Ukutula: Our Timeless Journeys at Museum London

Ukutula: Our Timeless Journeys is a travelling exhibition developed by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (AGNES) and hosted by Museum London

Anthony Gebrehiwot, The Diviner – Mokgobi #5, Mahaba Series, 2024, digital photograph, Courtesy of the artist. Photography, collage and creative direction by Anthony Gebrehiwot. Art direction by Anastasia De Lyon. Styling by Kyle Gervacy

Ukutula: Our Timeless Journeys

Curated by Dr. Qanita Lilla, Associate Curator, Arts of Africa, AGNES
November 21, 2024 – May 11, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 21, 7 – 10pm (remarks at 8pm)
Museum London, 421 Ridout Street North, London, Ontario

Ukutula: Our Timeless Journeys centres on a display of sixteen extraordinarily diverse traditional West African masks. These masks, part of AGNES’ Justin and Elisabeth Lang Collection, appear in chorus with the contemporary work of five Canadian artists from the African and Asian diasporas: Anthony Gebrehiwot, Jill Glatt, Jessica Karuhanga, Camille Turner, and Winsom Winsom.

Employing photography, new media and video, textile installation and more, the artists of Ukutula reflect on diasporic roots by exploring themes of identity, transformation, the body, belonging, place and regional histories. As a link from the past to the present, Ukutula demonstrates the richness in mixing creative forms, the sonic formation of Black geographies, the importance of navigating the world collectively and the loving presence of those who came before as they guide us to new futures.

Winsom Winsom, The Masks We Wear (detail), 2018, mixed media installation, Collection of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Purchase, Chancellor Richardson Memorial Fund, 2022

Curator, writer and researcher Qanita Lilla (PhD) is AGNES’ Associate Curator, Arts of Africa. At Agnes, Qanita cares for the Lang Collection of African Art and works with contemporary art practice from the diaspora to engage the African collection in the present. She is interested in the life and after-life of objects in collections, hidden histories, the representation of racialised minorities, and alternative practices of collections care.

Anthony Gebrehiwot is a visual artist and community leader who sees in photography an ongoing dialogue for social change. A self-taught artist, Gebrehiwot founded studio XvXy-photo in 2014, focusing on portraiture. His subjects appear as divine and otherworldly to explore Black identity and in response to racial tensions in North America.

Jill Glatt is a Katarokwi/Kingston, Ontario-based illustrator, printmaker, arts educator, and teacher. Her practice focuses on issues of ecology, community, and sustainability, and aims to inspire people to observe a less extractive relationship with the earth. Glatt’s artistic practice involves making dyes from foraged plants for paintings and prints.

Jessica Karuhanga is a first-generation Canadian artist of British-Ugandan heritage who addresses politics of identity and Black diasporic concerns through lens-based technologies, sculpture, writing, drawing, and performance. Karuhanga’s practice explores self-articulation, beauty, illness, isolation, and grief through intuitive approaches to drawing and performative movement, centring Black subjectivity and embodiment.

Artist/scholar Camille Turner’s work combines Afrofuturism and historical research. Her most recent explorations confront the entanglement of what is now Canada in the transatlantic trade in Africans. She puts into practice Afronautics, a methodological framework she developed to approach colonial archives from the point of view of a liberated future.

Winsom Winsom is a Maroon Canadian artist with a prolific career spanning several decades. Born and trained as an artist in Jamaica, Winsom’s art often explores themes of spirituality and identity. Her work is characterised by bold colours, dynamic brushstrokes and themes, and a sense of movement and energy.

Ukutula: Our Timeless Journeys is made possible by generous support from the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund at Queen’s University, and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

With humility and respect we acknowledge that Museum London sits at the forks of the Deshkan Ziibi on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Attawandaron.

Museum London
421 Ridout St. N., London, ON
N6A 5H4 • (519) 661-0333
www.museumlondon.ca
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Thursday until 8:00 pm
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