New exhibition in North Vancouver to show the beauty, complexity, and diversity of Black life
Community, identity, and power. Those are the themes of As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic, an exhibition opening this month at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver.
It contains more than 100 images spanning from the 1930s to 2021, selected from the collection of Dr. Kenneth Montague of Toronto, Canada’s largest private collection devoted to championing Black artists.
The title of the exhibition is drawn from one of his father’s sayings.
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“When he was growing up, his father had a saying, ‘lifting as we rise’ and by that he meant as they better their lot in the world, they felt it was their responsibility as citizens to also lift up and bring along the rest of their Black community,” explained curator Elliott Ramsey.
The exhibition features artists from North America, South America, Africa, and Europe.
“It looks at Black life, Black communities, and Black identities through the lens of Black photographers,” said Ramsey.
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One of themes that emerges from the photographs is Black resilience.
“There’s always been a defiance of the odds and a will to participate fully in culture despite whatever else might be happening in the world,” Ramsey explained. “So, looking back on the fact that there is this really rich visual history, it makes me really happy and really proud.”
“You have a lot of photographs of reclaiming or performing history, you have a lot of photographs of Black people at rest, at leisure. That’s something that we don’t see enough in the media where the Black body is always active, is playing sports, is marching, is demonstrating, is being violated, whatever it is. So, to just see Black bodies relaxing was such a beautifully radical thing,” Ramsey said.
As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic runs from February 24th to May 14th at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver.
