How long it takes to piece together a collage is hard to pinpoint for London artist Tafadzwa Maposa.
“It’s quite a process,” she said. It takes up to six hours to find images — and up to 10 hours to cut and arrange them together.
But with scissors, glue and paper in hand, Maposa finds “little pockets of time” to explore the ordinary lives of Black people in her art, a genre she said is missing from much of Western art history.
Her work is a way to “repaint history” and represent Black people in ways that are “more reflective of who we are.” In Western art history, she said Black people were often shown either infantilized, exoticized or unnamed in the background.
Maposa, who also goes by Taffy, is speaking at the London Public Library’s Meet the Artist monthly series on Saturday. Her collages — focused on themes of identity, beauty and family — are on display at the library’s Central branch at 251 Dundas Street through February as part of Black History Month events across the city.
Tafadzwa Maposa’s colloges are on display on the third floor of the Central Library in downtown London, Ont., until Feb. 28. (Travis Dolynny/CBC)
She first began collaging last January to honour the history of the Fugitive Slave Chapel, a London landmark built in 1848 that served as a refuge on the underground railroad. Her piece, The Mothers on Their Way to the Chapel, was selected for the 20th anniversary of Black history month in the city last year.
Showing the humanity of Black people in her art is a priority as she mixes with photographs, vibrant colours, and African prints.
Collage is a way to take something apart and make something new, she said.
Tafadzwa Maposa’s piece, The Mothers on Their Way to the Chapel, was the winning art submission for the 20th anniversary of Black history month in London last year. It looks at London’s fugitive slave chapel, a stop on the underground railroad dating back to 1848. (Tafadzwa Maposa)
“The process itself kind of reflects this history that Black people have had of having to just make do with what we have.”
The process is also therapeutic, she said.
“It’s a way to deal with some of the trauma, some of the racialized trauma that we go through… to question things and to really delve into it in a way that is constructive.”
Maposa’s life and identity inspire her work
Maposa was born in Zimbabwe eight years after the country’s independence, so she’s part of the “born-free” generation. Her family moved to the U.S. before settling in Canada when she was 19.
She studied art at Fanshawe College and Western University before becoming a library assistant at the London Public Library.
Maposa sources books, magazines and the internet to find images to use for her collages. (Tafadzwa Maposa)
In Zimbabwe, her grandparents were sharecroppers, also called tenant farmers. They were given cattle and land but were forced to stay and farm or find a way to escape, she said.
“That’s just one example of kind of how my identity inspires the work. But the biggest thing is just like finding these connections among the African diaspora,” she said.
Another piece, Hand Game, portrays two girls playing a hand game, a nostalgic memory from her childhood in Zimbabwe. In this piece, she explores the “ordinary lives of black girls” in a visual way.
Maposa’s fond memories playing hand games as a child growing up in Zimbabwe are reflected in her piece, Hand Game. (Tafadzwa Maposa)
“I just wanted to focus on black representation because it’s been lacking for so long,” Maposa said. “A lot of Black artists, we’ve kind of taken it upon ourselves to correct that representation.”
Mariposa will discuss her art process and influences at the Central Library on Saturday, Feb. 11, at 2:30 p.m. Her exhibit can be seen on the third floor until Feb. 28.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
