Christina Leslie
Statement
Black Anthology is inspired by musician Ralph MacDonald’s “The Path” in which the musical scores trace the roots of the Black Diaspora from Africa to the Caribbean and finally to North America.
Hearing this record caused me to reflect on Black identity, the Black body and the many ways in which Blackness is represented in mainstream culture. Through the lens of the African and Caribbean Diaspora I have sought to highlight our untold stories and histories through the creation of new narratives and loosely connected images.
The photographs Before 3, Motherland and Grand-Rising featured in the Being Scene exhibition are from chapter one of the Black Anthology series. These images are a re-imagining and re-interpretation of Black History prior to it being interrupted by colonialism and slavery.
Bio
Christina Leslie is an artist based in Toronto. She earned her B.F.A. in 2006 at OCADU in Toronto. In June 2022, she will graduate from SCAD in Georgia, USA and with her M.F.A.
Her photographs have been featured in numerous publications; most recently in the online magazine Ain’t Bad (2022), Divide Art Magazine (2021) and Murze Magazine (2020 and 2019).
She has had an extensive exhibition career and has been featured at such major Canadian and international institutions like: The GAMU (2009), The Royal Ontario Museum (2010), Canada’s Pier 21 (2010) and The Art Gallery of Windsor (2017). Leslie was a speaker at the SPE conference in Philadelphia in 2010 and a panellist for the Position as Desired symposium at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2011
Her series Morant Bay was shown in two solo exhibitions in April 2020. One was part of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival at BAND Gallery in Toronto and three prints from the series were transformed onto billboards as part of Vancouver’s Capture Festival, both curated by Dr. Julie Crooks of the AGO.
In Fall 2020, her photographs were part of the exhibition “When night stirred at Sea: Contemporary Caribbean Art” at PAMA in Brampton. In the May 2021, she one of the four featured photographers in the exhibition “Movers and Makers” at Prefix ICA in Toronto curated by Betty Julian.
She is also a member of an all-female photography collective called the Silver Water Collective. Much of her photographic practice revolves around the themes of de-colonialization, identity, and her West Indian heritage.
Artist website: christinaleslie.com
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