January 24 to May 18, 2024
Curated by Lisa Deanne Smith
power offers artworks that challenge dominant capitalist and state capitalist worldviews. These Toronto-based artists use their eloquent sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, and video practices to inspire and reflect ways of being that reposition the meaning of power to be grounded in respect, cooperation, and emotional intelligence.
power Exhibition Publication
power Exhibition Documentation
Promotional image credit: Ekow Nimako, M A A M E W A T A, 2023, 64 x 40 x 45 in, LEGO®, metal armature. Photo by Samuel Engelking
About the Artists
Rocky Dobey
Rocky Dobey (he/him) has been installing street art in Toronto and other Canadian cities for five decades, beginning with xeroxed posters in the mid-1970s and numerous anonymous agitprop billboards, concrete sculptures, lacquered books, and political plaques in the ’80s and ’90s. He has been bolting etched copper memorial plaques to telephone poles throughout this time and making posters for Anti-Globalization, Reclaim the Streets, Prison Justice, Harm Reduction, and many more progressive political causes.
Over the past twenty years, Dobey has developed a more formal public practice of intaglio prints, copper sculptures, and more recently large etched works in copper, enhanced with porcelain paint, tar, and other materials. The new works address many of the same concerns as the early street art, but applied to a much larger scale, and use techniques derived from printmaking and sculptural traditions.
Natalie King
Natalie King (she/her) is a queer interdisciplinary Anishinaabe (Algonquin) artist, facilitator, and member of Timiskaming First Nation. King's arts practice ranges from video, painting, sculpture, and installation as well as community engagement, curation, and arts administration. King is currently a Programming Coordinator at Xpace Cultural Centre in Tkaronto.
Often involving portrayals of queer femmes, King’s works are about embracing the ambiguity and multiplicities of identity within the Anishinaabe queer femme experience(s). King's practice operates from a firmly critical, anti-colonial, non-oppressive, and future-bound perspective, reclaiming the realities of lived lives through frameworks of desire and survivance.
King’s recent exhibitions include Come and Get Your Love at Arsenal Contemporary, Toronto (2022), Proud Joy at Nuit Blanche Toronto (2022), Bursting with Love at Harbourfront Centre (2021) PAGEANT curated by Ryan Rice at Centre[3] in Hamilton (2021), and (Re)membering and (Re)imagining: the Joyous Star Peoples of Turtle Island at Hearth Garage (2021). King has an extensive mural making practice that includes a permanent mural currently on at the Art Gallery of Burlington. King holds a BFA in Drawing and Painting from OCAD University (2018). King is currently GalleryTPW’s 2023 Curatorial Research Fellow.
Jamiyla Lowe
Jamiyla Lowe (she/her) is a Black Canadian illustrative artist with a concentration on drawing animation and screen printing. She has exhibited her work in galleries and at small press fairs in Canada and the United States. She currently lives and works in Toronto.
She has self-published books of her work including Good Evening and As You Wish, with her most recent release Heartache Inn, a screen-printed book project. The themes in her work focus on discomfort, desirability and the gaps between fantasy and reality.
Khadijah Morley
Khadijah Morley (she/her) is a Toronto-based artist and educator with a BFA in Drawing and Painting and minor in Printmaking from OCAD University.
Morley's work is autobiographical, informed by her lived experience as a Black woman in Canada born of Jamaican immigrants. She creates work from a Black-feminist framework; prioritizing subjectivity as a counter-narrative. Through the process of etching and relief printing, she depicts Afro-surrealist themes where dreams, magic, and reality converge.
Morley has been featured on CBC Arts and has been a recipient of the Fellowship Program at KALA Art Institute in Berkeley, California.
Ekow Nimako
Ekow Nimako (he/him) is a Ghanaian-Canadian internationally exhibiting artist who crafts futuristic and whimsical sculptures using LEGO®. Combining a multidisciplinary and formal arts program, Nimako explores Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and Black narratives through an unmistakable figurative aesthetic that transcends the iconic medium. Nimako has exhibited works in Canada, the United States, Germany, Korea, United Arab Emirates, Austria, and the United Kingdom.
Rajni Perera
Rajni Perera (she/her) was born in Sri Lanka and lives and works in Toronto. She explores issues of hybridity, sacrilege, irreverence, the indexical sciences, ethnography, gender, sexuality, popular culture, deities, monsters, and dream worlds. These themes marry in a newly objectified realm of mythical symbioses and counteract oppressive discourses. Her art has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Phi Foundation (Montreal), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Toronto), The National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the Gwangju Biennale (South Korea), Colomboscope (Sri Lanka), and Eastside Projects (United Kingdom) among others. She is in numerous collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Museé des Beaux-Arts, the McMicheal Gallery, and the Sobey Foundation.
