Re-centring Knowledge an Interview with Artist and Curator Anique Jordan

BUSH gallery recently spoke with artist and curator Anique Jordan about her recently curated off-site programming for the Art Gallery of Ontario’s exhibition Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood, and ways in which this programming resonated with ideas we are activating at BUSH gallery.

The Public – Land and Body (West) was a video art exhibition installed inside the Black Creek Community Farm farmhouse in North York. Black Creek Community Farm focuses on improving food security, reducing social isolation and improving employment and education outcomes. The Public used performance, video installation and discussion to explore themes of land and body across two community sites: The Public – Land and Body (West) at Black Creek Community Farm and The Public – Land and Body (East) at Y+ contemporary in Scarborough. At Black Creek Community Farm, the program included work by artists Yu Gu, Lisa Hirmer, Lisa Myers, Ella Cooper and Joshua Vettivelu and panel discussions with Cooper (artist, educator), Erica Violet Lee (writer, blogger) and Sabrina “Butterfly” GoPaul (community activist and journalist) in conversation with curator, Anique Jordan.

TANIA WILLARD: At BUSH gallery we are thinking about creating intentional space for art-makingor art-conversation or different things, but not in gallery spaces. Not that it’s meant to be a binary – we love gallery spaces, we want to be in gallery spaces – but part of the impetus for BUSH gallery is finding ourselves always having to move to cities to show in galleries. There are very few that are Indigenous- or people of colour- or Black-led; for this issue of , we wanted to play with that idea and do reviews and texts that are more about experiences of art within a community that’s important to