Detail from Naomi Daryn Boyd, Memory Map, w/ sounds (dead stock wool fabric and vintage tapestry wool), 2021-2022.
A multi-media art party celebrating stories & journeys
Meet the Artists | Dance Workshops | POP-UP PROJECTS | Interactive INSTALLATIONS | Snacks & Drinks | Music & More
Inspired by the current exhibition in the FENTSTER window gallery, HAMAPAH (Hebrew for ‘the map’), FENTSTER presents pop-up projects on view for one night only! All inspired by the form and metaphor of maps, these works intertwine personal narratives, memory, migration and place, mapping individual stories through the languages of dance, sound and visual art.
Presented outdoors for the first time, Naomi Daryn Boyd’s BLOOD, WATER & BATHURST STREET is an interactive, hand-made 18-meter long wool map of Bathurst Street that engages with their Jewish roots in Toronto, stories of Toronto’s Jewish community and the little known narratives of the Indigenous Peoples that have dwelled, gathered, and journeyed through these lands for millennia. Boyd’s embroidered Memory Map, w/ sounds (2021-2022) will also be in view. Meichen Waxer’s Looking at Two Poems (2022) incorporates a found hand-drawn map that references the history of her family in the small Jewish community of Kirkland Lake in North Ontario. And, meet visiting U.S. artists Adam W. McKinney and Daniel Banks in advance of the Canadian premiere screening of HaMapah / The Map Dance-on-Film, which inspired their site-specific FENTSTER installation that maps Adam’s narrative as a Black, Jewish, Indigenous Queer man in the United States.
PLUS, music from DJ Jerus Nazdaq
DANCE WITH US!
Join all level, all ages dance classes through out the night with dance Immersion’s Zahra Harriet Badua-Baffoe and DNAWORKS’ Adam W. McKinney and Daniel Banks
Presented by FENTSTER, Prosserman JCC, DNAWORKS, dance Immersion and Makom: Creative Downtown Judaism with support from Kultura Collective
IMAGE: Naomi Daryn Boyd, Memory Map, w/ sounds, 2021-2022. 165 x 80 cm
ABOUT NAOMI DARYN BOYD’S INSTALLATION
BLOOD, WATER & BATHURST STREET is about navigating an active relationship to land, place, and community through textiles. This project began with the artist exploring their 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, Boyd has 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 shoreline of Niigani-Gichigami (Lake Ontario) up to Steeles Avenue (the City of Toronto’s northern boundary). It is unequal parts of family tree, topographic exploration, historical survey, storybook, and material research. The work was first exhibited this past March at OCAD University as Chapter One: A Map is Born. Visitors are invited to contribute their own narratives and knowledge, expressed through a variety of materials. Boyd has just completed their graduate studies at OCADU. Previously, they graduated from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, BC, completing a BDes with a major in Industrial Design and a minor in Social Practice and Community Engagement (SPACE). Naomi's work here has led to an interest in design practices that are engaged in social justice, equity, community building, and non-traditional modes of learning. Analogue material and craft practices hold a special place in their heart as a means of exploring embodied knowledge, skill sharing, and connections to place.
Learn more: naomidboyd.ca
ABOUT HAMAPAH
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 and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 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. Learn More: fentster.org/dnaworks
ABOUT MEICHEN WAXER’S INSTALLATION
Through an interdisciplinary practice, Meichen Waxer is interested in exploring the difficulty of locating her own Jewish, multi-ethnic, and queer identities within environments which specifically work to obscure them. 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 Waxer’s ancestors took, both from Eastern Europe and to Northern Ontario. The installation consists of an image she took of the Black Sea while visiting Turkey and staring across the waters to imagine the shoreline her ancestors departed from in Odessa during the first great wave of Jewish migration to North America. This image is projected onto a screen made from an embroidered map of Krugerdorf, the small township in North Ontario where her family first settled in Canada. The map is based on a hand drawn sketch found at the Museum of Northern History at the Sir Harry Oakes Chateau Kirkland Lake, Ontario. It is rendered through embroidery with golden thread left from her Bubbie, Jessie Waxer; and made mostly while in a car driving up North to visit Northern Hebrew cemetery, the remaining vestige of the small Jewish community of Kirkland Lake and the greater Timiskaming region. With this work, the artist brings these two pivotal journeys together while embodying the geography of her familial story. Waxer is a queer visual artist, curator and arts worker living in Toronto. Recent exhibitions include XPACE, Toronto, The Plumb, Toronto, Ministry of Casual Living, Victoria, Canada; CSA Space, Vancouver, Canada, Mr. Lee’s Shed, Vancouver Canada; #3 Gallery, Vancouver Canada; halka sanat projesi, Istanbul, Turkey; and Open Studio, Toronto. Learn more: meichenwaxer.com
ABOUT ZAHRA BADUA
Zahra Harriet Badua is a Ghanaian dancer/teacher/choreographer originally from Montreal, Quebec. Her passion for dance started at a very young age as a means to learn and understand her African heritage. Through discovery and training, she is skilled in Traditional West African, Afro-Caribbean folklore, Afrobeats, Dancehall and Soca. She is the founder of an educational and performance base brand called ZahraMoves. The educational component of the brand provides classes/workshops/lectures that educate people on the complexities of Black dances from the African Diaspora as well, teaching about West African and Caribbean cultures through movement. The performance component of the brand produces a collection of video projected and curated showcases to provide opportunities for emerging artists of color. Zahra is dedicated to disseminating knowledge about the vast beauty and history of Afro-Diasporic dance. Whether through seminars, podcast discussions, or movement workshops, her aim is to create a holistic view of the different facets of African dance. She also works at dance Immersion which is a black-led non-profit organization that promotes, produces and supports Black dances and dancers from the African Diaspora.
ABOUT JERUS NAZDAQ
Jerus Nazdaq is a musician and DJ that gained a certain underground notoriety in Toronto. She is an electronic DJ producer with varying styles ranging from dubstep, bass, dub, progressive, psytech, organic house and complete mash-ups often tinged with a certain tropical flavors. She has been involved with and presented by several promoters and electronic festivals based in Toronto and the area; in addition, she organized and promoted the PSK Collective Day in Kensington Market, and was a core participating DJ at the monthly Bass Culture events in Toronto. She also performed as a DJ at the Canadian New Media Awards, including electronic festivals in Canada and Brazil, such as Universo Parallelo and Eclipse Festival in Quebec. In February 2022, Jerus Nazdaq released her first album - Weakly - through Architexture Records, a Toronto-based label specializing in electronic music for over 10 years.