Join us for an artist panel and closing ceremony happening on Wednesday July 2nd led by artist Natalie Wood.
Location:
Wildseed Centre of Art and Activism [24 Cecil St.]
Questions? Contact JDeVittoris@The519.org. This exhibition is part of Each Other’s Magnitude, a 2-Spirit, Queer and Trans, Black, Indigenous and racialized Intergenerational Storytelling Program from The 519.
Storytellers have long existed to move cultures and histories forward. This role traverses time- a way of archiving what has been in order to name ourselves as we are, and with the purpose of nurturing spiritual growth into our collective becoming.
Storytelling allows us to name our truths, hold our contradictions, and dream up new ways of being. It is a practice of refusal— resistance and a deliberate turning away from systems that seek to erase, commodify, or contain us. As Kanien’kehá:ka scholar Audra Simpson writes, refusal is a political act that “resists the lure of recognition” and insists on sovereignty, opacity, and self-definition beyond the terms of the settler state.
The work of these artists situates itself within varied lineages, oceans, and relationships. While expansive, it remains precisely visible—anchored in intention and form. These works complicate notions of home and belonging, leaning toward the question: “Where is here?”—a question writer and poet Dionne Brand asks so affectionately in her work. bell hooks names love as an active choice, an act of will. For the storyteller, each work becomes a portal, inviting us into their ongoing process of becoming. Through portraits, imagined realities, archival footage, and gestures of devotion, these artists call on us to witness and feel across time. Their works traverse cultural memory and personal longing, often dissolving the line between what is real and what is dreamed. Here, storytelling becomes a collective offering.
Written by Emkay Adjei-Manu and Jess De Vittoris.
Featured Artists:
· anélia victor
· Casandra Fullwood
· Fataba
· Gitanjali Lena & The Pink Pottu Crew
· Idehai
· Imani Edwards
· Kalmplex
· Kobena Ampofo
· Sigrid Yu
· Susanna
Anélia Victor is a Toronto based mixed media textile artist. They revisit methods and discourses from the past to better innovate a new trajectory for the future to give life through texture and feel, to give people a vision of the future. They rely on the act of re/membering; talking and feeling the body in the present about the past and the connections to self and others.
They create art pieces with used and new textiles as a primary material with mixed media such as natural plants and flowers, natural dyes, paint, discarded and dry food, photographs and found items to create collages, sculptures, and installations.
Their work seeks to explore the depths of their own identity and culture to tell stories that have been forgotten or tucked away and bring it into the light. Their founding themes are identity, herbalism and Africanfuturism with a focus on Black & Queer Histories, Caribbean textile history, textile sustainability, food cultivation and access from farming to cooking.
These memories are captured moments of queer kinship and care. The memories are preserved in these jars as moments that have been instrumental to each participant. snaps shows the web of memories from Sugandha, her experiences navigating the precious memories of belonging. sweat captures a snapshot of the freedom of dance from anélia’s experiences of a shared connection with their chosen family on the dancefloor.
You can find anélia on Instagram as @aneliavictor and their website is aneliavictor.format.com
an act of preservation: snaps
May 2025
textile, paper, acrylic paint, rocks, dry plants, found items
an act of preservation: sweat
May 2025
textile, paper, acrylic paint, rocks, dry plants, found items
These memories are captured moments of queer kinship and care. The memories are preserved in these jars as moments that have been instrumental to each participant. snaps shows the web of memories from Sugandha, her experiences navigating the precious memories of belonging. sweat captures a snapshot of the freedom of dance from anélia’s experiences of a shared connection with their chosen family on the dancefloor
Casandra Fullwood is a Black Trinidadian Jamaican artist, born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario. Her multidisciplinary work explores Caribbean identity, Black feminism, erotic agency, and body autonomy. Rooted in digital storytelling, Casandra’s practice is guided by geography, ancestral memory, and the spiritual dimensions of nature. Her work often asks, “Who are you when no one is looking?” a question that threads through her reflections on self-perception and societal gaze.
In 2024, she travelled to Dakar, Senegal, as part of an art archival research initiative with Toronto Metropolitan University, where she earned a B.A. in Arts in Contemporary Studies. Her work has been featured in the Bi Arts Film Festival, Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Safer Sex and Sexualized Violence Support. Casandra‘s practice is deeply influenced by the healing and generative power of natural landscapes and by the belief that water and land are living archives of memory, connection, and spirit.
To connect with her and explore more of her art practice, follow her on Instagram: @crazysexxycool.
In Toco, the Ocean and the Sea Meet
2025
Audiovisual Projection and living altar
In Toco, the Ocean and the Sea Meet is an experimental video/audio installation that meditates on ancestral memory and recollection through bodies of water. The convergence of waters becomes a metaphor for the intermingling of personal, collective, and ancestral memory. In this work, water acts as a living archive, a vessel that holds history, grief, knowledge, and transformation.
