Rocks

Rocks are the record keepers and storytellers of the earth. By attuning our beings to the stillness of rocks, we hear the stories they contain.

In the 18th-century slave ships were constructed along the Atlantic coast in what is now Canada. They were ballasted with rocks from the area’s shoreline. When the ships sailed to West Africa the rocks were dumped onto the shore and humans, their intended cargo, were loaded into the stifling cargo holds. The ships have dissolved into the sea and the people in their holds are no more but the rocks have not forgotten.

Models:
Stella Joseph
Sizwe Ishema
Sharrae Lyon

Rocks - series 2021-
24x36
Edition of 3 Black and White photography on vinyl in lightboxes

1 (Copy)

2 (Copy)

3 (Copy)

Full Description

In their engaging Afrofuturist video and sound installation Family Matters (2017), Camille Turner and Camal Pirbhai invite visitors to encounter silences haunting Canadian history. Realized during a residency with Charles Street Video, the work was inspired by an advertisement posted in the Upper Canada Gazette in February, 1806 by Peter Russell, an administrator in Upper Canada, offering Peggy Pompadour and her son Jupiter for sale. The mother and son are two of the enslaved people that Russell legally claimed as his property. In Family Matters Peggy and Jupiter travel through time to visit contemporary Toronto, where their plight illuminates the ongoing co-constitution of past and present. Like the earlier series Wanted (2016), Family Matters humanizes the enslaved people described in historical advertisements by challenging linear constructions of history—opening up the past to unexpected futurities.

Exhibition & Touring History

McIntosh Gallery 2017 – Shown as part of Futurisms curated by Adam Lauder

Latcham Art Centre 2019 – Shown at Whitchurch-Stouffville, Canada, as part of Where We Stand.

We would like to acknowledge:

City of Toronto

Funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. Ontario Arts Council (OAC)