A Mobile And Visible Carriage

A Mobile and Visible Carriage

2017, MDF painted with metal based paint, stainless steel, antique wheel, wood, LED Lights, 10’x11’

Shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario, as part of EVERY. NOW. THEN: REFRAMING NATIONHOOD, June 29 – December 10, 2017

Blueprint for a Mobile and Visible Carriage (2017-2018) is a commemorative work that positions the story of Black entrepreneurs and taxicab owners Lucie and Thornton Blackburn into the Canadian narrative. The Blackburn’s were an activist couple who used their properties in the area of Toronto known as the Ward to shelter many escaping the horrors of enslavement. The work reimagines the Blackburn’s 1937 cab company named “The City” through a stark and simple silhouette and a narrative blueprint, and does not simply draw from the historical archive. The taxicab was a modest yellow carriage drawn by a single horse, and believed to have inspired the colours of the present Toronto Transit Commission vehicles.

The sculpture reflects upon the relationship between space and place and practices of belonging. The placement of the sculpture grounds the Blackburn’s lived experiences and the pronounced negative space is a conversation on invisibility and erasure of Black subjectivities in Canadian history. The old and new wheels, through the various constructions and materials refer to a number of topographies, routes and passages, past and present traversed by Black folks in the quest for freedom. .

Blueprint   

2017, Acrylic/Metal patina on wood, 2 sections - 48”x 36 ”+ 36”x 36”

In 1985, an archeological dig brought to light a number of objects that were buried at the site of the Blackburn’s home. The blueprints present the viewer with a speculative drawing of the taxicab including objects such as a medicine bottle, shards of a common blue dinnerware, buttons from Lucie’s dress, and other everyday objects. These found objects help us imagine how Black people negotiated the streets of Toronto and give us a window into “a different narrative of Blackness than we might be accustomed to,” as scholar Katherine McKittrick suggests.