Drawing inspiration from Saint Lucian poet and playwright Derek Walcott’s poem The Sea is History, which asks, “Where is your tribal memory?” and answers, “The sea has locked them up… The sea is history,” this piece explores how memory is submerged, preserved, and resurfaced through water’s depths.
The installation weaves together archival footage and video collected from Scarborough, Trinidad, and Senegal, three geographies where fragments of self and lineage have revealed themselves to me. Though separated by distance, these landscapes flow into one another, forming a spiritual map that helps me recollect parts of my ancestry.
I invite you to reflect on the spiritual dimensions of nature, take a deep listen to the land and sea. Allow yourself to receive the quiet teachings of water, and attune to the enduring, mysterious wisdom held within the waters that connect us all.
Fataba Kakulatombo (b. 1998) is an artisan, writer, movement and sound artist based in Tkarón:to with roots in Kenya and Sierra Leone. Born in Kensington Market, they are also shaped by the experience of living across Kenya for over a decade.
Through the use of crochet, clay, glass, movement, sound and text, their interdisciplinary artistic practice explores obscured rituals & teachings shared in the hearth of the temporal (aisuru). Fataba’s work has been exhibited at It’s Ok* Studios, 198 Gallery, Wildseed Centre, Nuit Blanche Toronto, Whippersnapper Gallery and published in Down River Road Magazine, Jalada Africa, Burning House Press and Stedelijk Studies Journal.
Ikose?
2025
clay, glass, lambswool, mohair, silk, (crochet), mudcloth
pronounced /ee-gah-seh? | meaning “are you listening?”
Since beginning my ceramic practice, I have found that working with clay often overlaps my encounters with grief. Touching clay evokes strong memories of my lineage and the skin and the flesh of the people who are held in it. It is an emotional medium for me in this way. And not entirely different to the ways that I am both affected and curious about the other mediums in my practice.
In making these pieces, I offer the shapes that grief prepared and a hope to continue making room for their shadows to fit too.
Bi siɛ. Kongoi.
<holding patterns>
2025
Mixed media, poetry.
Poetry and textile design: gitanjali lena
Construction: gitanjali lena & Krish Balakrishnan, Hari Somaskantha & David Udayasekaran aka The Pink Pottu Crew
Additional sewists: Lakshmi Narayanan (“Paati”), Geetha, Deb of Unicorn Collaborators
Graphic design: Najwa Rahmani, Kanchana Rajalingam
Thanks to Asma Atique, Ayasha Mayr Handel
Making <holding patterns> began by holding our visions in pin-pricked hands then releasing our tension into the connective tissue of friendship . <holding patterns > serves up our collective 162 years evolution as diverse Tamil nb queers in the form of an archival tapestry.
The catalyst is the 6-month search for love in 2024 amidst the chaos of protesting the hypocrisy of Canadian complicity in global conflicts. We seemed to be circling waiting to land. From that, a raucous islander friendship emerged and birthed the pink triangle poem. That poem formed a textile as a story emerged about the land and sky and all the bones, resources and memories destructive and regenerative they hold across time. The tapestry bares the fruits of our 8-week intergenerational skills share with a maximalist South Indian seamstress and a queer leather bondage gear sewist.
<holding patterns> represents our experiences as we reconnect with our kin fighting occupation on the island and our diasporic haunting of the eastern/western suburbs. In our process we attempt at solidarity with peoples the land and their labour represented through Kashmiri apples, Jaffa oranges, Sudanese gold, Illankai cinnamon, elephants, spiders & peacocks. More than once we encountered landmines & more than once we sewed ourselves into the vetti!
The tapestry is greater than gitanjali’s original dream drawings. As days passed with urgency, we added in numbers signifying the days since latest bombings of Gaza began, days that Tamil women have protested outside the Office of Missing Persons in Colombo, SL. We included artefacts whose messaging we feel less than aligned with because they are part of the record.
<holding patterns> is thrifted, stolen, hidden, gifted, shared, imagined, hot-glued, pinned, lost, observed, disappeared, learned, questioned, augmented, broken, inherited, remembered, found. an imperfect mirror.
Idehai (They/He) is a multidisciplinary artist, storyteller and curator based in Toronto, born in Lagos with ancestral roots in the Benin Kingdom. They utilize and experiment with several art forms and mediums in their art practice including photography, filmmaking, sound, clay, plants and land.
Their work explores ancient and indigenous memories, spirituality, rituals and practices while investigating current socio-economic and political paradigms. Their works weave the memories of the past and visions of the future into the fabric of our current times. It exists to trance everyday people to seek within themselves truth, to reclaim ancestral rites, remember rituals that feed the soul, return to get what has been forgotten, sight glimpse of their future and grow towards it.
