BIPOC communities are making their mark on Toronto’s growing art scene — and they’re just getting started
By: Kayla Higgins
Initiative creator Zayn Ojoawo delivering land remarks at the beginning of ArtWorxTO’s “Stolen People, Stolen Land” on Oct. 6, 2021. (Kayla Higgins/CanCulture)
A collaborative initiative in Toronto is hosting events and projects to highlight art created by young Black and Indigenous artists.
ArtWorxTO’s “Stolen People, Stolen Land” is a series of interconnected films and poems from exclusively Black and Indigenous Toronto-based youth, aiming to present similarities between experiences and stories of diaspora, grief and survival.
Taking place over the course of four days at the Artscape Daniels Spectrum, the project was done in collaboration with the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC) after a callout to Toronto-based artists on Facebook.
The project was funded as part of ArtWorxTO's Year of Public Art 2021-22, as "an opportunity for residents across the city to learn more about the vibrant and diverse public art in our city and the talented artists who have created it," said Mayor John Tory during the launch of the city-wide project in September.
The young creatives were paired with a mentor, who worked together on the project over the course of a year. Each film was approximately two to five minutes long with stylistic choices ranging from animation to short, poignant clips. Their poetry guided their films through the stories they chose.
"We took short films, ideally with no dialogue, created by Black and Indigenous filmmakers and paired them with our youth poets," said Zayn Ojoawo, creator and artistic director of “Stolen People, Stolen Land.”
Ojoawo found the Facebook callout with less than a week to the deadline and was inspired to apply. Time management and organization were challenges for Ojoawo, but in the end, it was worth it. “It was so fulfilling and I'm very proud of the way everything turned out."
Ojoawo hopes that programs such as these offer safe spaces and more nuanced conversations around colonial violence and shared trauma. "Creating change and dialogue around these topics, even just in and around Toronto, is a great place to start."
There are multiple initiatives in Toronto that are dedicated to fostering and promoting BIPOC identity through art, including Akin Collective: a Toronto-based arts organization run by a small team of artists that provides creative studio space for young people, as well as arts-based programming.
The Akin Studio Program is one of many opportunities offered by the collective that creates space for applicants that are art practitioners, curators and writers to lease shared studio space. Selected artists are then eligible to participate in four seasonal public “Open Studio” events that include opportunities to present workshops or artist talks.
"A lot of the work that I do is an invitation and an exchange," said Yasmeen Nematt Alla, an installation and sculpture-based artist and marketing specialist at Akin. "How do we ask people to tell us about their loneliness and have them feel safe and comfortable to brandish that sort of information to us in the first place?"
Nematt Alla said that building an unapologetic space for BIPOC communities to exist in is the first step forward. "Recognizing that in order to move towards creating care-based communities is the first step; we need space by us, for us,” she said. “We have to believe in each other.”