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.