This November 2026 I am very happy to have orchestrated two exciting events!
ALYSSA FEARON
A talk and discussion with Alyssa Fearon, curator of BLACK PRAIRIES, and Sites of Agency at the National Gallery of Canada.
Wednesday 4 November 2026 at 4.00pm in IMA307, on the third floor of the Image Arts building on Toronto Metropolitan University campus. All welcome.
Alyssa Fearon is a curator whose extraordinary work establishing and reframing the histories of Black Canadian creative practice has earned international recognition. This event offers a preview of Sites of Agency: Studio Photography, the exhibition she has co-curated which opens at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, in December 2026.
Fearon has brought recognition to the photographer William “Billy” Beal, an early Black migrant who relocated to Canada from the United States in 1906, and spent years documenting the people, events, and activities of his community in the western Manitoba region. Lack of recognition of this innovative artist, and others that Fearon celebrates, speaks to the ongoing “absented presence” of Blackness in Canada.
Alyssa Fearon is a scholar, curator, and art gallery director. Her research focuses on historical and contemporary Black-Canadian cultural production with a focus on photography and other lens-based media. She was the inaugural curator of City of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche Scarborough zone (2018), and her curatorial work has toured extensively, most notably the research-driven exhibition BLACK PRAIRIES (2025).
INTERVENTIONS
Partly in order to launch my pamphlet, Tiny Paper Boats: or, Why make art in a broken world?, three speakers will each give three answers to that question, followed by a discussion.
Wednesday 25 November 2026 at 3.00pm in The Catalyst, Rogers Communications Centre, 80 Gould St, Toronto. All welcome. Includes free pamphlet.
The pamphlet begins with a question:
“In a world of injustice and racism, at a time where nobody thinks things are going really well, and a combination of authoritarian leaders, tech billionaires, climate change and AI threaten to destroy everything, what is the point of people making art, music or poetry?”
The three speakers suggesting answers to this conundrum are:
→ Hirra Farooqi – Founder and CEO of the Muslim International Film Festival
→ Miki Perry – Multi-disciplinary artist, creative director and stylist
→ And me, David Gauntlett, author of the pamphlet.
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