Presentations and conversation with Michèle Pearson Clarke, Canisia Lubrin, Péjú Oshin, and Pamela Woolford

Presented by the University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery and Patterns Collective. This project is supported in part by a University of Manitoba Community Engagement Fund, 2021-22.

This event will be facilitated on Zoom, with ASL interpretation. Live captioning will be available.

Curated and moderated by Patterns Collective Saturday, January 22, 7:00-9:00 pm CST

Patterns Collective and the School of Art Gallery are happy to present Deconstruction of Being, a confluence of percipient thoughts on being. Filmmaker Michèle Pearson Clarke, poet Canisia Lubrin, curator Péjú Oshin, and interdisciplinary artist Pamela Woolford will present readings and screenings of their work, engaging in a conversation moderated by Patterns Collective afterwards. This event will serve as a dynamic, non-conventional, and activated lecture. This event will break down and synthesize notions of individual and collective identity, self-exploration, memory, the body, place, kinship, language amongst other themes.

I’ll be sharing new work from my upcoming gallery show and VR experience Up/Rooted: Pamela Woolford’s Cabin Windows

Program: Pamela Woolford, excerpts from: Up/Rooted: Pamela Woolfod's Cabin Windows 2022, Péjú Oshin, Between Words & Space, 2021, published by Bakanna BooksFilm screening: Michèle Pearson Clarke, Black Men and Me, 2006, 5:57 Reading: Canisia Lubrin, The Dyzgraphxst , 2020, published by McLelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House

About the presenters:

Michèle Pearson Clarke is a Trinidad-born artist, writer and educator. Working primarily in photography and video, her work situates grief as a site of possibility for social engagement and political connection. Based in Toronto, she holds an MSW from the University of Toronto, and an MFA in Documentary Media Studies from Ryerson University. Her work has been included in exhibitions and screenings across Canada and internationally. She has been artist- in-residence at Gallery 44, in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and in the University of Toronto’s Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. Clarke’s writing has been published in Canadian Art, Transition Magazine, Momus, and The Toronto Star and in 2018, she was a speaker at the eighth TEDxPortofSpain. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Canada. Currently, she is serving as the second Photo Laureate for the City of Toronto (2019-2023), and she has forthcoming solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and Mercer Union in 2022.

Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor, critic and teacher. Her books include the awards-nominated debut Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn, ‘17) and a forthcoming book of short fiction, Code Noir (Knopf, ’23). Her sophomore poetry collection, The Dyzgraphxst (M&S, ‘20), received honours including winner of the overall 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Griffin Poetry Prize, Derek Walcott Prize, and finalist for the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Lubrin is the inaugural Shaftesbury Writer in Residence at Victoria College, University of Toronto. Poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart, Lubrin studied at York University and the University of Guelph, where she is the incoming MFA in Creative Writing Coordinator and an Assistant Professor in the School of English & Theatre Studies. In 2021 Lubrin was awarded a Windham-Campbell prize in Poetry from Yale University.

Péjú Oshin is a British-Nigerian curator, writer, and lecturer based in London. Her work explores liminality in culture, identity and the built environment through working with artists, archives and cultural artefacts to create and further explore shared experiences across a global African diaspora. She has managed the delivery of the Tate’s Workshop Artists in Residence programme, and curated in- person and online programming, including the performances Stillness: We Invoke the Black to Rest (2020), Beyond Boundaries (2021). In 2019-20, she led the Barbican’s first Young Curators Group and has delivered public events at Wellcome Collection. Péjú holds a PgCert in Academic Practice in Art, Design and Communication from UAL and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Recently, Péjú was shortlisted for the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list in Arts & Culture, was on the selection panel for the other art fair and was a judge for the 2019 Cultural residency at the Institute of Imagination. She currently works at Tate as Curator: Young People’s Programmes, is an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins and Chair of trustee of Peckham Platform. Words & Space is her first collection of prose and poetry.

Pamela Woolford is an interdisciplinary artist and keynote speaker, intertwining her work as a writer, filmmaker, performer, and immersive-media director to create new forms of narrative work about Black women and girls and others whose joy, imagination, and inner life are under-explored in American media and popular art. She is the recipient numerous awards and honours including five Maryland State Arts Council Awards, five international film festival awards, a Changemaker Challenge Award from United Way of Central Maryland and Horizon Foundation, a Baker Artist Award in interdisciplinary arts, a Storyknife Writers Residency, a NES Artist Residency, and an Official Citation from the Maryland House of Delegates, and she has been a Bisson Lecturer in the Humanities at Marymount University. Woolford’s writing has been published in the Baltimore Sun, Poets & Writers Magazine, NAACP's Crisis Magazine, Harvard University’s Transition, and other publications. Woolford is a member of Sundance Co//ab, Brown Girls Doc Mafia, CRAFT Institute, Women of Color Unite, The Gotham, and Women Writers of Color. Her work will be featured in a Spring 2022 solo exhibition at Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery in Washington, DC. Interrupted: Prologue to a Mem-noir is her latest film.

About Patterns Collective:

Shaneela Boodoo is a graduate of the University of Manitoba with a BFA (Honours) in Design. She is a second-generation immigrant, born and based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and identifies as Indo-Caribbean. As an emerging artist, designer, and curator, Boodoo's work uses design, installation, collage and photography to communicate carefully constructed narratives which use reconstructed memories to explore facets of information. These memories come from aspects of personal relationships that deal with larger intersecting themes of colonialism, displacement and womanhood. In addition to Patterns Collective, Boodoo has also worked to establish and brand BIPOC collectives RIND, and Chroma Collective. She has curated exhibitions including School of Art Gallery shows Adornment and Analogous, which have centered the experiences of BIPOC in institutional spaces.

Mahlet Cuff is an emerging interdisciplinary artist and curator producing work through audiovisual storytelling. Using analog and digital photography, found and generated recordings, they explore subjects of healing, memory and collective care. Mahlet’s work questions conventional narratives about relationship-building both within themselves and with their kin in the world. She is also a community organizer and founder of the advocacy and action group Justice 4 Black Lives Winnipeg where she advocates for abolition and safety of all Black people. Her collaborations as a curator include showcasing work for the Patterns Collective, as well as for the Window Winnipeg exhibition Joy is more than just a feeling. Their work has been shown locally and nationally.

Chukwudubem Ukaigwe is a Nigerian-born song, dispersed by a transient Atlantic breeze, currently passing through Canada. He consciously uses a variety of mediums to relay a plurality of ideas at any given time. He approaches his art practice as a conversation, or a portal into one, and in some instances, as an interpretation of this ongoing exchange. Chukwudubem operates as an interdisciplinary artist, curator, writer, and cultural worker and is a founding member of Patterns Collective.

The University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery is physically located on Treaty 1 territory, the original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

The University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery’s Adjunct programming’s objective is to create an accessible, anti-oppressive safer space to learn, explore, take risks, and connect through art. Within this framework we ask participants to engage respectfully and mindfully with each other and the facilitators. If there is anything we can do to make your visit—onsite, offsite, or online—more accessible/safe, we welcome your feedback. Please contact Jean Borbridge the Education Coordinator at the School of Art Gallery at soageducator@umanitoba.ca if you have questions, concerns, or access needs.

School of Art Gallery

255 ARTlab, 180 Dafoe Road, Winnipeg, MB, R3T2N2

umanitoba.ca/schools/art/gallery