Fiona Smyth
Toronto feminist painter, illustrator, cartoonist, and comics educator Fiona Smyth (she/her) collaborated with sex educator Cory Silverberg on the award-winning kids’ books What Makes A Baby, Sex Is A Funny Word, and You Know, Sex (Seven Stories Press) released in 2022. Somnambulance, a thirty-year collection of her comics, was published by Koyama Press in 2018. Smyth was inducted into the Doug Wright Awards’ Giants of The North Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame in 2019. She was the General Programming Artistic Curator for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival in 2023 and will continue in the role for one more year in 2024. She teaches cartooning at OCAD University.
About the Curator
Lisa Deanne Smith (she/her) is the Senior Curator of Onsite Gallery, OCAD University. Her practice in the arts sector explores issues of voice, embodied experience, nonhuman centric worldviews, knowledge creation, and power. She actively addresses diversity in the gallery through its administration systems, curatorial methods, and outreach programming while engaging and attracting a community that culturally reflects our local community, which she carries to Onsite through former experiences working at YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Fuse Magazine, and Gallery 44. Selected curatorial projects include: pi'tawita'iek: we go upriver (a large-scale outdoor mural by Jordan Bennett on 100 McCaul Street), How will we be with you?, How to Breathe Forever, The Sunshine Eaters, Objects for Listening: Cheryl Pope, Ads for People: Selling Ethics in the Digital Age and I Wonder: Marian Bantjes.
Onsite Gallery is generously supported by The Delaney Family.
Onsite Gallery Free Public Events
January to May 2024
Opening Reception – Wednesday, January 24, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West
Join us for the exciting simultaneous launch of power + Taqralik Partridge: ᐳᓛᖃᑎᒌᑦ (Pulaaqatigiit) exhibitions!
power Human Library – Friday, February 16, 12 p.m. to 3 p.m., at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West
In partnership with RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers (CEAD), registered post-secondary students and recent alumni have an opportunity to borrow and engage in a meaningful conversation with power Human Books (power artists).
To register, please email Susan Jama at susanjama@ocadu.ca
Janet Dees: Notes Towards a Black Feminist Curatorial Practice: Contemplation, “Difficult Knowledge,” and “Radical Friendship” – Thursday, February 22, 2024 – 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at 100 McCaul Street, MC190, OCAD University
Onsite Gallery Curatorial Lecture
Onsite Gallery presents its inaugural Black History Month annual guest lecture with curator Janet Dees. Trained as a historian of American art, Janet Dees’ curatorial work focuses on the ways in which contemporary artists engage with history and archives; artists’ interest in transformational practices; and inclusive museum methodologies.
The guest lecture is co-presented with the Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora.
Reviving Narratives: Exploring the Transformative power of Speculative Reclamation Afrofuturism, and Indigenous Futurism through Creative Practices – Wednesday, February 28, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West
Join our invited panelists as they delve into the transformative power of speculative reclamation, Afrofuturism, and Indigenous Futurism through their creative practices and artistic works. Experience firsthand how these powerful narratives transcend boundaries, empower agency, and carve spaces for cultural reclamation. Stay engaged with the live Q&A session moderated by the Onsite Gallery’s Programs & Community Coordinator, Susan Jama.
Curator’s Tour with Lisa Deanne Smith – Friday, March 15, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West
Join the exhibition curator, Lisa Deanne Smith, for an in-depth curatorial tour of power.
Book Launch: Fable For Tomorrow Wendy Coburn - Saturday, April 13, 2 p.m. to 4p.m., at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West
Join us for the book launch for Fable for Tomorrow Wendy Coburn. This full colour, hard cover, 96-page catalogue eloquently translates Coburn's survey exhibition into book form ensuring this significant artist is written into Canadian art history.
Building Beyond: An Instructional LEGO® with Ekow Nimako – Friday, May 03, 12 p.m. to 3 p.m., at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West
Building Beyond: An Instructional LEGO® Workshop with Ekow Nimako three-hour workshop is a dynamic voyage into the realms of creativity, cultural reflection, and forward-looking storytelling, intertwining Lego artistry with Afrofuturism and speculative reclamation of African legacies and dynasties. Spaces are limited with priority given to self-identifying Black and African OCAD U students and alumni.
To register, please email Susan Jama at susanjama@ocadu.ca
The workshop is co-presented with the Office of Diversity, Equity and Sustainability Initiatives (ODESI).
Explore & Discover Rocky’s Public Works – Saturday, May 04, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West
Registered participants explore Toronto with power exhibition artist, Rocky Dobey, and discover Rocky Dobey’s work throughout Toronto neighbourhoods. His works brought crucial focus to societal and civic concerns, including justice reform, globalization, neighborhood gentrification, Indigenous sovereignty, drug rehabilitation, and homelessness.
We acknowledge the support of this exhibition from the Canada Council for the Arts
