Provocative speaker series returns for a timely discussion on Art and Nationhood, with moderator Matt Galloway and singer Tanya Tagaq
After a sold-out launch last fall, AGO Creative Minds at Massey Hall returns to address Art and Nationhood through the eyes of four acclaimed artists. Architect Sir David Adjaye, visual artist Christi Belcourt, author Junot Díaz and filmmaker Paul Gross join moderator Matt Galloway, host of CBC Toronto’s Metro Morning, for an evening of inspired conversation on the nation-state and its impacts. The discussion will address current global politics and how art shapes our understanding of place, history and progress. The event, taking place on April 21, 2017 at 8 p.m., kicks off with a performance by JUNO Award-winning Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq and will be live-streamed at cbc.ca/arts and broadcast nationally on CBC Radio One.
With the rapid rise of nationalist movements in the West following Brexit and the election of Donald Trump—and as we mark the 150th anniversary of Canada’s confederation—there is no better moment to ask, “What makes a nation?” Galloway will lead the artists in a discussion that begins with the ways each has approached this question in their practice before opening up the conversation to debate broader questions about today’s political moment, including issues of migration, colonialism, protest and how we might find connection across difference.
A landmark partnership between the Art Gallery of Ontario, Massey Hall, CBC and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Creative Minds is supported by Series Presenters Jonas and Lynda Prince, whose leadership inspired the development of the project. The semi-annual series aims to examine the present and imagine our futures through the eyes of some of the world’s most innovative and socially-engaged artists, while celebrating the vitally important role their work plays in shaping our lives.
Tickets for AGO Creative Minds at Massey Hall will be available through the Roy Thomson Hall box office, and range from $19.50 to $79.50. Tickets go on sale to members of AGO Curator’s Circle, AGO Next and Massey Hall Friends First on March 8 at 12 p.m.; to AGO Members on March 9 at 12 p.m.; and to the public on March 10 at 12 p.m.
Creative Minds debuted in September 2016, with a sold-out crowd offering a standing ovation to speakers André Alexis, Rebecca Belmore, Deepa Mehta and Buffy Sainte-Marie after an engaging discussion on the theme of Art and Social Justice.
For more information, please visit www.AGOCreativeMinds.ca.
Creative Minds is supported by Series Presenters Jonas and Lynda Prince.
About Sir David Adjaye OBE
Sir David Adjaye OBE is recognized as a leading architect of his generation. Now based in London, U.K., Adjaye was born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents. His influences range from contemporary art, music and science to African art forms and the civic life of cities. Since forming Adjaye Associates in 2000, he has won several prestigious commissions, including the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo (2005), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver (2007), and the forthcoming new home of the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2009 a team led by Adjaye was selected to design the new $360 million Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington DC., which opened in September 2016 to universal praise. Adjaye frequently collaborates with contemporary artists on art and installation projects, including Chris Ofili and Olafur Eliasson. In 2015 a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of his work to date was held at Haus der Kunst in Munich and the Art Institute of Chicago.
About Christi Belcourt
Christi Belcourt is a Michif (Métis) visual artist and author whose ancestry originates from the Métis historic community of Manitou Sakhigan (Lac Ste. Anne) in Alberta, Canada. Her work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Art Gallery of Ontario, where in 2015 her painting The Wisdom of the Universe was voted by Gallery visitors to win the “People’s Choice” award. She is the co-founder of Walking with our Sisters, a touring memorial project that honours the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada and the United States. In 2015, her work gained international recognition when she collaborated with the fashion house Valentino to create a print based on her work Water Song. In 2016, Belcourt received a Governor General’s Innovation Award for the role of her work in raising awareness about Indigenous issues in Canada.
About Junot Diaz
Junot Díaz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who has centred the American immigrant experience in his celebrated work. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, Díaz is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A graduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the recipient of the Ella Baker Award from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, recognizing writers for work that advances social justice.
About Matt Galloway
Matt Galloway is the host of Metro Morning on CBC Radio One, 99.1 FM, and the co-host of Podcast Playlist on CBC Radio One. He has anchored CBC Radio’s coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics live from Beijing, and the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics. In 2012, he was given the Excellence In Community Service Award for addressing issues confronting diverse communities by the Intercultural Dialogue Institute, and in 2013, received the Award for Diversity and Social Inclusion by the Tagore Anniversary Celebrations Committee of Toronto. In 2014, 2015 and 2016 Toronto Life Magazine named him one of Toronto’s Top 50 Most Influential people, and he also received the African Canadian Achievement Award for excellence in Media.
About Paul Gross
Paul Gross is one of Canada’s most popular actors on stage and screen, internationally known for his role as Constable Benton Fraser on the award-winning drama series Due South. Gross wrote, directed and starred in the films Hyena Road, Passchendaele and Men with Brooms, which was the highest-grossing English-language Canadian film of the previous 20 years. Passchendaele was the highest grossing Canadian film of 2008 and won five Genie Awards, including Best Picture. He has won multiple Gemini awards for his performances, including two for the critically acclaimed series Slings & Arrows. A recipient of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award and the Earle Grey Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, Gross was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2013.
About Tanya Tagaq
Tanya Tagaq is a JUNO Award-winning Inuit throat singer whose blazing, political, galvanizing music has gained international acclaim. Her most recent album, Retribution, a portrait of a violent world in crisis, follows on the heels of her celebrated album Animism, which won the 2014 Polaris Prize. Hailed by Rolling Stone as “one of today’s most electric, transfixing performers in any genre,” Tagaq has collaborated with Björk, the Kronos Quartet, Buffy Sainte-Marie and other artists across Canada and around the world. In 2016, she was named to the Order of Canada for her extraordinary contributions to Canadian culture.