G.6 Facing Colonial History through Faith and Fortune: A Shared Project Between Institution and Community
Sat Oct 21 / 13:45 – 15:15 / KC 208
chair /
- Dr. Marissa Largo, York University
This panel examines the development and presentation of the 2022 Faith and Fortune: Art Across the Global Spanish Empire (June 11- October 10, 2022) curated by Adam Harris Levine, Tahnee Pantig, and Bianca Weeko Martin at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Using this exhibition as a case study, this panel asks, “How can curatorial practice and community engagement facilitate decolonial understandings of the Empire?” Community engagement played critical roles in the exhibition’s making, content, programming, and even interventions into retail and food and beverage operations. Bringing together curators, scholars, and community arts leaders who worked on the project, we analyze the impact of this first major exhibition to showcase Philippine history and visual culture in Canada’s largest art gallery. Representing a crucial moment for Filipinx visibility, this panel scrutinizes the importance of diasporic lived experience, community engagement, and writing art histories from the peripheries.
keywords: Filipinx diaspora, the Philippines, Spanish Empire, community engagement, Art Gallery of Ontario
session type: panel
Marissa Largo (she/her) is an assistant professor of Creative Technologies in the School of Art, Media, Performance & Design of York University. Her research focuses on the intersections of community engagement, race, gender, and Asian diasporic cultural production. Her forthcoming book, Unsettling Imaginaries: Filipinx Contemporary Artists in Canada (University of Washington Press) examines the work and oral histories of artists who imagine Filipinx subjectivity beyond colonial logics. She is co-editor of Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos and Canadian Imaginaries (Northwestern University Press, 2017). Since 2018, Largo has served as the Canada Area Editor of the Journal of Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA). Dr. Largo served as a Filipinx community advisor for the Art Gallery of Ontario’s exhibition Faith and Fortune: Art Across the Global Spanish Empire.
Image courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario
Image courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario
Community-Created Content in the AGO’s Faith and Fortune exhibit
- Adam Harris Levine, Art Gallery of Ontario / Columbia University
Faith and Fortune: Art Across the Global Spanish Empire (curated by Adam Levine) brings together more than 200 works of art from Latin America, the Philippines and Spain made between 1492 and 1898. This exhibition, from the collection of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, allows us to study critically the mechanics of colonization by examining the visual culture of the Spanish Empire. As artists, books and patrons moved throughout the Empire, the art created was beautiful, highly international, and cosmopolitan. This exhibition represented a new direction for the AGO: a central process of making the Faith and Fortune exhibition was work with a community advisory group of arts workers with close cultural ties to the geographies and histories represented in the exhibition. The curatorial team used the questions and answers produced through this process to write the texts of the exhibition, but the advisory process also organically developed into an audio guide that invited many different voices to reflect on particular artworks in the exhibition. Many of the advisory group members contributed to the audio guide, and new voices were invited in. This presentation will review the community advisory group consultation process and the creation of the exhibition’s audio guide. Levine will offer reflections on the role and best practices for community advisory / community consultation for exhibition making within museum context.
keywords: community partnership, the Philippines, Latin America, Spanish Empire, Art Gallery of Ontario
Adam Harris Levine (he/him) is assistant curator of European art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, working on art made before 1700. At the AGO, he has curated exhibitions such as European Art on First Nations Land (2020) and Meditation and the Medieval Mind (2021). In 2022, Levine led the curatorial team for the exhibition Faith and Fortune: Art Across the Global Spanish Empire, which examined the visual culture of colonization in Latin America and the Philippines over many centuries. Levine holds degrees in art history from McGill University, the Courtauld Institute of Art, and Columbia University. He is currently completing his PhD at Columbia, in which he examines the art and ritual around relics of women saints in the Spanish empire.
