Main Space Exhibition /
careworn & coil
Christina Oyawale
November 1 – December 19, 2024
Opening Reception:
November 1st, 7-9PM
@ The New Gallery
208 Centre St. S
︎Accessibility Notes
My body moves on crip time, meaning, it decides when it wants to move, it decides when I need to slow down and when it’s time to go. I experience space and time in a completely different way than most do. I’ve learned to live through the discomfort, but this is my attempt at being vulnerable with you. Let’s reevaluate our perceptions of private versus public life. I want you to understand that it’s not pretty, it’s raw and it’s ugly. In the words of Mia Mingus, I would rather be “ugly—magnificently ugly” than “beautiful” because I am flawed and sometimes need the space to remember that. I move on crip time, as breathing hurts from my ribs that have been inflamed for weeks. I move on crip time because I am too anxious to face the world today. So I stay in my space until I feel it is time to leave.
I watch the seasons change from my window, I watch the sun kiss my pigmented skin.
I've built my world for you, I’ve reconstructed my space.
I watch the seasons change from my window, I watch the sun kiss my pigmented skin.
I've built my world for you, I’ve reconstructed my space.
– Christina Oyawale
careworn & coil undertakes the ongoing photographic and written documentation of my disabled body through invisible physical and mental illness. The project aims to showcase the daily negotiations that occur within myself, replicating the complexities and comfort of living as a spoonie. I work to challenge notions of able-bodied productivity, using photographs and sculptural installation to task viewers with challenging their perceptions of the human experience, creating an environment that emphasizes the emotional vulnerability of placing private life into the public sphere. careworn & coil breathes the concept of "Crip Time", a term coined by academic Alison Kafer – disabled people’s relationship to time rather than monoculture’s ideas productivity in a given day – and bell hooks’ “Oppositional Gaze” – allowing Black bodies the right to “looking”. The project asks viewers to interrogate their perceptions of invisible illness and how it manifests in the body. Within the images, light and shadows act as a catalyst for both these theoretical concepts and how they specifically interact with my navigation of fatness, depression and chronic pain.
The project applies research-creation as a means of situating itself within the broader conversation of disability theory; notably from a Black Feminist disability politic that is oftentimes understudied. Incorporating the works of racialized disabled scholars such as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Mia Mingus and Alice Wong allows me to take hold of my personhood while rejecting palatability. Ultimately, in staking myself on these terms, I allow for an active viewership that challenges ableism and supposedly “correct” ways of being consumed.
The project applies research-creation as a means of situating itself within the broader conversation of disability theory; notably from a Black Feminist disability politic that is oftentimes understudied. Incorporating the works of racialized disabled scholars such as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Mia Mingus and Alice Wong allows me to take hold of my personhood while rejecting palatability. Ultimately, in staking myself on these terms, I allow for an active viewership that challenges ableism and supposedly “correct” ways of being consumed.
Christina Oyawale (b. 2000 Toronto; lives and works in Toronto and Winnipeg) is a self-proclaimed “anarchist punk boy” and emerging multi-hyphenate artist, graphic designer, researcher + curator. Working with film, photography and text, they use memories, shared Black feminist history and knowledge exchange in order to create work that emphasises curiosity of learning and documenting the necessity of slowness. Currently they are attempting to break free from the expected/frequent uses of identity politics under our current neo-liberalist society, that requires marginalized people to sell their identity in exchange for “visibility” in the art world and academia.
Their work and research attempts to foster communal conversation surrounding capitalism, anti-Black racism, queer-/trans-phobia and ableism. Many of these socio-political conditions that they believe we should be fighting to dismantle. Their current research interests and musings surround: Social Reproduction Theory, the works of Angela Davis, Naomi Klein and Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, queer USSR and Black feminist disability theory.
Their work and research attempts to foster communal conversation surrounding capitalism, anti-Black racism, queer-/trans-phobia and ableism. Many of these socio-political conditions that they believe we should be fighting to dismantle. Their current research interests and musings surround: Social Reproduction Theory, the works of Angela Davis, Naomi Klein and Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, queer USSR and Black feminist disability theory.
The New Gallery & Christina Oyawale gratefully acknowledge
the support from the following organizations:
the support from the following organizations: