The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) is presenting HOME: A Space of Sharing and Strength, an exhibition which will highlight recent acquisitions made by the NGC that explore the idea of home as a “powerful but fragile site.”
The exhibition, which opened earlier this month, will run until December 15, 2024.
Six artists will be featured in the show, including Sarah Anne Johnson based in Winnepeg; Jimmy Manning, Inuk, based in Kinngait [Cape Dorset]; Siwa Mgoboza, Hlubi, based in Cape Town; Curtis Talwst Santiago of Trinidadian heritage, based in Edmonton; Frank Shebageget, Anishinaabe, based in Ottawa; and Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, born in Botswana, and now based in The Hague. All six artists wil depict the global reach of art practices based in local and community concerns.
The 16 works on view include photography, sculptures, paintings and prints that were acquired by the National Gallery of Canada between 2020 and 2024.
HOME: A Space of Sharing and Strength suggests that home is “a place of respect, enriched through shared experiences, values and memories.”
“This show invites visitors to spend time and reflect on the meaning of home in today’s context and understand how it might have a different definition for different people. The artists we highlight express home in diverse ways, inspired by their own experiences and roots,” said Andrea Kunard, senior curator, photographs collection at the NGC. “This exhibition is also a unique occasion to discover in a shared space how NGC’s newest acquisitions reflect some of the most pressing concerns in contemporary artistic practice.”
In this exhibition, the artists will showcase how communities resist destructive legacies of government agendas by means of embracing memories of both home and community. They also depict how home can be a “non-human, natural site” that is shared between species.
“This exhibition presents these newly acquired works together in dialogue with decolonial curatorial methods and dynamic critical art practices rooted in concepts of place making and belonging,” said Rachelle Dickenson, associate curator, Indigenous ways and decolonization at the NGC. “From Inuk, Anishinaabe, Canadian and Hlubi artists comes an assemblage of unique perspectives of the meaning of home, and we are pleased to bring well-deserved attention to these artists at the NGC.”
HOME: A Space of Sharing and Strength is supported by the Scotiabank Photography Program at the NGC and is the result of a curatorial collaboration between the NGC’s Contemporary Art, Indigenous Ways & Decolonization (IWD) and Photography curatorial departments represented by Kunard.