[BCMA] 'Charles Campbell: An Ocean to Livity' is on now at Nanaimo Art Gallery

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv]

*Charles Campbell: An Ocean to Livity *

*October 14th, 2023 - January 14th, 2023*

Curated by Jesse Birch and Jordan Strom

Presented in partnership with Surrey Art Gallery

>From the intimacy of a quiet inhalation to the distance between
continents, Charles
Campbell: An Ocean to Livity brings together metal and mixed media sculptures
along with immersive and participatory multichannel audio installations.
Tapping into the fecundity of the Black diasporic imagination, Campbell
reconstructs and reinvents lost connections, lamenting the violent
disruptions of the past while constructing a home for Black communities’
strength of being.

Central to the exhibition is Black Breath Archive, an installation of
breath recordings from Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, and Lower Mainland
residents. Campbell strips away racial hierarchies and holds up Black
breath as its own force—a carrier of ancestry and experience, a creator of
community and something that, even in its most subtle presentation, changes
the way we think, feel, and live.

Other artworks that address breath and breathing are Breath Cycle and Finding
Accompong Reprise. Breath Cycle gestures towards a deeper past, connecting
the oxygen we breathe to its production in symbiotic, multispecies
communities of ancient lichen. Finding Accompong Reprise derives its shape
from the bronchial structure of a human lung as well as the forked shapes
of slave yokes (forked wooden sticks used to tie captives together in a
line). Both these works nod to fractal geometry and binary counting systems
that originated in Africa.

“Livity” is a Rastafarian word that can either mean way of life or the life
force present in every living thing. The artworks in Charles Campbell: An
Ocean to Livity evoke a sense of journey, worldly interconnectedness, and
communal struggle against the injustices of times past and present,
geographies far and near.

Charles Campbell: An Ocean to Livity is the seventh exhibition through
which Nanaimo Art Gallery asks the question, what stories do we tell?
Exhibition
tours are available to the public every Friday at noon.
*Attached Images by Sean Fenzl*

Charles Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and curator who
lives and works on lək̓ʷəŋən territory, Victoria, BC. His artworks, which
include sculptures, paintings, sonic installations, and performances, have
been exhibited widely in the Americas and Europe. Campbell is the recipient
of the 2022 VIVA Award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation and the
2020 City of Victoria Creative Builder Award. He holds an MA in Fine Art
from Goldsmith College and a BFA from Concordia University.

-- 

Dana Gage (she/her)

Marketing & Communications Coordinator

Nanaimo Art Gallery



Snuneymuxw Territory

150 Commercial Street, Nanaimo BC

250-754-1750

NanaimoArtGallery.ca <http://www.nanaimoartgallery.ca/>
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