History Is Rarely Black or White, curated by Jason Cyrus, is now open for visitors at The Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario. This multi-faceted exhibition engages contemporary art and fashion to examine colonial history and envision a raically positive future. Artists Karin Jones, Gordon Shadrach, and Damian Jöel demonstrate the manner in which the burden of colonial history entwines itself in research, making and cultural heritage. Jones and Shadrach discuss the ongoing legacies of oppression that created the global cotton industry.
The exhibition interrogates cotton garments in the Queen’s Collection of Canadian Dress through archival research and scientific analysis that connects these materials to resource extraction, Indigenous displacement, enslaved labour, and the Underground Railroad. This history is also shown through tintypes and artifacts.
History Is Rarely Black or White runs from 27 November 2021–20 March 2022.
