meaningfully to the overarching theme, but we did have some challenges because we’re a predominately white city, and it’s difficult for these calls to be open,” Kaye said.
Kaye and Ghadial enjoyed their launch into the world of curation but ran into financial challenges due to a lack of funding. They hope future projects featuring BIPOC people can be granted a larger space to encourage the community to engage with these narratives in Kingston.
“The biggest takeaway from organizing this exhibit is speaking to artists of diverse backgrounds, seeing their work in person and understanding the need for communication with each work when you’re viewing the gallery space,” Kaye said.
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