EMILIA-AMALIA and the Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives at the Art Gallery of Ontario invite BIPOC, womxn, and trans artists to contribute to the AGO’s collection of more than 20,000 artist files that document the practices of artists in Canada since 1915.

This year, EMILIA-AMALIA is working within the framework of HOLES AND HOW TO FILL THEM as an organizing principle and guiding metaphor. Designed as a test-site for feminist research, commissioning, writing and exhibition-making, this programming arc takes up E-A’s ongoing interest in practices of failure, refusal, withdrawal, deliberate omission, and generative stoppages as sites for feminist organizing and conduits for lost intergenerational knowledge.

In keeping with E-A’s year-long inquiry, this File Fair event is centred on inviting BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour), womxn and trans artists to start a file at the library, archive their contributions within Canadian art history and contribute to institutional memory.

This afternoon of free programming will invite guests to explore the existing collection, hear talks from local artists and curators about practices of radical and community archiving, and start their own file by completing a questionnaire about their work. Emerging and established artists alike are encouraged to come start an artist file or contribute to their existing file. Please bring in catalogues, exhibition cards, press releases, and any other ephemera related to your practice or exhibition history.

Speaker Schedule:

• Genevieve Flavelle
• Courtnay McFarlane

EMILIA-AMALIA is an exploratory working group that employs practices of citation, annotation, and autobiography as modes of activating feminist art, writing and research practices. E-A is initiated by Cecilia Berkovic, Yaniya Lee, Annie MacDonell, Zinnia Naqvi, Gabrielle Moser, Leila Timmins, cheyanne turions and Shellie Zhang.\

Genevieve Flavelle is an independent curator, writer, and PhD student at Queen’s University. She is currently interested in artists working with archives, in particular how contemporary artists are challenging traditional forms of historical research to give voice to underrepresented, forgotten, or imagined histories. Her broader research and curatorial interests include queer theory, queer and feminist art histories, contemporary art, and feminist curatorial strategies. Genevieve is a settler of Scottish and French ancestry raised in Tkaronto/Toronto and currently living as an uninvited guest on unceded territory in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Courtnay McFarlane is a visual artist and poet whose work has been published in several African Canadian and Queer anthologies including: Fiery Spirits, and Voices: Writers of African-Canadian Descent, Word-up, and Plush. He is a long-time activist with a history of engagement with organizations such as Zami, Black CAP, AYA Men, and Blackness Yes, the organizing committee for Blockorama at Pride. He recently curated Legacies in Motion: Black Queer Toronto Archival Project, that unearthed and celebrated the political and cultural activism of Black LGBTQ communities in Toronto in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Legacies In Motion was exhibited at BAND Gallery as part of the 2019 Myseum Intersections Festival and with the support of the ArQuives. In his other life, Courtnay works in the community health sector and is currently Interim Director, Health Promotion and Community Engagement at Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre.