Join us to celebrate the opening of two new installations from the Afrocentric spiritually moving work of Canadian and Maroon artist Winsom: The Masks We Wear and Jumping the Boa, curated by Andrea Fatona, PhD, Associate Professor, OCADU and on view in the J.S. McLean Centre for Indigenous and Canadian Art.

The Masks We Wear gestures to African traditions of mask-wearing as part of healing rituals and to practices of masking within the context of trauma and the everyday presentation of self. In this installation, Winsom contemplates practices of unmasking/ healing and connections with the ‘natural’ world that enable a more holistic engagement with both human and non-human forms.

Jumping the Boa is an interactive installation that pays homage to those who came before us. It focuses on death as a form of transformation. In African spiritual practices, the ancestors or the departed, are believed to continue to exist unencumbered by the strictures of material reality in an invisible or metaphysical world. They are keepers of knowledge, customs, and symbols, and provide the living with access to the divine. Animals are often participants in rituals that honour those who have entered the spirit world.