Their current photo series Sacred Taboo is a natural progression of their 2019 series titled Untamed Roots: The Return to Glory.
Èguré mè, My altar.
2025
From the Sacred Taboo photo series
As our cultures rupture, fragment, disintegrate and fade under waves of violent intrusions, colonization and slavery, many of our people have turned away from the ways of the spirits and the spirits away from them. But the spirits never left us, they chose us to be prophets of our time, to carry within us, our cultures, knowledge, and rituals, to become the embodiment of our lost worlds. The works of the spirits are clear to see in the ways we talk, the ways we walk, and the ways we look, we conjure them through our mere existence. To our times we are deviants, heathens, lost souls, queer, TABOO. In the times of the past we are SACRED, closer to the divine, a bridge to the other world, QUEER. We are a Sacred Taboo
Those who heed to the ancestral call offer themselves as vessels to the currents of memories that move the waters our ancestors are stood in; and as they drink of the water, their skin turn the shade of the adire maker’s hands, an indigo as deep as the ocean, deep as the night skies, deep enough to travel immaterial realms. As they remember so does their skin, etched with symbols to mark their remembrance; they carry with them deities unseen to the eyes.
Imani Edwards (she/her) is a visionary Art Director and Photographer whose work intentionally weaves the threads of storytelling and visual art. Imani’s artistic journey is profoundly influenced by the vibrant tapestry of her community.
Imani’s photography, celebrated in magazine publications throughout Toronto, is a testament to her ability to capture the nuanced layers of human experience that we call life. Her series delve into themes of Black cultural subjects, queerness, and sexuality, offering a compelling narrative that goes beyond the surface to reveal the complex, multifaceted nature of identity.
Driven by a passion for seeing the deeper meaning in every frame, Imani’s work unearths the multitude of experiences that shape our lives. Her lens becomes a conduit for exploring the dynamic interplay of movement and stillness, capturing moments that resonate with profound emotional and cultural significance.
Find Imani on Instagram @imni.edwrds
I’ve been independently documenting art and culture in Toronto for over 20 years. I’ve also been drawing and painting for over 4 decades. My creation process currently encompasses using metallic paint to depict portraits and scenarios on canvas.
In 2023-2024 I had a artist residency in a shipping container that was sponsored by The City Of Toronto thru Uma Nota Culture’s Art Vessel Projects. I have been creating pieces ranging from 18 inches by 36 inches to works that are 5 feet by 5 feet.
Power Vibes
2024
2 feet x 3 feet
Acrylic on Canvas
Olu Seye
2024
18 inches x 24 inches
Acrylic on Canvas
I’ve been exploring creating depictions of friends, current events and imagined scenarios of Black people having moments of Joy. By using metallic paints I make my subjects appear copper or golden to represent our connection to the cosmos. The Carbon in the air and richness of these precious metals resides in our skin and my mission is to remind us of our royalty.
Aside from painting my documentation using photography and videography to archive Toronto’s rich history over the years has been a driving force in my creative process. From capturing cultural moments that the mainstream media has ignored to being on stage at cultural events I’ve been out and about capturing the city’s greatness as well as focusing on preserving Black culture.
Kobena was born on a dark Tuesday morning in Kumasi, Ghana. They grew up there and have since also lived in Accra, South Bend, Chicago, and now Toronto.
Kobena’s formal art journey in Canada began with their exploration of Shadow Work in the Shadowmancer series in 2020. Since then, their exploration of various crafts, practices and histories have informed their artistic practice in a quest to encounter and commune with spirits within and beyond their body. Kobena’s experience of collecting stories on the history of the Ghanaian coast during a residency with Saman Archive, especially oral and spiritual histories from elders and townspeople was incredibly eye-opening and a major inspiration in developing their “Notes on Making Jollof” collage series, which was exhibited at the 2024 Toronto Outdoor Art Fair.
Kobena’s current practice continues to experiment with discipline and form in hopes that the process of developing this craft will lead to them becoming a better storyteller and communal resource for the stories they are learning from elders and other ancestors.
Some of their work can be viewed on Instagram @nipazeen
Younion
2025
Found objects (Mirrors, Kente Fabric, Felt fabric, Yellow Cotton Thread)
This art piece explores identity as a unity. The unity of a looping fractal of fragmented pieces that, together, emerge a multifaceted whole. The sculpture is made up of found items, including a piece of Kente Cloth a friend and I found on Queen Street, a red felt dress I found on Bloor Street, an IKEA mirror, and a thrifted mirror donated by a friend. These items individually hold stories and memories from both this present moment and long before they found me, as well as symbolic identities that go beyond time and space. In coming together, the new emerging form is both a combination of these different stories and symbols as well as a whole new identity.
