Multiple States of Being
February 5 - 26, 2022
Artist Talk on February 24, 7:30pm AST
Multiple States of Being comprises of a series of four videos featuring Rowe performing various acts on brightly coloured backdrops. Video works made in Barbados accompany and highlight both the island and the matriarchs in Rowe’s family, expanding on themes like home, place and belonging.
The Gallery is once again open to the public, but we ask that you book an appointment to see the exhibition ahead of time. This helps us limit the number of visitors in the space at once time.
Racqel Rowe's online Artist Talk is available on Youtube.
Artist Bio
Racquel Rowe is an interdisciplinary artist from the island of Barbados currently residing in Sackville, New Brunswick. She’s exhibited widely across Ontario and holds an MFA from the University of Waterloo and a BA in History and Studio Art from the University of Guelph.
Her practice is continuously influenced by many aspects of history, matrilineal family structures, diasporic communities, and her upbringing in Barbados. Her work takes the form of performance, video, site specific work, and installation.
Artist Statement
Racquel Rowe is an interdisciplinary artist who works across various mediums. She considers performative action as a form of exploratory, open-ended research that is constantly evolving. Action and then causation are a common method of research for her; essentially working backwards. She is often compelled to do things and then spends a long time investigating and contextualizing what it is that possess her to do them. After a performance, rather than before she finds herself uncovering deep rooted memories of home that become stronger the more a performance is repeated.
Exploring the notion of compulsory visibility and subverting dominant ideologies, Rowe’s practice embraces the differences and similarities between the various Black experiences across the Diaspora. Engaging in critical conversations around race, migration, and colonialism, furthers her own ability to understand and break away from colonial representations.
Rowe’s practice is largely influenced by her surroundings, for example being in Barbados for extended periods of time, allows her to expand into new environments, researching and performing within familial and community structures.
Throughout all her video’s colour is formally and symbolically employed, reminiscent of vast Caribbean landscapes. What does it mean to live in a picture-perfect place? A place represented as an escape, a dream, not reality and how does this effect its populations and what does it mean to be exploring this in the middle of the Canadian winter, away from home. These are the questions Rowe is continuously grappling with.
Komentar