Virtual archives
Curated by artist Roya Del Sol, a new group exhibition, BLACK_BOX, at Toronto’s Trinity Square Video sends visitors on a virtual reality journey through the Black archive.
Oreka James, Untitled 2021
A new group exhibition at Toronto media arts centre Trinity Square Video explores the idea of the Black archive, speculating about different forms it could embody. Featuring a hybrid of works in both physical and digital mediums, BLACK_BOX invites visitors on a unique journey through virtual reality. Curated by Roya Del Sol, the exhibition is comprised of works by contemporary artists Anique Jordan, Ashley Jane Lewis, Isabel Okoro, KanikaXx, Kim Ninkuru, Meech Boakye, Oreka James and Zoe Osborne.
BLACK_BOX is a speculative project that considers archives, art spaces and artmaking as a means of knowledge transfer and preservation. By connecting the physical reality with an imagined, digital world, the exhibition attempts to create a pathway for the viewer to travel through space and time. Del Sol delves into this concept further in her curatorial statement, raising critical questions about archives.
“BLACK_BOX asks in what ways could a Black archive exist – how is the archive generated and cared for? Who does the archive celebrate? In what forms can an archive exist and be embodied – a dance, a garden, a fungal root network, an altar? What stories do these unconventional archives tell about the crises that we as Black people overcame, and how? How can these archives also not just hold knowledge, but exist as spaces of community that facilitate healing?”
KanikaXx’s, Divine Link, 2022
Upon entering the space, visitors encounter Isabel Okoro’s the other side of Dreaming (2022) – a short film that prompts the viewer to consider what it means to transcend the present. Next they engage with Oreka James’s sculpture, untitled (2021), which acts as a portal to the virtual aspect of the exhibition.
Visitors are then prompted to symbolically upload themselves into a virtual reality, whereby they place on a headset and view the remainder of the works in a virtual realm. There they are left to freely explore and navigate the rest of the show.
Within the virtual realm of BLACK_BOX visitors will engage with five other works: Kim Ninkuru’s volumetric video performance piece, Incorrect Password (2022); Ashley Jane Lewis’s Slime Mold – a 3D rendering of Black culture as a multicellular organism; Meech Boakye’s sometimes-holding-something (2022) – a virtual installation that positions nature as a communal space; the sound and light installation Divine Link (2022) by KanikaXx, which references the earth’s core as an ancestral link; and finally, a visual rendering of Anique Jordan’s 2020 written piece Enough is Enough – originally written as a response 2020’s Black uprisings.
This week is your last chance to check out BLACK_BOX on view until Saturday, August 13 at Trinity Square Video in Toronto.