Timothy Yanick Hunter

Timothy Yanick Hunter is a multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Toronto. With a degree in Art History and English, his practice explores digital security, identity (both digital and lived), narratives of hierarchical power structures, and how these ideas intersect with notions of Blackness and the greater African diaspora. 

Approaching his work from an exploratory or educational lens, Hunter likes to define his artistic process as experiments in visual language, where the mediums represent a range of languages and individual artworks are stories. His practice includes painting, sculpture, video, performance and installation.

Timothy Yanick Hunter. Basic Instructions, 2019. Video, Acrylic Sheet, 5:15min. Cooper Cole Gallery.

Hunter recently exhibited Basic Instructions Before Leaving Everything, at Toronto's A Space Gallery. A study in the temporal and sculptural capacities of image, sound, and screen, the video explores the effects of non-neutral relationships and intersections on Black and Afro-diasporic experience along with concurrent strategies of decolonization.

AGO: What was the inspiration for this artwork or series?

Hunter: The work is inspired by historical thought around strategies of decolonization, Black African aesthetic sensibilities, and themes of genetic memory.

AGO: Tell us about a place or a space where you most love making your work?

Hunter: While a bulk of my practice has been done in the studio, much of the works shown in Basic Instructions Before Leaving Everything had been produced during my time in residence in Portugal and New York City. My practice focuses on ideas around the African Diaspora so ideas of place/displacement are very important. There is no singular place that I enjoy making work per-se, the work often centers around ideas of having no place at all. 

Timothy Yanick Hunter. Before Leaving Everything, 2019-2020. Video, 18:48min.

AGO: Are you in dialogue with any other artists or creative peers about your practice? If so, how does this dialogue feed your work?

Hunter: I am in dialogue with my peers and mentors regularly. The conversations and experiences that we share influence the work. Black experiences ranging from love to politics to resistance all come into play. These dialogues appear in the work conceptually and also manifest in a material sense. My practice is an attempt to synthesize these dialogues together. 

Follow Timothy Hunter @yanickhunter