DISCOVER THE ARTWORK ON VIEW TONIGHT

NAOMI DARYN BOYD, BLOOD, WATER & BATHURST STREET, 2023

BLOOD, WATER & BATHURST STREET is about navigating an active relationship to land, place, and community through textiles. This project began with exploring my family’s multi-generational history here in this place now known as Toronto, and the broader Jewish community that has grown here. Beyond blood relations, I have sought to establish further connection and understanding of/with the lands and waters that have shaped these territories. Many Indigenous Peoples have dwelled, gathered, and journeyed through these lands for millennia, yet their stories and ongoing presence have been largely erased from public memory here in the city. The Map, made of an 18-metre-long scroll of wool fabric, encompasses Bathurst Street and its geographic surroundings, from the current shore line of Niigani-Gichigami (Lake Ontario) up to Steeles Avenue (the City of Toronto’s northern boundary). It is unequal parts of my family tree, topographic exploration, historical survey, storybook, and material research. You are invited to contribute their own narratives and knowledge, expressed through a variety of materials. naomidboyd.ca

NAOMI DARYN BOYD, MEMORY MAP W/ SOUNDS, 2021-2022

Memory Map, w/ sounds (2021-2022), was a project that I began just after moving into a new apartment. I have always enjoyed going for meandering urban walks, and I wanted to document the process of exploring this relatively unfamiliar place by foot. (Almost) every day, I would go for a walk, taking care to consciously listen and take in my surroundings, without any distractions, and with the specific goal to explore. When I got home (walks would range from 20-120 minutes) I would then retrace my steps, using tapestry wool to embroider the route onto the fabric, as best as I could remember. The different colours of the route correspond to their dates of recording along the edge of the blanket. The spirals on the map represent significant sounds that were heard along the walks, their size denoting relative volume. This process became an important part of my daily routine, and a great way to discover the best neighbourhood nooks. I would highly recommend walking as a mode for practicing being present on the land. Read an interview with Boyd about their work

MEICHEN WAXER, LOOKING AT TWO POEMS, 2022

Looking at Two Poems explores wayfinding and witnessing as a meditation on inheritance and loss. This work was created over two journeys years apart, and in memory of journeys my ancestors took, both from Eastern Europe and to Northern Ontario. In 2018, while in Turkey I went to the Black Sea to touch the water and stare across to imagine the shore line my ancestors departed from in Odessa during the first great wave of Jewish migration to North America. I took an image with an accidental inclusion of my shadow in the bottom of the frame; this mark of my shadow later revealed my role as an active witness. This image is projected onto a screen made from an embroidered map of Krugerdorf, the small township in North Ontario my family first settled in. From a hand drawn map I found via Museum of Northern History at the Sir Harry Oakes Chateau Kirkland Lake, Ontario; I embroidered with golden thread left from my Bubbie, Jessie Waxer; and mostly while in a car that was driving up North to visit Northern Hebrew cemetery - the remaining vestige of the Jewish community of Kirkland Lake and the greater Timiskaming region. This work is grounded in journals I inherited from my Bubbie. In these journals she retells the stories of my family, beginning at the ports of Odessa from the perspective of her Bubbie bleeding into to stories of her own life. With this work I aim to not only bring these pivotal journeys together, but to actively embody the geography of my familial story. meichenwaxer.com

ADAM W. McKINNEY & DANIEL BANKS, HAMAPAH, 2023

Earth, artifacts, movement and memory come together to form this new installation created for FENTSTER by the artist duo and married couple, Adam W. McKinney and Daniel Banks, based in Fort Worth, Texas. This exhibition is an outgrowth of their film, dubbed “a genealogical dance journey,” directed by Banks with McKinney as dancer / choreographer. They traveled to the places where McKinney traces his roots and where he danced in this site-specific work: Ouidah, Benin; Kraków and Siedlanka, Poland; as well as cities, towns, fields and shores across Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, and Wisconsin. The installation is in dialogue with McKinney’s ancestor, the 16th century scholar, Rabbi Moshe Isserles, and his foundational work: HaMapah, Hebrew for both ‘tablecloth’ and ‘map’. The artists map the narrative of a Black, Jewish, Indigenous Queer man in the United States, who inherits a lineage of genocide, forced migration and oppression; cultures of vibrance, community and resilience; and a past teeming with loss and omissions. In a gesture of release and exaltation, McKinney offers an opening for each of us to dance our own maps into existence. Discover the artifacts on view in the installation

Read an interview with the artists about the exhibition & their work

Other works on longterm view around Makom:

• a photographic portfolio by David Kaufman of Kensington Market and Spadina

• several pieces by Rochelle Rubinstein on fabric and wood

• a large-scale photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim from this series taken in Morocco called A Co-Existence.

MUSIC BY JERUSA NAZDAQ

@jermusicca

7 PM | DANCE with DNAWORKS’ Banks & McKinney

@dnaworksarts

8:30 PM | DANCE WITH ZAHRA BADUA

@zahra_moves