Abi Palmer, Abi Palmer Invents the Weather (Rain) (video still), 2023. Quad HD video, 12:04. Commissioned by Artangel. Courtesy the artist.

The Whole World in Our Hands

Exhibition in campus spaces, open research forum, and film screening
Curated by Jacqui Usiskin

Exhibition in Campus Spaces
September 3, 2024–January 7, 2025
University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM)

Artists: Yuki Iiyama, Mikhail Karikis, Darrin Martin, Abi Palmer, the vacuum cleaner and collaborators

The Whole World in Our Hands is an invitation to break apart, remodel, and act out new grammars of empathy and togetherness. Composed of public artworks, experiential workshops, and a film made by, for, and with disabled artists and collaborators, this program asks: how does the presence of blindness, deafness, illness, and neurodiversity nurture a language that is sensed rather than spoken? What are the syntaxes of touch, smell, sound, and movement? With the understanding that everyone plays a role in how disability is experienced, The Whole World in Our Hands embraces our shared responsibility for making livable worlds for all.

In the poem, “what is in the hand carries what is in the head,” Deaf poet Meg Day incorporates idioms to amplify American Sign Language and its speakers: “the whole world is in our hands / handfuls of it / we are a handful / hand to mouth” (We Can’t Read This, p.14). By subverting harmful colloquial phrases and rescripting the well-known spiritual song, Day resists the ableism and audism that permeates language, placing emphasis on the first-person plural “our.” This program borrows its title from Day’s poem, similarly centring collective experiences of disability and their tactile vernaculars that tear able-bodied and neurotypical norms into pieces. Exploring the corporeal possibilities of communication, The Whole World in Our Hands considers the voice as elastic, textured, and embodied—a muscle that can reach beyond the verbal and audible to reconceive what it means to listen and to be heard.

The Whole World in Our Hands extends across six public sites at UTM, including four outdoor lightboxes, a forest clearing, and a screen at the entrance to the campus Meeting Place (Davis Building), as well as through an open research forum, film screening, and a Sensory Engagement Guide, created by partially Blind artist Olivia Brouwer. Integrating tools for Blind and low-vision visitors, including a co-language of Braille and large print, this guide opens new forms of engagement through multisensory and non-visual modalities, while offering sighted individuals an opportunity to interact with Braille. All exhibition sites are mapped on a tactile map and BlindSquare, a GPS-app developed for Blind, DeafBlind, and low-vision individuals.

For the full curatorial statement, artist bios, and project descriptions, visit blackwoodgallery.ca.

Yuki Iiyama, Old Long Stay, 2020. Single-channel video with sound, 170 minutes. Production still restaged for the Blackwood’s lightbox. Courtesy the artist and WAITINGROOM, Tokyo.

Open Research Forum
November 13, 2024, 9:45am–4pm
Deerfield Rehearsal Halls and Blackwood Gallery
University of Toronto Mississauga

Contributors: Shay Erlich, Maryam Hafizirad, Devon Healey, Nina Leo, Ely Lyonblum, Moez Surani
Respondent: Eliza Chandler

FREE to attend; register on Eventbrite. Food and refreshments provided.
All sessions will have ASL interpretation.

This public forum includes four workshops and a response that foreground multivalent experiences of access, including its sounds, scents, motions, and textures. Embracing what Disability Studies scholar Tanya Titchkosky calls the “politics of wonder”—a “pausing in the face of what already is”—this forum confronts barriers to access that shape current exclusionary systems, environments, and interactions (The Question of Access, p.X). Through experiential, participatory, and conversational modes, each session holds space for processes of learning and unlearning to destabilize able-bodied, high-sensory, and fast-paced ways of being that are too often deemed acceptable.

For the forum schedule and workshop descriptions, visit blackwoodgallery.ca.

Nyeisha “Nyke” Prince in Alison O’Daniel’s The Tuba Thieves, 2023. US, American Sign Language and English with open captions, 91 minutes. Courtesy the artist and The Cinema Guild.

Film Screening: The Tuba Thieves
Directed by Alison O’Daniel
December 5, 2024, 7–9pm
CAMH Auditorium
Located inside the CAMH McCain Centre for Complex Care and Recovery, 1025 Queen Street West, Toronto

Post-screening conversation with Director Alison O’Daniel and artist Darrin Martin
Free to attend; register on Eventbrite.

Framed by an inexplicable series of tuba thefts from Los Angeles schools in the early 2010s, d/Deaf artist and filmmaker Alison O’Daniel’s debut feature film uses the instrument’s absence from these bands to explore what it means to listen. With Deaf collaborators, such as artist Christine Sun Kim and Nyke Prince who portrays a deaf drummer in the film, O’Daniel threads together re-enactments of moments in history where audiences experienced music through inaudible frequencies, including the premiere of John Cage’s 4’33’, the final punk show at San Francisco’s Deaf Club, and Prince’s surprise Purple Rain tour show at the Deaf university Gallaudet. Creating a cinematic language that centres deafness in a world of audism, while asking audiences to access the film with heightened sonic and tactile sensitivities, O’Daniel retunes what a d/Deaf cinema sounds like and how it is experienced.

At entry, guests will be offered inflated balloons to feel the vibrations of the soundtrack. This practice pays homage to the Deaf clubs that invited community members to experience films together in this way.

This film has open captions and ASL. The introduction and Q&A will have ASL interpretation.

For access information and directions to all program venues, visit blackwoodgallery.ca.

The Blackwood gratefully acknowledges the support of the University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council. Special thanks to CNIB Access Labs for their support with accessibility initiatives.

The Blackwood
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Rd.
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6

www.blackwoodgallery.ca
blackwood.gallery@utoronto.ca
905.828.3789
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Please note: The Whole World in Our Hands is FREE and open in public spaces across UTM campus. Some movement throughout the campus is required—ramps and curb cuts are in place. The forest clearing site is in an unpaved area near a paved walking trail. Its surface is hard-packed mulch.

Image descriptions:
1. A cardboard box with a silver tray and a grey cloud in it made of soaked cheesecloth is seen inside a bedroom with carpeted floors and a wicker basket. A person’s arms appear from behind the box pulling strings that release water from the cloud.
2. A procession of colourful clay figurines lined up on the tiled floor of a train station. A woman with an umbrella is seen in the background.
3. Nyeisha “Nyke” Prince is seen in an outdoor setting. The background is blurred but a shrub with pink flowers can be discerned.