Join an engaging and lively online event in celebration of Black History Month and the next FENTSTER exhibition. A dynamic group of North American artists working in theatre, film, dance, visual art, and literature will each share projects grounded in their own lived experience. After offering a window into their work and process, they will join together in conversation about creating art that channels their personal stories. A not-to-be-missed evening of multi-disciplinary art and wide-ranging discussion with Anique Jordan (Toronto), Adam W. McKinney (Fort Worth), Kendell Pinkney (Brooklyn) and Chanel M. Sutherland (Montreal). Moderated by playwright, dancer and theatre-artist, Sarah Waisvisz (Ottawa).
WATCH THE EVENT ANY TIME here
Presented together by FENTSTER, Prosserman JCC, DNAWORKS and The Workshop. This event was made possible through support from the Kultura Collective and participating partners.
This online event is inspired by the forthcoming installation, HaMapah, created for FENTSTER by award-winning creatives based in Fort Worth, Texas: Daniel Banks and Adam W. McKinney as part of a season-long, multimedia production of FENTSTER and Prosserman JCC culminating in an artist residency in Toronto this June. Follow us on Instagram for announcements about screenings, talks, community gatherings and more with Banks and McKinney.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Anique Jordan is an artist, writer and curator who looks to answer the question of possibility in everything she creates. As an artist, Anique works in photography, sculpture and performance often employing the theory of hauntology to challenge historical or dominant narratives and creating, what she calls, impossible images. Recently, she has been thinking about time, the surreal, and the rejection of the singular and linear ways of thinking or being in the world. Anique has lectured on her artistic and community engaged curatorial practice as a 2017 Canada Seminar speaker at Harvard University and in numerous institutions across the Americas. In 2017 she co-curated the exhibition Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood at the Art Gallery of Ontario. As an artist, she has exhibited in galleries such as Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), Art Gallery of Guelph, Doris McCarthy Gallery, German Gallery, Art Gallery of Windsor, Gallery 44, and Y+ Contemporary. She has received numerous awards, grants and fellowships and in 2017 was awarded the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist of the Year award. Anique is currently completing her MFA in Photography at Rhode Island School of Design. Anique Jordan Photo: Stanley Collins
Adam W. McKinney is a dancer, choreographer, and activist. A former member of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Béjart Ballet Lausanne, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet Company, and other prestigious dance companies, he served as a U.S. Embassy Culture Connect Envoy to South Africa in 2006 through the U.S. State Department. Other recent awards of note include a Mid-America Arts Alliance Interchange grant forFort Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse; a 2020 commission for Shelter in Place at Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education; and Texas Christian University's 2019 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion award. McKinney served as President for Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice, a Fort Worth-based social justice organization. He was an Associate Professor of Dance with tenure in the School for Classical & Contemporary Dance at Texas Christian University. McKinney is the incoming Artistic Director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.
Kendell Pinkney is a New York-based theatre artist, producer, and rabbi. As a theatre artist, his collaborative works have been presented at venues such as Feinstein’s 54 Below, Joe’s Pub, LABA @ the 14th St. Y, and Two River Theatre, to name a few. He is currently writing a new multiracial family-drama for Theater J in Washington DC. As a rabbi, he has been featured in the acclaimed docuseries "The New Jew," with actor-comedian Guri Alfi, BuzzFeed’s Tasty channel broadcast of “Saturday Night Seder,” and Crooked Media’s religion and society podcast, “Unholier than Thou.” Kendell is the Rabbinical Educator at Reboot in addition to being the founding Artistic Director of The Workshop (@theworkshopartist), a New York based arts and culture fellowship that supports and foregrounds the work of professional artists of BIPOC-Jewish heritage. Kendell Pinkney Photo: Deneka Peniston/@dpshutter
Chanel M. Sutherland is the winner of the 2021 CBC Nonfiction prize and the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize. In addition, she was awarded the 2022 Mairuth Sarsfield Mentorship, longlisted for the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Max Margles Fiction Prize. Chanel was also included on the CBC Books 30 Writers to Watch list for 2022. Born in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Chanel moved to Montreal, Quebec, when she was ten. She holds a BA in English Literature from Concordia University. She is writing her first book – a collection of short stories exploring the Caribbean immigrant experience, especially those dealing with girlhood.
Sarah Waisvisz is a playwright, director, and performer. Her multidisciplinary solo show Monstrous, about her mixed Afro-Caribbean and Jewish identity, was published in Alt.theatre 13.3; her play Heartlines (about Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore), was produced at Great Canadian Theatre Company (Ottawa) and will be published in 2023 by Methuen Drama / Bloomsbury. Sarah directed Donna-Michelle St. Bernard’s Witness Shift for Obsidian Theatre/CBC Arts’ 21 Black Futures and is honoured to be part of the artistic team for The First Stone (New Harlem/ Buddies in Bad Times / GCTC). Sarah is Assistant Professor at the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University and a member of the Tikkun Olam Commission of Reconstructing Judaism.