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Portraits featured in Richmond art show highlight complexity of Black experience – CBC.ca

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One of the artists featured in a new exhibit at the Richmond Cultural Centre says her hope is that visitors come away with an understanding that Black people are as multidimensional as anyone else. 

Sade Alexis says showing the Black experience through portraits humanizes Black people and allows them to live authentically.

“Blackness is joyful. It’s suffering, it’s love. It’s kindness, it’s contemplation. It’s so much more than just one thing,” Alexis said. 

The exhibit, which is on for the duration of Black History Month, features several portraits by Alexis and Joella Daniela. It’s a joint initiative of the City of Richmond and Richmond Black History Month. 

Richmond Black History Month was initiated by Mary Wilson in 2016 to acknowledge and celebrate the vast contributions that people of African descent have made to Canada.

The Black History Month art exhibit at the Richmond Cultural Centre features the work of local artists Joella Daniela and Sade Alexis. (The City of Richmond)

Johnny Trinh, community arts coordinator with the City of Richmond, says Alexis and Daniela were chosen after presenting their art to a committee. Trinh says the purpose of the exhibit, which has taken place since 2018, is to celebrate the diversity of the community. 

“This exhibition really speaks to connecting to our roots and showing and recognizing how our ancestors are like our protectors and pave the way for us,” he said.

Vancouver-based artist Daniela says she has seven digital illustrations on display that focus on different themes like familial relationships between parent and child, skin colour, and hair. 

Daniela says these pieces allowed her to think deeply about how she defines herself and how she views other Black people around her. 

“There’s no one way to be Black, but also … there are so many things about being Black that deserve to be celebrated,” she said.

Safe Home Sarah 

Alexis’s project for the exhibit is called Safe Home Sarah. It depicts portraits of Sarah Baartman, an African woman who was used as a freak show attraction in 19th century Europe.

She was part of the show because of her body type, which had high levels of tissue in the buttocks and thigh area.

Sade Alexis’s project Safe Home Sarah is shown here at the Richmond Cultural Centre. (The City of Richmond)

Alexis said researching Baartman’s story filled her with sadness. She wanted to honour her with kindness, because other visuals of Baartman focused on her body as a spectacle, she said.

Accompanying Baartman are portraits of other noteworthy Black women: writers Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison, and musician Nina Simone.

“I feel protected and cared for by them, even if they didn’t know me,” Alexis said. “I’m really inspired by them.”

An artist talk presented by the Richmond Art Gallery Association featuring Alexis will take place on the night of Feb. 24 where she will explain her artistic process.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.

(CBC)

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate – Cracked.com

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate  Cracked.com



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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 – CBC.ca

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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96  CBC.ca



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A misspelled memorial to the Brontë sisters gets its dots back at last

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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.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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