Exhibitions and Events
Erasure Art Collective @ Prismatic Arts Festival
Prismatic Arts Festival presents Harmonies & Hues, an event featuring presentations by Erasure Art Collective, Ibe Ananaba, and Mumu Fresh.
Erasure Art Collective is an interdisciplinary arts group committed to researching and reinterpreting archival texts using visual, poetic, and performative erasure. Founded in 2022 by Shauntay Grant and Tyshan Wright, the collective’s inaugural project—called BLACKOUT—reimagines slave ads using ‘erasure’, or ‘blackout’, a form of poetry created by erasing words from an existing text to create a visual poem. Presenting the art of erasure poetry in non-traditional form, this presentation of BLACKOUT combines poetry with visual art, short film, and live performance collaboration with African Nova Scotian musicians. Presenting the art of erasure poetry in non-traditional form, this presentation of BLACKOUT combines poetry with visual art, short film, and live performance.
GUMBE
Opening Reception: Saturday September 21, 2-4PM
Artist in attendance
Artist Talk: Saturday September 21, 1PM
Join us for a casual walkthrough of the exhibition with artist Tyshan Wright.
This event is programmed as part of Gallery Weekend Toronto, with extended gallery hours throughout the weekend.
In GUMBE, Wright uses wood sourced from Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and the African diaspora to construct a selection of square gumbe drums, a ceremonial instrument the Maroons were denied in exile. Adorned by beads collected from the forests of Maroon Town, Jamaica, these drums act as diasporic talismans, capable of transporting material and spiritual culture through time and space. Accompanying these sculptural objects are a series of erasure texts in which Wright redacts letters written by Sir John Wentworth, appropriating and recontextualizing colonial language to tease new connections between migration, labour, freedom, settlement, history, and ancestry. Taken together, this suite of new works follows the movement of the Jamaican Maroons from the past into the present, tracing a cycle of displacement and resistance across the globe.
(Text: Zaluky Contemporary)
GUMBE IX, 2024, wood (Ebony, Padauk), deer skin, Maroon beads, leather cord, 12 x 15 x 15 inches.
📸: Steve Farmer
BNSC 2024
Tyshan Wright joins 14 Canadian and international artists for the 11th Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine, presenting his exhibition Maroon Camp II in response to this year’s theme Oui, Dire! (Hear, Say!).
For more information please visit: https://www.bnsc.ca/
BLACKOUT
BLACKOUT is an interdisciplinary art project that recreates historical slave ads using ‘erasure’ or ‘blackout’—a form of poetry created by erasing words from an existing text to create a visual poem. Presented by Erasure Art Collective, the project uncovers messages in ads that appeared in local newspapers during the transatlantic slave trade. Presenting the art of erasure poetry in non-traditional form, this presentation of BLACKOUT combines poetry with visual art and live performance.
For more information please visit: https://www.easternfronttheatre.com/blackout
Creative Minds: Erasure Art Collective
Experience BLACKOUT performance and artist talk with Erasure Art Collective on February 28 at Paul O'Regan Hall in Halifax. Presented by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Creative Minds program) and hosted by Portia Clark (CBC), this event features poetry with visual art, short film and live performance collaboration with African Nova Scotian musicians. Admission is free.
Artist Talk with Tyshan Wright
All are invited to join artist Tyshan Wright for an informal presentation about his work on view in the exhibition Maroon Town. In this immersive exhibition, Wright creates a staged Maroon house and settlement that includes expertly handcrafted iterations of the ceremonial and everyday domestic objects that Maroons were forced to leave behind in Jamaica, as well as those they use today. This staged settlement imagines Jamaican Maroons and Maroon life thriving across time and place. Maroon Town celebrates historic Maroon resilience and present-day acts of sovereignty that build a vibrant and connected tomorrow for Maroon descendants.
For more information please visit: https://www.msvuart.ca/exhibition/tyshan-wright-maroon-town/
Tyshan Wright: Maroon Town exhibition reception
All are welcome to the exhibition reception for Tyshan Wright: Maroon Town. In this immersive exhibition, Wright creates a staged Maroon house and settlement that includes expertly handcrafted iterations of the ceremonial and everyday domestic objects that Maroons were forced to leave behind in Jamaica, as well as those they use today. This staged settlement imagines Jamaican Maroons and Maroon life thriving across time and place. Maroon Town celebrates historic Maroon resilience and present-day acts of sovereignty that build a vibrant and connected tomorrow for Maroon descendants. The exhibition reception will be a celebratory community event that centres a performance by the artist and also feature live music and refreshments.
