Constellations: Racial myths land and labour

2024 September 21 - December 15
Esker Foundation, Calgary
Carl Beam, David Blandy, Andrea Chung, Minerva Cuevas, Aria Dean, Inyang Essien, Andil Gosine, Deborah Jack, Dinh Q. Lê, Candice Lin, Daniela Ortiz, Chanell Stone, Hank Willis Thomas, Jeff Thomas, Bo Wang & Lu Pan, Carrie Mae Weems, Connie Zheng

Constellations are groups of stars that form conspicuous patterns. In the exhibition’s title, Constellations is a metaphor for early European colonialism’s configuration of racialization, with land and labour. The project of early European colonialism depended upon the invention and inscription of racial categories to justify its methods— non-Europeans being conceived of as lesser humans. Beginning in Africa, European colonialism set off extractive practices, changing the physical landscape of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Racialization was instrumental in enslavement and indenture cementing anti-Black and other forms of racism. The material and social conditions created by this pattern continues today. Artists’ works in Constellations: Racial myths, land, and labour look at the connected nature of racemaking through a series of thematic areas. Not leaving trauma and the sum of this history to inscribe identity, artists’ explorations of themes also powerfully express self-definition, reclamation, agency, and beauty.
Read full exhibition text in Esker Foundation brochure.