Jan 4, 2023

All Celestial Bodies are Framed in Black

Black Pen writer Onyka Gairey's poems in response to What Matters Most: Photographs of Black Life.

Unknown Photographer. [Profile of children dressed in white and walking in a line], 1983–1993. Colour instant print [Polaroid Type 600], overall: 10.8 × 8.8 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Fade Resistance Collection. Purchase, with funds donated by Martha LA McCain, 2018. © Art Gallery of Ontario 2018/2824

What Matters Most: Photographs of Black Life enshrines the role of the family photograph in shaping Black identities. Co-curated by artist Zun Lee and AGO Curator, Photography, Sophie Hackett, the exhibition of over 500 instant prints drawn from the AGO’s Fade Resistance Collection underscores the moments that matter most in the everyday – births, deaths, portraits, graduations and family gatherings among them.

We commissioned six graduates of Black Pen, a Toronto-based literary program for emerging Black-identifying writers, to compose personal responses to one or more of the photographs on view in a style of their choosing. The Black Pen alumni were first given a guided tour of the exhibition, which proved inspiring for each of them, and the results blew us away.

A moving contribution by African-American poet and essayist Dawn Lundy Martin to the What Matters Most catalogue inspired this commission. She writes about the implications of the Fade Resistance Collection being acquired and placed on view at a major art museum. She then turns her reflections inward, analyzing two of her family photographs and revealing the complex narratives they represent.

Take a moment to read two poems by Onyka Gairey below.

All Celestial Bodies are Framed in Black

By Onyka Gairey

Step into the music of a Black Girl

She is loved loudly,

Her mother’s hands braid

rhythms of hope into her hair,

the patterns of stars, histories shared before bed

Joyful choruses of bobbles ring at her temples

When she speaks, her breath breaks silence

Defies stillness

laid out in her late cousin’s dress,

She demands more,

When she walks, her sister’s shoes shake the earth

a rallying click of heels to pavement echoes

in a thousand marches forward,

a thousand voices cry out

make room for the daughters hereafter

But their heartbeats are already here

Unknown photographer. [Woman in sleeveless white dress looking in mirror, combing her hair], 1983–1993. Colour instant print [Polaroid SX-70], overall: 10.8 × 8.8 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Fade Resistance Collection. Purchase, with funds donated by Martha LA McCain, 2018. © Art Gallery of Ontario 2018/3519

Archiving the Archivist in Loved Ones Lost

By Onyka Gairey

I left the only Polaroid I ever took at my Auntie’s New York City apartment

She doesn’t live there anymore, she lives in between emails—in between lines

—in between my life, then and now,

I hope she’s happier there, in a space my memory cannot reach

Caught resplendent in the moments before, the years, the hurt and the quiet

I hope joy has found a home on her face even if I never see it again

I wish I kept that picture—I want to think that she did

but I cannot look for meaning where it does not live

Onyka Gairey is a Black queer writer from Toronto. She became a writer to celebrate their grandmother’s legacy as a teacher. Onyka believes that storytelling, and therefore writing, is humanity remembered. Her work focuses on Black protagonists in extraordinary worlds and circumstances.

Black Pen is a Toronto-based literary program for emerging Black-identifying writers, founded by Nia Centre for the Arts. The program’s first six graduates published GRIOT: Sojourn into the Dark in 2022, their first chapbook of fiction and non-fiction. Read the writings of Yvvana Yeboah Duku, Adeola Egbeyemi, Onyka Gairey, Saherla Osman, Kais Padamshi and Omi Blue, all on Foyer.