All image credit: It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900 – 1970 and Now. Installation documentation, Audain Gallery, 2022. Photos: Rachel Topham Photography.
Interview with Seika Boye and Yerin Choi
Following the exhibition, It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900 – 1970 and Now — held at Audain Gallery from October 13 – December 9, 2022 and guest-curated by Seika Boye — SFU Galleries Engagement Intern, Yerin Choi sat with Boye to reflect on motivations, research practices, responding to the archive, and future iterations.
Yerin Choi:
As a scholar, artist, and educator researching the history of Black dancing in Canada, can you explain the conditions that motivated you to develop It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900 – 1970 and Now?
Seika Boye:
I think there are two phases to this exhibition coming to life. The first was my doctoral research, which I completed from 2010 to 2016, and in that research I was asking the question, 'Where were Black people dancing in Canada between 1900, and (it ended up being) 1970’? And that's defined by immigration laws, because they impacted the Black population. My dissertation focused on research in the Toronto region, and on social dancing — it was a limited boundary for this research project, as a dissertation needs to be.
While I was working on the dissertation, the archive and gallery I had worked for, Dance Collection Danse, asked if I would create an exhibition of the research I was doing. When I worked at the archive, I was vocal and we spoke a lot about the lack of black representation in the archive with Dance Collection Danse. And as we started working, and we — Amy Bowring (who is now the Executive and Curatorial Director at Dance Collection Danse) — realized that there were objects in the archive that were related to Blackness. We were to pull those together alongside other material I was finding in my research, and of course, with an exhibition [as an outcome].
It's so different from a dissertation, because [an exhibition is] public-facing. It is predominantly visual, with text that gives context to what you're seeing, but it's a completely different entry point, as you know, from attending an art gallery daily. We really wanted to reach a broader public: we wanted the work to be accessible to dancers who are training to dance, for example. That was really the genesis of putting the work into an exhibition format. There are a lot of gorgeous materials to look at; there are a lot of troubling materials to look at, too. There's so much to see, and we wanted to make sure that people could see [and access] those [artifacts and objects of Black dance history].
Yerin Choi:
What an interesting journey you went through to arrive at the current exhibition! It is noteworthy that this exhibition includes such a rich archive and has been presented in many iterations — Dance Collection Danse Gallery in Toronto (2018); Ignite Gallery in Toronto (2018); Progress Festival in Toronto (2019); and John & Maggie Mitchell Art Gallery in Edmonton (2020) — can you describe what your approach has been when selecting contemporary artists to respond to the archive?
Seika Boye:
That format really came about when I was working with Carolyn Jervis at the Mitchell Art Gallery, which is the university art gallery at McEwen University in Edmonton; and the archival exhibition existed already. There are a few things that I learned about. The budget is designed to commission artists and I really wanted to make sure that those resources went into the creative community.
It was also about perspectives of Black people who were from or working in Alberta. So, the process of selecting artists, I think, is a lot like any curatorial process. You bring your own references and knowledge and put them into conversation with collaborators. When I am working as a guest curator in a place I am visiting, I rely on the network of those who are living and working locally.
A part of what was different for me is that we were looking to commission visual artists and literary artists to connect with performing artists — the interdisciplinary practices of who was invited to respond to the archive was really important. [This is] the format that we landed on that has worked so well and is exciting. We were asking artists to respond to objects that were of interest to them in the archive itself, and I wanted to have different perspectives.
I am a dance artist trained in western theatrical forms, a researcher, and a scholar, and there's a lot I can do to talk,write, and think about an object. But my perspective is only mine, especially as I connect to it personally. It's been exciting to have other people respond to the archive.
Yerin Choi:
I was particularly drawn to the work of Otoniya J. Okot Bitek’s, made nude, which includes interesting sensory aspects, both sound and visual, giving it a multisensorial experience when entering the exhibition. Can you explain your approach as to why you chose to separate, spatially, the audio from the visual?
Seika Boye:
It really is about creating a space in which people can process the information. And I didn't want Otoniya’s poem to be competing with the sound from a video that was kind of diagonally adjacent to her artwork installation. So those are some very practical sound and spatial decisions that were made. But what happened out of that practical necessity was that people were greeted first by a recording of Otoniya’s voice, and then encountered her artwork.
The repetition of the text in Otoniya’s artwork, made nude, I found to be very powerful, because the first encounter is sound. You experience that, and then experience the poem, visually, which is an arrangement of separate words in various colours and placed according to a rhythm, but they aren't readable as complete sentences.
Having the installation of the poem represented visually in printed vinyl at approximately 10’ x 11’ becomes a visual experience and encounter with the poem as you are reading and looking at the arrangement of letters, [alongside]the long panel of different shades of hosiery. It’s a layered experience.
There was a real presence of Otoniya’s artwork throughout the exhibition, because you can faintly hear the audio recording as well, within the main gallery space. When speaking together with SFU Galleries staff Christopher Lacroix and Kristy Trinier, we wanted the artworks and archival works to be presented together in a way that wasn't an overwhelming experience.
Yerin Choi:
What prompted the decision to add “and Now” in the title for the SFU Galleries’ iteration of this exhibition, which had an original title of It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900-1970?
Seika Boye:
Yes, we actually added that qualifier “and Now” in the Edmonton [iteration of the touring exhibition at McEwan University], when we started inviting contemporary artists [to respond to the archive]. This was because there is a gap within the holdings of the archive, and the historical dance materials represented in the archive are accumulated up to the period of time around 1970. I don't have an intention to extend the Black dance archive collection holdings further, from 1970 – 2000.
