Under the Surface is a group exhibition featuring works by Kim Cain, Tina Roberts-Jeffers and Katie Toth.
Together, their works ask us to take a closer look at their subjects, unearth the obscured and reconsider our assumptions about home.
Opening Reception
May 1st at 6:30pm
following the May Day rally
FREE ice cream will be on offer at our opening reception immediately following the May Day march thanks to Dee Dee’s Ice Cream!
Sign language interpreters will be present during our opening reception.
Visiting Hours
The exhibit will remain viewable for free to anyone attending festival events at the Bus Stop Theatre Co-op.
Visiting hours will also be held on the weekend of May 5th and 6th from noon to 5pm each day.
Seeds of the Seven Year Harvest
by Kim Cain
Through her painting, Cain pays homage to the arduous agricultural labour through which African Nova Scotian communities have survived despite obstacles set against them. Today’s generations of African Nova Scotians are the harvest of seeds planted long ago by tenacious and hard working ancestors.
In Full View
by Tina Roberts-Jeffers
She is
Possession
Commodity
Life
….I mean wife
In Full View is a photo exhibit that explores the unpaid labour of women, and more specifically Black women, in and around the home. The stills and self portraits point to the work needed to sustain households.
Labour that is often invisible is presented here in large, oversized photos that ask viewers to think about the physical and emotional weight of people and things on women.
In Full View wonders aloud who and what can be set aside until tomorrow, when the struggle demands so much of us today.
Face Control
by Katie Toth
What makes a refugee?
Canada is held up as a bastion of multiculturalism for many Romani people in Europe, who say that they are subject to a kind of “face control” that prevents them from finding employment and being treated as full citizens in their current nations. National and international laws try to draw borders between refugees fleeing persecution and immigrants seeking better financial futures. But for people who are prevented from participating fully in civil society because of discrimination or who are denied a chance to find meaning through their work, those lines aren’t so easy to draw. Material concerns are also political ones.
The Artists:
Kim Cain
Kim Cain’s work explores the African Canadian existence here in Canada and how it relates to the larger global African Diaspora. Growing up in Ontario, her concept of cultural racial identity felt watered down and irrelevant. Since relocating to Nova Scotia in 1995, she began an exploration of using Art as a means of claiming identity. Since her studies at NSCAD, Kim has shown her work in numerous exhibitions including In This Place (1996), Skin (1998), Sistervision II (1998), Far and Wide (2000), Beyond 2000: Art of Bob Marley (2000), Sistervision III: Through Others Eyes (2001), Africville Reunion (2010), Freedom Festival (2011 & 2012) and SisterReVision: Reclaiming the black female body (2014). She has had two solo exhibitions at the Anna Leonowen Gallery: The Bridge: a Visual Biography (1999) and Artmomma Resurrected (2008).
Tina Roberts-Jeffers
Tina Roberts-Jeffers is currently a stay-at-home mom to three beautiful, bright children. A former school counsellor, she arrived in Nova Scotia in 2010. Tina is committed to community and believes strongly in progress through collective action.
Katie Toth
Katie Toth is a multimedia journalist who has been featured in Teen Vogue, NPR and the Village Voice. She is interested in the boundaries between journalism, art and documentary. This is her second display for Mayworks Halifax. Photo credit: Mary-Dan Johnston.
Under the Surface is presented by the Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union