For more information please visit: https://www.msvuart.ca/exhibition/tyshan-wright-maroon-town/
Tyshan Wright: Maroon Town
Maroon Town is an immersive exhibition by Kjipuktuk (Halifax)-based artist Tyshan Wright. Maroon Town (re)imagines, (re)creates, and (re)claims the lived experience of Maroons in Nova Scotia in 1796, in 2023, and in the future. Following their forced exile after the Second Maroon War with the British, Jamaican Maroons were exiled to Mi’kma’ki and the British colony of Nova Scotia in 1796. While a majority of Maroons departed Nova Scotia centuries ago after sustained resistance and protest, many Maroon descendants still live in this province where the legacy of Maroon culture endures. In this exhibition, Tyshan Wright creates a parafictional staging of a Maroon house and settlement that includes expertly handcrafted iterations of the ceremonial and everyday domestic objects that Maroons were forced to leave behind in Jamaica as well as those they use today. Through this exhibition, Tyshan Wright poses a powerful Afrofuturist intervention to connect historic Maroon resilience and resistance on this land, with the resurgent sovereignty enacted today, toward creating future Maroon cultural and social thrivance connected across land and sea. (Source: MSVU Art Gallery website)
Sustainability Through Craft
This participatory exhibition brings together traditional craft practices and new ways of thinking. The artists in this exhibition explored the four pillars of sustainability: Social, Cultural, Economic, and Environmental through their craft practices and mediums of choice.
Human Capital
Organized and circulated by the MacKenzie Art Gallery and presented in partnership with the Confederation Centre for the Arts, this exhibition presents work by Canadian artists that offer insight into the impact of Canada’s immigration policies and history: how it treats humans as capital, and the role it plays in shaping the complex and contested formation of a “Canadian identity”.
Inner/Outer Space
The exhibition, Inner/Outer Space features artwork from seven contemporary artist—including Gumbe II (2017) by Tyshan Wright— selected from the Nova Scotia Art Bank who build resilience through a broader or in-depth exploration of different kinds of relationships. Each artist offers their own unique perspective, meeting us somewhere in between their inmost intentions and shared artistic expressions. By bringing together a range of artistic perspectives and experiences, Inner/Outer Space offers a focus on an expansive in-between us and the art, where we can contemplate our relationships with ourselves, and with each other.
Artists in the exhibition include Jordan Bennett, Melanie Colosimo, Cecil Day, Séamus Gallagher, Shauna MacLeod, Onni Nordman, and Tyshan Wright.
Tyshan Wright: Traditional Craft Meets Contemporary Art
Tyshan Wright is the 2022 Sobey Art Award finalist representing the Atlantic region. He describes his practice as working from his cultural traditions, those of the Jamaican Maroons. Jamaican Maroons are descendants of Africans who resisted slavery and formed their own independent communities in the mountains of Jamaica in the 1600s. Based in Halifax, Wright considers the Jamaican Maroons exiled to this same city in 1796 and asks - what did they do here? how did they keep ceremony in this new place? Wright will discuss his practice, the cultural and ceremonial nature of his artwork, and his installation in the 2022 Sobey Art Award exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada. Visit the link below to register.
https://agns.ca/event/artist-talk-tyshan-wright-traditional-craft-meets-contemporary-art/
after this Exhibition
after this explores the activation of critical remembrance relating to histories, stories, and lived experiences in the context of the complex conditions of a white supremacist settler colonial state. Working in a range of media, the artists demonstrate multiple approaches to remembering otherwise. Showcasing interventions into dominant historical narratives and incursions into ancestral and personal stories through acts of resilience, intentionality and activism, after this features accomplished local and national artists who bring distinct lived experiences and histories to the urgent task of casting a critical lens on the question of what is remembered, by and for whom and how.
Sobey Art Award Exhibition
Founded in 2002, the annual Sobey Art Award celebrates contemporary artists from across all regions of Canada. Work by the five shortlisted artists—Stanley Février, Divya Mehra, Azza El Siddique, Krystle Silverfox and Tyshan Wright—will be featured in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada.
National Gallery of Canada: Fall Open House
Admission is FREE Saturday, October 29, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Explore the national gallery spaces, check out new installations, join an exhibition tour, create art together, share stories, and make connections.
Plus, meet the five finalists for the 2022 Sobey Art Award—Stanley Février, Divya Mehra, Azza El Siddique, Krystle Silverfox and Tyshan Wright! From 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., this year’s shortlisted artists will be in the exhibition space with their work, giving you a rare opportunity to chat with these contemporary artists.
Arts Atlantic Symposium
Erasure Art Collective presents its inaugural project, called Blackout, at the Atlantic Arts Symposium. Co-founders Shauntay Grant and Tyshan Wright redact historical slave ads using ‘erasure’ or ‘blackout’—a form of poetry created by erasing select words from an existing text to create a visual poem—in a performative artist talk on October 22 at Jones Gallery Contemporary Art + Projects. Click here to discover more.
Opening! Craft Today
Works from Tyshan Wright’s Myal collection on exhibit at the Mary E. Black Gallery as part of the Craft Nova Scotia Members Exhibition. Click here to discover more.
Tyshan Wright: Institute Fellow Talk
Artist-In-Residence Fellow Tyshan Wright will share artwork and research from his project The Trelawny Town Maroons: Between Sovereignty and Slavery in an online talk. He creatively considers the Maroons in Nova Scotia, and asks how they navigated the complex space between sovereignty and slavery in a new society.
The Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery at NSCAD University provides a one-of-a-kind destination for scholars, artists and cultural producers to create work related to Canadian Slavery and its legacies. Click here to discover more.
For more information, accessibility inquiries, or to request to join virtual Fellows' Talks by phone, please contact: theinstitute@nscad.ca
Festival Art Soutterain
Four works from Tyshan Wright’s MYAL collection will be presented at Montreal’s Place Des Arts as part of the contemporary art festival Festival Art Soutterain. Curated by artist/curator Eddy Firmin and the collective of artists/curators Intervals, the 2022 festival — themed Voies-Voix Résilientes (Resilient Voices-Pathways) — features artwork made by over 40 local and international artists. Click here to learn more.
Atlantic Vernacular Digital Exhibition
Atlantic Vernacular is a curated digital exhibition of contemporary craft paired with poetry of Atlantic Canada. Poet Shauntay Grant’s ‘Bench Drum’ responds to Tyshan Wright’s artwork of the same name. Visit atlanticvernacular.ca to view.
50 Things: An Interactive Art Adventure
50 Things is an app-guided, interactive art adventure in celebration of the Ecology Action Centre’s fiftieth anniversary. Throughout Nova Scotia are fifty original works created by artists from multiple disciplines. Fifty artworks throughout Nova Scotia are created by established and emerging artists from multiple disciplines, commissioned by the EAC, and curated with Zuppa Theatre Co. To start your adventure, click here to download the app and follow the instructions. Some of the artworks can be experienced directly through your phone, while others are physical objects. All are intended to be experienced in a certain place, mindful of the surrounding environment and the history of activism to protect it.
Myal
MYAL is a collection of ceremonial objects and instruments used spiritually among the Jamaican Maroons. For centuries, these instruments have been used to guide Maroons towards myal – a sacred moment of communion with the ancestors.
On exhibit February 3-28 @ The Craig Gallery (Dartmouth, Nova Scotia)
Tyshan Wright Artist Talk
Artist talk for NSCAD University’s survey course on 20th Centuary Craft.
Craft LAIR (Local Artist In Residence) Tyshan Wright
The Centre for Craft Nova Scotia welcomes Tyshan Wright to the Craft LAIR. Stop by the centre to celebrate the launch of his residency on Thursday July 4th at 6pm in conjunction with the opening reception for the exhibitions Woven Woods by Lorraine Roy and Patterns of Growth by Toni Losey.
Kids Night Out: Words & Rhythms
Join visual artist Tyshan Wright and writer Shauntay Grant at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia for Words & Rhythms. Grant will read from her award-winning picture books, and Wright will share stories and guide participants in the making of a musical instrument inspired by traditional Jamaican Maroon music.
Nova Scotia Art Bank
Visit the Anna Leonowens Gallery to celebrate the latest acquisitions to the Nova Scotia Art Bank. The exhibition runs until Saturday, October 6th, and features artworks by:
• Dean Brousseau • Sara Caracristi • Renate Deppe • Maria Doering • Frances Dorsey • Steve Farmer • Anke Fox • Sam Kinsley • Jessica Korderas • Deb Kuzyk & Ray Mackie • Kim Morgan • Nancy Price • William Robinson • Su Rogers • Julie Wagner • Susan Wood • Tyshan Wright • Charley Young •
A Handmade Assembly
Tyshan Wright teams up with writer Shauntay Grant to present their artist talk “Go back and fetch": Cultivating Maroon Tradition in Contemporary Canada. at A Handmade Assembly, an event that brings together artists, curators, and community members working with “the handmade” for discussions, workshops, and exhibitions. The event is organized annually by Owens Art Gallery and Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre with support from the Fine Arts Department at Mount Allison University.
Canada Day 1: Artist Series
A tool of celebration, ceremony, war, and the Jamaican Maroons’ sacred symbol, an abeng forms the central pillar in Shauntay Grant and Tyshan Wright’s mixed-media work. On Tuesday, July 25th from 5:30 – 7:30 pm join the artists for a discussion about the process and intention behind the creation of Abeng.
Grant’s genealogy dates back to the 1796 arrival of Jamaican Maroons in Halifax, and Wright hails from the historic Maroon town of Accompong in Jamaica. Currently a part of the Canada: Day 1 exhibit, Abeng combines poetry about of Wright’s “Day 1” in Canada with sculpture to create a contemporary exploration of the Maroons’ symbol.
Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood
Taking over the entire fourth floor of the AGO’s Contemporary Tower, Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood explores three urgent questions through the eyes of some of the country’s best emerging and established artists: where has Canada come from, what it is now, and where is it going?
The exhibition features a newly commissioned collection of Jamaican Maroon ceremonial objects and instruments from visual artist Tyshan Wright.
Canada: Day 1
Visit the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 to celebrate the launch of Canada: Day 1, an exhibition developed by the museum that uses art, photographs, personal objects and voice recordings to tell the stories of newcomers’ arrivals in Canada. Among the exhibited works is Abeng, a mixed-media collaboration from visual artist Tyshan Wright and writer Shauntay Grant.