by Robin Chantree
Figure 1: History Is Rarely Black or White, Davies Gallery view. Photo by Paul Litherland, used with permission from Jason Cyrus.
In mid-November 2021, curator Jason Cyrus, conservator Anne-Marie Guérin, and I were in the Agnes Etherington Art Centre’s vault deep below Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Jason was inspecting the garments he curated for his History is Rarely Black or White exhibition, and we were fawning over how beautifully Anne-Marie had cleaned the ruffles on an early twentieth-century white cotton wedding dress. After a year of organising and coordinating the exhibition remotely, this was the first time he had seen the dress cleaned and mounted for the exhibition. As we admired her handiwork of conservation and restoration, she explained to us how cotton as a fibre has memory, it holds on to the form it is pressed into, and simply washing it can return it to that shape. “What does antique cotton recall?” This question is at the core of History is Rarely Black or White, as it explores how those recollections pour into contemporary society through a combination of historiography, scientific analysis, and creative work that deeply engages with the very matter of the pieces.
While my view of the show is deeply coloured by having worked on it (it is amazing), from the onset Cyrus’ vision seemed alarmingly ambitious. Spanning three of the Agnes Etherington’s gallery spaces, the exhibition explored the tumultuous and violently racist history of cotton in which our fashion system is rooted. The entire exhibition consisted of twelve antique cotton garments pulled from the Agnes’ collection and put in conversation with the work of three contemporary creatives whose work reflects on contemporary black identity. In addition to this, Guérin introduced the idea of submitting the garments to isotope analysis, to map out where the cotton used in the garments originated. It complicates Canada’s relationship to chattel slavery because Canadians use the narrative of Canada being a safe haven at the end of the Underground Railroad to shield ourselves from facing the anti-black racism that permeates our society, and this project uses the very materiality of antique garments to shatter that idealistic rewriting of history.
My role with History is Rarely Black or White was as graphic designer and creative consultant. This entire process took place during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and involved the development of a new skill set to accommodate a world that could no longer be experienced physically. I learned SketchUp, a fairly user-friendly 3D rendering program, and thus began the planning of a show with pieces I’d never seen, for a place I had never been to. Over the course of a year Jason would send me the sketch of what he wanted for the space, and I would stumble my way through unfamiliar software, bringing his vision to a facsimile of life. It is fitting then that materiality stands as one of the most potent themes of the show, a reminder that despite late-stage capitalism’s insistence on the virtualization of reality, things have power.
Figure 2. An early Sketchup rendering of the Davies Gallery in the Agnes Etherington Art Centre that was never intended for public viewing. Image by the author.
Dozens of these renderings were produced, and despite the nostalgia they invoke in me, they all feel hollow in light of the final images of the show. Jane Bennet (2010) describes thing-power in numerous ways, but her description of some especially interesting garbage is perhaps the most apt. Bennet describes how the interplay of otherwise mundane litter evokes a tableau of associations that supersedes the objects themselves, where their interconnections with their context and ability to ricochet associations transcends the inertness of their matter. Karin Jones’ installation of cotton and hair bulbs too transcends their inactivity, with more elegance than Bennet’s dead rat.
The installation intentionally echoes a floral print in rhythm, but uses cotton bulbs and curly hair to pull the history of slavery into the gallery space. Furthermore, the shadows from the suspended bulbs cast into the space, extending their pattern beyond the textiles surface. The viewer, the garments, and the space itself are engulfed by these shadows, thus engulfing each actant with their shared history of anti-blackness.
Figures 3 and 4. Freed, Karin Jones, 2021. Cotton, hair, wire and wood. Photo by Paul Litherland, used with permission from Jason Cyrus.
While the physical exhibition has now concluded, it is still available as a digital exhibition through the Agnes Etherington Art Centre website. The digital version serves as its own experience, providing additional context and information that could not fit neatly into the space itself, including guided tours by the artists who participated and much more information on isotopic analysis. It is quite rigorous by online exhibition standards, but that too is a result of pandemic planning. Ontario’s political leaders chose to guide the province through the apocalypse by expecting event organisers and businesses to pivot their plans within a week's notice, leaving any costs associated with such chaos to be absorbed by the constituent. It was very possible that the digital exhibition would be the only way that the show could be experienced, which thankfully did not occur. Granted, it was experienced at limited capacity, and in a context where immunocompromised people would still likely feel endangered, which is also a problem that deserves consideration, but the thing-power was present and more or less available. This project that reminds the viewer that our experience of the world is important, powerful, and political, was still able to be experienced as it should be.
Endnotes:
Agnes Etherington Gallery. History Is Rarely Black or White. Kingston, ON: Agnes Etherington Gallery; 2021 [cited 2021 Dec 10]. Available from: https://agnes.queensu.ca/digital-agnes/
Guérin discusses this process further on the podcast Dressed: The history of fashion. Calahan, A., Zachary, C. History is Rarely Black or White: fashion storytelling with Jason Cyrus and Anne-Marie Guérin. Dressed: The History of Fashion [podcast]. iHeart Radio; 2021 Nov 30 [cited 2021 Dec 10]. Available From: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-dressed-the-history-of-fas-29000690/episode/history-is-rarely-black-or-white-89906884/
See Bain, Marc. April 7, 2022. Can The Metaverse Transform Fashion Business Models?. BOF; accessed April 10, 2022. Retrieved from: www.businessoffashion.com/articles/technology/can-the-metaverse-transform-fashion-business-models; and Zuckerman, Ethan. October 29, 2021. Hey, Facebook, I Made a Metaverse 27 Years Ago. The Atlantic; accessed April 10, 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/10/facebook-metaverse-was-always-terrible/620546.
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.
Potentially more, but I refuse to go back and count them.
Bennett, Jane. 2010. “The Force of Things”. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.
History is Rarely Black or White. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, accessed April 10, 2022. Retrieved from: https://agnes.queensu.ca/digital-agnes/online-exhibition/hirbow/
Declerq, Katherine. April 3, 2021. Toronto restaurant sends Premier Doug Ford $431 bill for spoiled beer. CP24, accessed April 10, 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.cp24.com/news/toronto-restaurant-sends-premier-doug-ford-431-bill-for-spoiled-beer-1.5373474?cache=oswkadlgqjzv%3FclipId%3D1930113