Figuring Identity: declarations and dreams

works from the Youth Art Mentorship Program

Masinjah Aloh, Ruby Carbert, Annabelle Diamond, Artemis Lishman, and Jace McIntyre

June 26 – October 6, 2024

This exhibition is the culmination of the 2023/24 Youth Art Mentorship Program. Now in its third year, this program provides an opportunity for artists at the end of their high school careers to work with an artist-mentor, developing work for exhibition at the Art Gallery of Peterborough.

Selected by a jury of arts professionals at the end of 2023, artists Masinjah Aloh, Ruby Carbert,  Annabelle Diamond, Artemis Lishman, and Jace McIntyre, have spent the last four months working with artist-mentor Dr. Spencer J. Harrison, Education Programming Coordinator Andrew Ihamaki, and Curator Fynn Leitch working in their own ways to bring forward their diverse perspectives, informed by lived experience.

Figuring Identity: declarations and dreams includes paintings and sculptural works speaking to where these artists have come from, where they’re going, and how it feels to be here now. In a mixture of fantasy and reality, they document the process of mapping identity and carving space to conjure possible futures. The ways in which we inhabit, shape, and adorn our bodies help us move through the world with the powers we need: vibrancy or stealth or gentility or assertion. Through mark-making and material-manipulations ranging from the raw and visceral to the soft and delicate, these works speak with conviction.

RELATED EVENT:

Opening Reception: Wednesday, June 26 from 7:00 – 9:00 pm

Funding for this project was made possible by a grant from the PCVS Legacy Fund within the Community Foundation of Greater Peterborough.

The Community Foundation is a public foundation and registered charity. By combining and investing gifts of all sizes in a pooled fund, the Community Foundation works with donors to build sustainable community resources that can address the challenges and opportunities facing Peterborough now and in the future. For more information visit www.cfgp.ca