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"Making History is an unprecedented and boundary-breaking exploration of Black history and art in Canada. It brings together poems, artist statements, and art portfolios to showcase a careful and thoughtful understanding of Black aesthetics, while discussing the presence of Black contemporary art in Canadian institutions and offering perspectives on contemporary and historical art practices. The many voices and points of view within this publication explore alternate ways of approaching the relationship between institutions, artists, and audiences, emphasizing the significance of collaboration, resisting hierarchical and hegemonic curatorial practices, and making room for multiple perspectives to bring about transformative change." -- Publisher's website

"As We Rise presents an exciting compilation of photographs from African diasporic culture. With over one hundred works by Black artists from Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain, the United States, South America, as well as throughout the African continent, this volume provides a timely exploration of Black identity on both sides of the Atlantic. As Teju Cole describes in his preface, “Too often in the larger culture, we see images of Black people in attitudes of despair, pain, or brutal isolation. As We Rise gently refuses that. It is not that people are always in an attitude of celebration—no, that would be a reverse but corresponding falsehood—but rather that they are present as human beings, credible, fully engaged in their world.” Drawn from Dr. Kenneth Montague’s Wedge Collection in Toronto—a Black-owned collection dedicated to artists of African descent—As We Rise looks at the multifaceted ideas of Black life through the lenses of community, identity, and power." -- Publisher's website.

"Mickalene Thomas's vivid paintings, collages, and photographs explode off the wall. Their larger-than-life women stare back and down at the viewer, confronting them head on. Over the course of her prolific career, Thomas has created a body of work that expands notions of beauty, gender, sexuality, and race, offering a complex vision of what it means to be a Black woman. In Femmes Noires, Thomas moves breezily between pop culture and the long history of Western and African art, inserting images of Black women into iconic paintings. At times she poses them nude; at other times, she draws on elements as diverse as 1970s black-is-beautiful images of women, Edouard Mamet's odalisque figures, the mise-en-scène studio portraiture of James Van Der Zee and Malick Sidibé, and her own collection of personal portraits and staged scenes. Her ability to detect and contain contradictions and to wrestle with stereotypes translates into powerful, self-possessed depictions of Black women that confront and subvert stereotypes." -- Distributor's website.

"Drawing from the established fields of “African American Art History”, “Race and Representation”, and the “Visual Culture of Slavery”, Charmaine A. Nelson and her colleagues — a group of established and up-and-coming artists, scholars, and cultural critics — argue for an African Canadian Art History that can simultaneously examine the artistic contributions of black Canadian artists within their unique historical contexts, critique the colonial representation of black subjects by white artists, and contest the customary racial homogeneity of Canadian Art History." -- Publisher's website.