Paraluman Flora arrangement at Galleria Italia, AGO. Photo: Bianca Weeko Martin, 2022
AGO Shop display. Shirt by VINTA Gallery. Photo: Bianca Weeko Martin, 2022
Activating the Museum with Community Assests: Food, Fashion, and Design in the AGO’s Faith and Fortune
- Bianca Weeko Martin, AGO / Architectural Researcher
As part of the programming around the exhibition Faith and Fortune, Filipinx and Latinx makers were invited to intervene within the museum’s ancillary spaces for retail, events, and food and beverage. The vendors were BBs Diner for the bistro; VINTA Gallery, Cambio and Co. and Santa Isla for the gift shop; and Kwento and Paraluman Flora for events. By researching and reaching out to the creative community in Toronto in this capacity, new relationships were formed with chefs, designers, and artists—placing the diaspora of countries once under Spanish rule in conversation with the historic works presented in the exhibition. Weeko Martin’s role in reaching out to collaborators encompassed both curatorial assistant and community member, drawing from lived experience to make connections between the collection and the museum’s context in present day Toronto. She will outline the process of research, outreach, and delegation to other department heads within the museum, and provide reflections on the outcomes and the ways in which the exhibition and its programming were received by members of the Filipinx and Latinx communities.
keywords: Filipinx diaspora, Latinx diaspora, Spanish Empire, museum-community partnerships, exhibition programming
Bianca Weeko Martin (she/her) is a writer, architectural researcher, and passionate practitioner of the arts and the Internet. She served as Curatorial Assistant at the Art Gallery of Ontario for the exhibition Faith and Fortune: Art Across the Global Spanish Empire, and prior to this worked extensively in the studio of Canadian artist Philip Beesley. Bianca is the author of the forthcoming book Architectural Guide: Manila (DOM Publishers, Berlin, 2024, expected). Bianca's research is focused on Southeast Asian heritage, domestic space, and transcultural exchange, and her work aims to bring together ancestral knowledge and contemporary dissemination methods. She also enjoys food, films, surfing, and scuba diving.
Image courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario
Paniniwala: Acts of Faith | Decolonial Filipinx Artistic Activation at the Art Gallery of Ontario
- Eirene Cloma, Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture
In response to the exhibit Faith and Fortune, Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture activated Walker Court for an evening of live music, storytelling, and dance by Filipino-Canadian artists. Curated by Kapisanan’s Artistic Director Marie Sotto, the performances challenged colonial legacies of conquest, domination, and Catholicism. Embracing a decolonial aesthetic, Kapisanan’s artistic team worked closely with multidisciplinary artists Kryslyne-Mai Ancheta, Mikaela Cordero, and Revill Villanueva to arrange a choral medley of traditional Spanish and contemporary hymns. Kulintang instrumentalist Luyos MC performed traditional kulintang pieces which created an opportunity for audiences to experience a Filipino music tradition in contrast to Spanish liturgical music. Spoken word artist and storyteller Justine Abigail Yu presented new work exploring the meaning of “homeland” inspired by the Faith and Fortune exhibit. To close the evening, dancer and choreographer Candace Kumar embodied the story of Maria Clara to create a self-reflective piece about her journey with Filipino folk dance, colonialism, Catholicism, and family. At the time of the exhibit, Cloma served as Chair of Kapisanan’s Board of Directors, overseeing Kapisanan’s first institutional collaboration and mainstream public performance in six years. Cloma will discuss Kapisanan’s approach to building trust between arts organizations, institutions, artists, and audiences through culturally responsive community engagement. In discussing the outcomes of the event for Kapisanan and the broader Filipino Canadian artistic community, Cloma will explore possibilities for future collaborations between non-profit arts organizations and arts institutions.
keywords: Kapisanan Philippine Center for Arts and Culture, Filipinx youth, Filipino Canadian, community arts organization
Eirene Cloma (they/she) is the Executive Director and former Board Chair of Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture. They grew up on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. Eirene is a musician and arts facilitator. They are a member of Pantayo, an all-women Filipino kulintang gong ensemble in Toronto. Eirene has over 10 years of military, nonprofit, and post-secondary leadership experience. Eirene is a navy officer and army veteran. They currently study horticulture and work as a craft beer researcher.
