In Black Gathering: Art, Ecology, Ungiven Life, Sarah-Jane Cervenak engages with the ecoaesthetic, ecopoetic, and ecoliterary work of Black artists and writers who, through their engagement with the environment, imagine the earth and Black life outside the logics of governance, property and ownership. Guided by two primary concepts, Cervenak considers “Gathering” and “Ungiven” as crucial frameworks to think otherwise about Black sociality, togetherness, and gathering aesthetically. By attending to the creative and artistic practices of Toni Morrison, Nikki Wallschlaeger, Samiya Bashir, Gabrielle Ralambo-Rajerison, Gayl Jones, and Leonardo Drew, Cervenak underlines “gathering” as both an act of resistance to the enclosures of anti-blackness and an insistent practice of “deregulated togetherness.”
Articles by Kelann Currie-Williams
Kelann Currie-Williams is a visual artist, oral historian, and writer based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal where they are currently a PhD student at Concordia University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture. Their research focuses on the histories of image-making and photographic preservation/archival practices taken up by Black Canadians during the late-nineteenth to late-twentieth centuries, and the presence of these photographs within personal, community, and institutional archives. Kelann’s work has appeared in Urban History Review, Canadian Journal of History, Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, and Philosophy of Photography. They are an affiliate of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS).