Sex/ism: ECHoes & ‘ReVERBS’ @ Ivory Towers with artist/researcher Joanna Black


May 02 – July 1st, 2016
Opening: May 02, 5.30 - 6.30pm
Informal Discussion with Artist: 6pm

CWSE Hallway Gallery
2nd Floor, OISE
252 Bloor Street West
(Bloor & St George)


Images by Joanna Black
Winnipeg artist/researcher Joanna Black explores prejudice in academia in Sex/ism: ECHoes & ‘ReVERBS’ @ Ivory Towers. The abundance of articles and reports about longstanding persistent sexist problems in our universities informed the content of this work. For this exhibition in particular, attention has been given to the University of Toronto (U of T).
Sexism at U of T was established in the university’s founding year, 1850. Its illustrious professor and president John McCaul firmly exclaimed at the time that the university doors would never be open to women in his day! (Canadian Encyclopedia, 2016). Even though the doors have been opened – and indeed during his day no less! – today’s glass ceiling remains intact: existent sexist attitudes are prevalent, and old boys’ networks stand strong at universities across Canada and internationally (ACPPU Bulletin, March 2016).  
For this exhibit, images are made using a stream-of-consciousness approach, in which text and imagery interact. Appropriation, multi-layering, ‘gazing’, and contextualization are used to create montages in which digital photographs are interlaced with grouped text and digital screen shots. Creating playfully montaged, layered, and appropriated digital texts, by using humor, and by paying homage to the well-known feminist artist group, The Guerrilla Girls, Black highlights sexism within our academic walls.

 Joanna Black is an emerging artist from Winnipeg Manitoba. She recently collaborated with ARTIFACTS artists, Pam Patterson & Leena Raudvee and Miklos Legrady as performance artist/composer/interpreter in/for Babble (Babel) at Hart House, U of T, 2013/14. Black works in traditional and new media specifically with video, photography, painting, blogs spaces, computerized art and sound developing arts-informed research. Black is a professor at the University of Manitoba cross-appointed with the Faculty of Education and the School of Visual Arts. She has exhibited her work in the United States and Canada.


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