Stepping into this rich tradition, the John B. Aird Gallery is delighted to present PORTRAITS, an online survey exhibition, showcasing sixty-eight contemporary portrait artists, adjudicated by freelance writer and award-winning art and culture journalist, Byon Armstrong.

Armstrong’s curated collection allows wider discussion(s) around traditional/art historical and contemporary portrait-making.

The project features: an online slide exhibition (with playlist) and a downloadable PDF publication. The slideshow and the publication are designed by emerging contemporary art curator, Eliza Trent-Rennick.

The slideshow component of PORTRAITS is accompanied by Armstrong’s playlist, including tunes by Nat King Cole, Robert Palmer, Mission of Burman, Fab 5 Freddy, Grand Master Mel, The Furious Five, Cowboy, Mr. Ness, the Cure, Little Simz, and more.

FEATURING SEVENTY-TWO NEW WORKS BY THE FOLLOWING ARTISTS:

(Ojo Agi, Todd Babensee, Tina Boroviak, Janet Bradley, Monica Burnside, Christina Cao, Grace Dam, Ann Decker, Julie Donec, Teri Donovan, Loretta Faveri, Marie Finkelstein, J. Forrest, Doug Geldart, Jennifer Globush, Khadivizand Golnaz, Lisa Graziotto, Cathy Groulx, Arnie Guha, Marina Hanacek, Kathleen Haushalter, Angela Hennessey, Sarah Hunter, Sonia Isabelle, David Kempton, Serena Kobayashi-LeBel, Rosalie Lam, Andy Lee, Steven Lewis, Suzanne Lychowyd, Grahame Lynch, Carolanne MacLean, Megan Maitland, Jim Maunder, James McDowell, Rosemary Mihalyi, Catherine Mills, David Mutton, John Nobrega, Alex Neumann, Stella Obedi, Allan O’Marra, Carolyn Pack, Sherry Park, Rath Perry, Marie Prospero, Luanne Rechowicz, Barbara Roston, Viz Saraby, Colleen Schindler, Robert Charles Bruce Scott, Amanta Scott, Teresa Selbee Baker, Jasmeen Singh, Mara Smelters Wier, Margaret Stawicki, Kaeli Stein, Mark Sterling, Pierre St-Jacques, Grayzna Stryjek, Kate Taylor, Freddie Towe, Le Tri, Alexx Varga, Anu Vedagiri, Ken Vincent, Kari Visscher, and Victoria Wallace).

POTRAITS

By Byron Armstrong 

Grotte de Bernifal is a cave in France with over 100 engraved images dating back 15,000 years. Discovered by archaeologists, outlines of mammoths and at least one human face — recognized to be that of a woman — decorate the stone walls of the ancient tunnel. It should come as no surprise that in preceding empires, portraiture was important in acknowledging greatness, a shared existence, or celebrating the life of a person who has passed from this mortal coil. In the Fayum region of Egypt under Roman rule for instance, portraits were affixed to sarcophagi of mummies painted on wooden slats to represent the likeness of the person buried. We have never grown tired of seeing each other’s faces, whether engraved into prehistoric caves, painted on lime wood coffins, or taken with the digitized and filtered accuracy of a smartphone.

In the early 90s, as a young, Black Hip-hop head from the north end of Toronto, I had the naive, overblown ambition of being Canada’s first international rap star. Luckily, that didn’t pan out. However, my immersion into the subculture of Hip-hop in all its forms (dance, visual/street art, music) would inevitably lead me to discover the works of photographers and graffiti artists through magazines like the Source, Rap Pages, Stress, and Graffiti art. It was in these outsider tomes where I was first introduced to the work of photographers like Ernie Paniccioli, Sue Kwon, and Jamel Shabazz, who all documented the culture in their own ways. Shabazz — a photographer with an artistic lineage to predecessor James Van Der Zee — demonstrated the original idea behind portraiture, documenting, memorializing, and monumentalizing the subject.

While other photographers focused on rising celebrity under the music genres co-option by corporate culture, Shabazz trained his eye on the everyday person from whom the culture was born and to whom it was originally meant to represent. It was here I first saw the power of the portrait to capture the essence of a person, an emotion, and a moment that evokes a sense of connection to the subject presented — and for communities unused to seeing themselves presented with such grace — pride. Even graffiti, working through geometric shapes, lines, and wild abstraction, still had time to leave a face behind on the sides of trains and buildings that, although usually cartoonish in nature, still spoke to a desire to be recognized by a class of people who created their own culture for accomplishments often left unrecognized or unseen by the dominant culture.

In Canada as elsewhere, many of us come from populations whose values and lived realities haven’t always been considered worthy of representation by the dominant culture. Otherwise, they have been framed within a narrow view of voyeuristic recognition under the lens or brushstroke of an outsider who sees the subject as a fetishistic target of their sexual desire, or worse, a curious oddity. are able to feel acknowledged and seen when coming upon a portrait of someone that connects with your emotional, mental, or physical experience. 

Portrait of a Negro Slave or Negress (1786) was painted by French-Canadian artist François Malépart de Beaucourt with one breast out over a bowl of tropical fruit, simultaneously erasing his subject’s name and relegating her to the status of sexual object. The connotation of “exotic fruit” to be devoured like the pineapple under her exposed breast is hard to miss. Even a modern rebrand, Portrait of a Haitian Woman (1786), leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Although A. Curtis Williamson’s Negro Girl (1916), left its subject’s clothes on, again, all agency is removed. The dignity of even just a name, stolen by an artist/voyeur.

In contrast, “Portraits” at John B. Aird gallery is a celebration of the power of portraiture in its many forms today and aims to show how the human condition is experienced across the human spectrum. Stewarded by John B. Aird Gallery Director Carla Garnet — who was gracious enough to allow my involvement as a co-juror — the lived experiences of various people are all represented by the artist’s images, many of which are also imbued with mischief, mirth, rebellion, stillness, joy, and reflection. The artists are themselves representative of the many cultures and communities that make up this country, and it is my fervent hope that no future generation need go without seeing a portrait of someone that speaks to them and their lived experience as a human being.

BIOGRAPHIES

BYRON ARMSTRONG is a freelance writer and award-winning journalist who writes about community, arts, and culture. His art writing appears in Esse arts + opinions, The Globe and Mail-Arts, Whitehot Magazine, The National Gallery of Canada Magazine, Arts Help, and The Artist & The Viewer, while also authoring curatorial essays for exhibitions at The D’Aguilar Art Foundation (Nassau, Bahamas) and United Contemporary Gallery (Toronto, Canada). He resides in Toronto/Tkaronto with his family.

ELIZA TRENT-RENNICK is an experimental artist and designer based in Toronto, Ontario. She holds a Bachelor of Design from OCAD University, a Graphic Design certificate from George Brown College, and a certificate in Cultural Heritage and Conservation Management from Fleming College. Her professional background is as diverse as her education, having worked as an art director and stylist, artisan, vintage clothing buyer, art restorer, and graphic designer. In August 2023, Eliza created a site-specific sculpture for the Music is Art festival in Buffalo, where over six thousand people attended.