Council colloquium / exhibition in Lebanon - Manufacturing of Rights

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From May 14–16, 2015, Joscelyn's Creole Portraits III suite of lithographs was featured (digitally and in the printed program) as part of The Manufacturing of Rights pluridisciplinary colloquium held at Ashkal Alwan (Beirut). Initiated in 2014, this project accompanies the actions of Lebanese NGO Legal Agenda to investigate the concept of Nature in the context of the law, as it is still invoked to criminalize sexual orientation and gender identity for being “against nature” in Article 534 of Lebanon’s Penal code, as well as in more than 50 countries across the world. During the colloquium, participants attempted to unfold a series of new arguments to show how the concept of Nature is imbued with multiple, contradictory meanings used to regulate societal norms. The inquiry resulted in an online data platform that seeks to equip judges and lawmakers with cultural understandings for reinterpreting such penal statutes; it also included the production of a video by artist Carlos Motta, in collaboration with anthropologist Maya Mikdashi, as well as a co-written intervention by artists Marwa Arsanios and Lawrence Abu Hamdan.  

Founded in 2013 by Grégory Castéra and Sandra Terdjman, Council fosters the composition of knowledges—artistic, scientific, and social—in aim to propose new political representations. Council unites pluridisciplinary groups of researchers around inquiries related to societal issues, which are developed over several years. Council equally favors the production of works and awards an annual fellowship to cultural actors in support of their social engagement.

(text adapted from the Council website)

Read the e-flux anouncement here.

Visit the Council website for The Manufacturing of Rights Colloquium here.

Tilting Axis conference in Barbados

Joscelyn attended the inaugural two-day conference Tilting Axis: Within and Beyond the Caribbean - Shifting Models of Sustainability and Connectivity that was held at The Fresh Milk Art Platform, Barbados, on February 27-28, 2015. This meeting aimed to promote greater conversations and engagement between artists and professionals working within artist-led initiatives across the wider Caribbean region, build and redefine historical relationships with those in the North, and establish open dialogue with active networks emerging in the Global South.

Organized by Fresh Milk, ARC Inc., Res Artis and Pérez Art Museum Miami, Tilting Axis saw the founders/directors of several of the region’s artist-led initiatives coming together to engage in face to face conversations, along with a number of professionals from outside the region interested in working with Caribbean based initiatives.

Read more about the conference from Arc Magazine and from Fresh Milk.

Work exhibited in Prospects of Empire exhibition at Yale's Lewis Walpole Library Gallery

Four of Joscelyn's lithographs were exhibited in Prospects of Empire: Slavery and Ecology in Eighteenth-century Atlantic Britain, curated by Hazel V. Carby and Heather Vermeulen, at The Lewis Walpole Library Gallery, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA, from Nov 1, 2014 – May 1, 2015. 

The Yale university Calendar states: "The exhibit explores the notion of empire’s “prospects”—its gaze upon bodies and landscapes, its speculations and desires, its endeavors to capitalize upon seized land and labor, as well as its failures to manage enslaved persons and unruly colonial ecologies. It reads latent anxieties in the policing of bodies and borders, both in the colonies and in the metropole, and examines the forces that empire mustered to curtail perceived threats to its regimes of power and knowledge. In addition to the focus on material from the long eighteenth century, the exhibition features a selection of four lithographs from Joscelyn Gardner’s series Creole Portraits III: “bringing down the flowers” (2009-11), a recent joint acquisition by the Yale Center for British Art and the Yale University Art Gallery. Gardner’s work mines the eighteenth-century Jamaica archive of white English immigrant, overseer, slave owner, and pen-keeper Thomas Thistlewood, one of whose diaries is on loan from the Beinecke." 

http://www.library.yale.edu/walpole/programs/Prospects.html  

Visualizing Slavery Conference at Yale Centre for British Art

Joscelyn attended the two-day international conference “Visualizing Slavery and British Culture in the Eighteenth Century” at the Yale Center for British Art held on November 7 - 8, 2014.  The conference coincided with the Center’s exhibition 'Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain', which explored the multiple and complex relationships between slavery and portraiture in eighteenth-century Britain as represented in the collections of the Center and other Yale institutions. During a breakout session led by Gillian Saunders and Heather Vermeulen, Joscelyn spoke about her works from the Creole Portraits III series that are held in the Centre's permanent collection. 

Solo Exhibition at Alberta Printmakers' Artist Proof Gallery in Calgary

Joscelyn's solo exhibition at the Alberta Printmakers' Artist Proof Gallery titled Creole Portraits III: "bringing down the flowers…", ran from 22 October to 30 November 2014. An artist talk was presented at the Gallery on the evening of 24 October. A brochure accompanied the exhibition with an essay by Jenn Law.

Read the two Exhibition Reviews here:

Steven Cottingham, Joscelyn Gardner at Alberta Printmakers, Akimbo - Akimblog Reviews

          

Cadence Mandybura, Flowers and Power: Artist seeks to insert portraits in colonial Caribbean history, Exhibition Review, Fast Forward Weekly,Calgary Nov 20, 2014

           

Fanshawe College fine art students visit Chicago

Joscelyn accompanied her Fanshawe College Fine Art graduating students to Chicago in September for a long weekend. It was a busy three days with highlights including a tour of the Art Institute of Chicago, and architecture-focused tours of the city by both coach and river boat. Chicago, we love you!

'See Me Here' book launch and panel discussion in Barbados

Joscelyn was part of a panel discussion with Barbadian artists Ewan Atkinson, Annalee Davis, and Sheena Rose, editor Melanie Archer, and moderator Russell Watson, at the Barbados launch of the publication 'See Me Here' on June 26, 2014. The event, held at the Fresh Milk platform in Barbados, included a small exhibition of some of the images featured in the book by the artists who were present.

'See Me Here' is co-edited by Melanie Archer and Marielle Brown, is designed by Richard Mark Rawlins, and contains an essay by Marsha Pearce. It is published by Robert & Christopher Publishers.
 
Please see the review of the FRESH MILK XVI event here.

omi ebora video installation at London's Nuit Blanche

Documentation of this video installation can be viewed here:  omi ebora video installation