The question on the front of the sculpture, “YƐ FRƐ WO SƐN?” literally translates to “WE CALL YOU WHAT?”, a common question in my native language of Twi to inquire someone’s identity. It is both a question to the piece itself as well as the viewer, to inspire thinking around the identities and names we carry and the communities that birthed them. The framing of the Kente cloth both harkens to the complicated history of the fabric, which my people, the Asante, claim to have invented and perfected in Bonwire, and another ethnic group in Ghana, the Ewe, who may have a more complete story of how the fabric came to be and how it came to be such a powerful symbol of Asante power. These stories for me serve as a reminder to continue my conversational praxis with elders to better learn about the complexities of my identities and the stories I did not think to question in my youth.
The fragmented mirror-scape on the back of the sculpture is a portal to look at yourself as a multitude of composites. The idea for this portal was inspired by this epigraph from the book “Sylvia Wynter on being human as praxis”, edited by Katherine McKittrick:
“Human beings are magical. Bios and Logos. Words made flesh, muscle and bone animated by hope and desire, belief materialized in deeds, deeds which crystallize our actualities. . . . And the maps of spring always have to be redrawn again, in undared forms.”
Sylvia Wynter, “The Pope Must Have Been Drunk, the King of Castille a Madman”
Between this collection of essays and thoughts, and Malidoma Patrice Some’s book “Rituals“, I was struck by the power of symbols to shape the ways we can understand our present moment and the past, as well as imagine new futures. The fragmented mirror, on the opposite side of the question asking how we call you, provides an opportunity to locate yourself in many different ways as a product of communities and lineages that are present every time you are called, allowing you, hopefully, to find a new perspective of self you had not considered before.
As Malidoma Some advises, the symbolic realm is an important realm to access in order to heal our ills and be more present in the material realm. I hope this sculpture helps you to draw on your heritage to more firmly root yourself into this moment in space and time.
Those who call you are reminding you of your power to call yourself as well.
YƐ FRƐ WO SƐN?
Sigrid Yu is currently a master candidate of Museum Studies at the University of Toronto. Born and raised in Sichuan, China and studied in North America for seven years, Sigrid absorbs different cultures and perspectives into her personal experiences and stories.
She graduated from Vanderbilt University where she double majored in Art and Medicine Health & Society, blending her interests and care in social issues into creative process. Sigrid embraces technology in her creative journey, particularly the controversial AI-generated images. Being both an emerging museum professional and an artist, Sigrid aims to build bridges between art, culture and public, raising voices of underrepresented cultures and communities.
Sweet Dreams 女子梦
2025
Mix-media photographic installation with mixed printing techniques; frames in wood, acrylic, and paper
My mother was born in China in the 1970s, and I often wonder how her mindset might have been different if she had grown up in a society where lesbians were treated as normal and accepted by the majority. Would that have altered her perception of me, eased her self-blame, and helped resolve our conflicts? Unfortunately, that is not the reality we live in. Through this work, I aim to offer comfort and a sense of security to myself and others in our community. When we look at this alternative history created through AI-generated images, we imagine a world where familiarity and distance coexist in harmony, a world that kindles our longing to live in this parallel universe and dream sweet dreams.
Susanna (b.1994) is an eldest daughter whose experiences as a Black, Ghanaian born, queer and fat woman shape her poetry practice in Tkaronto. Her work is deeply influenced by the legacies of writers such as Ama Ata Aidoo, Mary Oliver, and Lucille Clifton.
She explores the intersections of embodiment, ancestral inquiry, and alchemy. A Social Service Worker & Educator, she is inclined to believe that there is faith to be found in all things—by perfecting the practice of being moved.
@susie4prez
when morning calls
2025
Paper
36 inches x 132 inches
For those who may struggle with the religious symbology, I hear you. I wrote this for you. I’ve given these words my own meaning, and I hope you might open. Thank you 🙂
“when morning calls,” explores the ways ideas and structures both inherited and chosen can shape, illuminate, or arrest our lives and inner light. As a Bible College dropout and a student of many faiths, theology often appears in my work as layered imagery. I’m deeply fascinated by the idea of reworlding — using language to guide us toward more tender and expansive futures.
To be alive is to know desire. I believe desire is one of the paths through which we trace our ancestry, map our longings, and better understand the stories we carry. Desire is worth fighting for!!!! One of my favorite things to do is kiss loved ones on the cheek. There’s a sensuality and earnestness in that act, something I also find reflected in many spiritual practices.
I invite you to meet your own innocence and the innocents in your life with a kiss, once in a while.
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