This exhibition project was produced in collaboration with the Montreal, Arts Interculturels (MAI) for the realization of the articule + MAI Joint Support Program for minority curators as part of the MAI's Alliance artist support program 2020-2021 and 2021-2022. This project is produced with support from the Government of Quebec and the City of Montreal as part of l'Entente sur le développement culturel de Montréal, and from the Canada Council for the Arts.

A look back at the exhibition capsize // together: building collective futures curated by Diane Hau Yu Wong with artists Devin Ronneberg, Quentin VerCetty and the Diasporic Futurism collective curatorial team of Adrienne Matheuszik and Vanessa Godden. A discussion of different futurisms and the intersection of diverse knowledge and new technologies to resist colonial structures of repression and suppression.

The curator and the artists look back on their fruitful artistic collaboration and its evolution, as well as the future projects that await them. The video is available with transcription and LSQ and ASL interpretation.

Full Transcription Here

Devin Ronneberg (Kanaka Maoli, Uchinanchu, European) is a transdisciplinary artist raised, and based in Los Angeles, working between sculpture, sound, image-making, installation, programing, engineering, computational media, and artificial intelligence. His work is currently focused on the unseen implications of emergent technologies and artificial intelligence, information control and collection, and the radiation of invisible forces. Ronneberg’s work has most recently been exhibited at Chronus Art Center Shanghai, Experimenta 2021 Triennial, MoMA Doc Fortnight 2021, The MacKenzie Art Gallery, EFA Project Space, MoCNA, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and is a Sundance Art of Practice 2021-22 and New Frontiers 2020 Fellow.

Quentin VerCetty - is an award-winning visual griot, artivist and self-described "ever-growing interstellar tree". He is one of the world's leading Afrofuturist a-r-tographer coining the term "Sankofanology" and "Rastafuturism" and the founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement Canada organization and co-editor of the first Canadian art book on Afrofuturism entitled "Cosmic Underground Northside: An Incantation of Black Canadian Speculative Discourse & Innerstandings". In 2021 he created Stepping Forward Into History, the Joshua Glover memorial monument, Toronto's first and currently, the only sculpture monument of a person of African descent. Also, he is the first visual artist to be commissioned by Carnegie Hall, creating a digital sculpture entitled AstroSankofa that pays homage to the different Afrofuturists women who have graced the concert venue's stage since its inception.

Through his work, Quentin VerCetty hopes to engage and inspire hearts and minds further to help make the world a better place not only for today but for many tomorrows to come.

Diasporic Futurisms is a collaborative curatorial team composed of Adrienne Matheuszik (she, her) and Vanessa Godden (they, them). This collaborative curatorial endeavor works to create space for marginalized and racialized people whose artworks are based in genres of diasporic futurisms. Matheuszik and Godden define diasporic futurisms as the presentation of alternative perspectives of the present, predictions of the future, and creative approaches to reimagining the past. Within the genre of diasporic futurisms, the destabilization of white-supremacy, colonization, and capitalism in relation to the lives of diasporic people are a primary concern. In diasporic futurisms, these concerns are materialized through the genres of Fantasy, Magical Realism, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, and related subgenres.

Adrienne Matheuszik (she, her) is a mixed Jamaican & settler-canadian interdisciplinary artist in Toronto. Adrienne has had unsupervised access to the internet since she was nine years old. Adrienne uses computers to make art — video, physical computing, creative coding & 3D design — which usually result in interactive installations, augmented reality, short film and video. Her work explores ideas of representation & identity online and IRL. She is interested in speculative futures and using sci-fi to examine the possibility of the post-colonial. Adrienne has an MFA from OCAD University from the Interdisciplinary Masters of Art Media and Design Graduate program (2019), and a BFA from University of Ottawa with a specialization in New Media Art (2014).

Vanessa Godden (they, them) is a queer Indo-Trinidadian and Euro-Canadian artist and academic based in Toronto, Canada. Godden has a PhD from the Victorian College of the Arts (2020), supported through the Melbourne International Research Scholarship and Melbourne International Fee Remission Scholarship. They received their MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2014) and BFA from the University of Houston (2012). Their artistic practice uses performative gestures to explore how personal histories of sexual assault, cultural heritage, and the body in relation to geographic space can be conveyed through material engagements with the body.

Diane Hau Yu Wong (She/Her) is an emerging curator and art historian currently based on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam)Nation. She graduated with a BFA in Art History at Concordia University in 2018 and is currently a MA Candidate in the Critical Curatorial Studies Program at the University of British Columbia. Her curatorial practice and research are largely based on the intersection between community and Asian diasporic identity.

Her research interest includes the depiction of Asian bodies in speculative fiction and Asian Futurism and how it could be used to embrace diasporic identities and imagine possible futures for Asian-Canadian communities. She has curated exhibitions for Nuit Blanche in Montreal, Art Matters, and Centre A Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art.

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