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Late in 2015, or thereabouts, MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art), as it was then known, moved out of its old location on Queen Street West. It has taken a few years, but the new expanded MOCA has recently opened. Its new home is the former Tower Automotive Building on Sterling Road.
below: As seen in 2013 before renovations started.
below: Today. Not much has changed on the exterior. There was graffiti and street art around the lower parts of the building that has all been removed….
below: Except for part of this mural by Jarus. This photo was taken in November 2014 and is the back corner of the building. Enough of the mural remains that it is recognizable.
The main exhibit at the moment is a group exhibition called ‘BELIEVE’
below: Sitting Bull and the whale, part of ‘Columbus Suite’ by Carl Beam (1943 – 2005). This work was produced in 1990 and was previously shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Beam was
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Ghosts of Colonial Modernity
KJ Abudu is a critic and curator based between London, Lagos, and New York. Informed bygd anti/post/de-colonial theory, queer theory, African philosophy, and Black radical thought, his writings and exhibitions focus on critical art and intellectual practices from the Global South (particularly Africa and its diasporas) that respond to the world-historical conditions produced bygd colonial modernity. KJ Abudu is the editor of Living with Ghosts: A Reader, Pace Publishing, 2022. He will also be curating “Clocking Out: Time Beyond Management” at Artists Space, New York, May 2023, and “Traces of Ecstasy” at the fourth edition of the Lagos Biennial, 2024.
Nacira Guénif-Souilamas fryst vatten a sociologist and anthropologist, professor at University Paris 8, and member of LEGS (CNRS). She writes on de/post/colonial France and Euramerica, racialized and sexualized post/colonial minorities and bodies, racism, and islamophobia. Her writings include “Rediscovered Faces
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Gauthier Lesturgie: James Baldwin reflected the terrifying genealogy of violence in the United States from the bloody “conquest of the Wild West” until his contemporary environment. Can you tell us more about your project and its contemporaneity?
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung: Our project takes its cue from two poems by James Baldwin: Conundrum and Imagination. One sentence that stuck with me was: “Columbus was discovered by what he found.” What fascinated me was how Baldwin twisted the perspective. The idea of discovery is a complicated one, tied to the imposition of one’s view, one’s epistemologies, and the destruction of the other’s knowledge. Questioning the position of who discovered whom or what, one necessarily shifts the center of gravity and thus of power. We were also inspired by a Burning Spear song, in which he chants “Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar.”
Pascale Marthine Tayou, Toguna, Wiener Festwochen, Performeum, Mai 2017. Photo: Lisa Rastl