It really is a capsule of archival materials of this important time, [which is] book-ended by these legislative changes.The end of the 1970s to now becomes about how the contemporary responds to that archive. It is an archive made up of things from the past but it is still active, it is still having an impact on us, and it impacts different people in different ways.
Of course, an exhibition focused on Blackness is not only relevant to Black communities, it's relevant to us all – so the addition of the words “and Now” to the exhibition title is just an extension of the title that talks about time. It's about time, which of course, is about dates. I think it's been a long time coming for many histories to be deeply engaged with in relationship to the Canadian nation-state. Additionally, dancing is about time and rhythm, and duration. So they're all of those plays on the word ‘time.’ Adding ‘and Now’ questions what about now, what about people who are continuing to work in the trajectory of this legacy?
Yerin Choi:
Coming from my position as a student of art and aspiring curator, can you explain in what ways your curatorial work has supported your scholarly practice and research? Do you find that your curatorial process has enabled the archive to reach wider publics?
Seika Boye:
This was a wonderful opportunity to explore curation for me. It allowed me to research within three different modes: my artistic training is as a dancer and performing on a stage to an audience, and I'm always present when the art that I am making with my body is happening and so I am very present within that live exchange with an audience.
When I'm researching through my writing practice, I find that when I write something I am usually alone. Many people review or edit the text, so writing is never a solitary practice, and then even after publication there is the potential that someone reads it or incorporates the text onwards in their own citation or curatorial research. But I am not there when they are reading it.
It feels like those two primary modes of research within the disciplines of performance and writing are essential to me, because the artifacts and objects related to those disciplines those remain in the gallery space, and then at the gallery opening events and public programming events I have an opportunity to talk to the people who are encountering the work and to be in dialogue with other people participating in it. And so in these various ways, all of these conversations and experiences impact my thinking, and in ways that are exciting to me.
Dance and performance is a really collaborative practice, and it is a practice where you are training constantly bygoing to class every day, and then rehearsing — you are always in practice with other people. That exchange is so valuable to me in the way that I process information – while curation and working with the format of presenting research in an exhibition allows me to keep that active in other ways, and extending the research beyond the writing of text — articles, chapters or a book — about Black dance histories.
Yerin Choi:
As an art student, I really relate to the way in which you stated that curatorial practices is also a way to connect with each other, and a unique way to communicate with the audience about the legacies and potential futures of Black dance histories.
Seika Boye:
That's right. Curating the exhibition It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900-1970 and Now became another way to include others in the study of these histories; especially including Kimberly Phillips, the Director of SFUGalleries, Curator Kristy Trinier and Exhibition Coordinator Christopher Lacroix in all of the conversations about how to present exhibition information in the interpretive planning (the planning that happens within museum spaces). I've learned so much from encountering those that often work with the practicalities of these particular areas of knowledge, and finding ways together towards making information accessible, in terms of thinking through the question: how much can a viewer or gallery visitor encounter in this set amount of time?
Yerin Choi:
What are your plans going forward with this incredibly significant work you’ve done? Will the research you have gathered, and the collaborations you’ve made, continue to be presented in exhibitons, or archived online, or produced in a publication?
Seika Boye:
All of the above. Right now I'm working on going back to the original dissertation research and working on a book manuscript that focuses my original research about Toronto. The hope next, is to share the archival works in regions of Eastern Canada, and to keep meeting with local communities wherever the archive is presented.
Emilie Jabouin was a research assistant who worked on the timeline of legislation research that relates to the archival objects within the exhibition and like I mentioned earlier: legislation has also always been a core part of organizing the presentation of the archive, but it's something that really changes as the archive is toured and presented from province to province, or in thinking about other boundaries and Colonial legislation that impacted Indigenous territory. This legacy of prohibitive legislation and the relationships between people shift depending on each location, and Emilie did a lot of wonderful work in summarizing the legislation that affected immigration and affected many different populations: not only Black people in terms of immigration, but also where people could engage in leisure culture, where people could work, and live. As the exhibition moves to be exhibited in different cities and regions across Canada, the goal is to continue looking closely at the legislation in different locations, and to to have a big map or timeline, a bird's eye view of the moving parts of that legislation.
Yerin Choi:
I'm excited to hear about your upcoming research and curatorial work, and it seems like an adventurous and significant series of projects to unfold and share with audiences.
Seika Boye:
Thank you for this wonderful interview and your thoughtful questions, Yerin. Thanks as well for your work as gallery attendant for the exhibition. Attendants have a perspective that few others get, and I appreciate your insight into the work! I have enjoyed talking with you.
Seika Boye is a scholar, writer, educator, and artist whose practices revolve around dance and movement. She is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Institute for Dance Studies at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Toronto. Seika curated the archival exhibition It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900–1970 and co-curated Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario. Her publications have appeared in numerous academic journals and magazines, and she was an Artist-in-Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2018). She was the Toronto District School Board’s African Heritage Educators’ Network Arts Honoree (2019) and in 2020 was the recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Heritage Trust Award for her work on Into the Light.
Yerin Choi is a creative multidisciplinary artist and art director from Korea. She studies at Simon Fraser University in the School of Contemporary Arts, majoring in Art, Performance, and Cinema Studies. Yerin is passionate about sharing the joy of art knowledge with everyone. Her ultimate goal is to be a person who acts as a bridge between emerging artists and audiences, introducing and connecting them.