Taking over from our regular host, Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett will be filling on the “Blank Canvas” to interview Charlotte Henay (left) and Dr. Angelique V. Nixon (right), who both have work in the current National Exhibition (N8), which this year includes not only visual artists but also writers and poets.
Charlotte is a mother, teacher, storyteller, and researcher. She works to counter extinction myths through story work, and relationships of imagining. Charlotte writes about cultural memory and grandmothers’ gardens, as an activist for Afro-Indigenous futurities. She has a background in critical race theory and being exiled; she has been a teacher, administrator and consultant in First Nations, mainstream and international education contexts, and co-founded Nusdeh Yoh, BC’s first Aboriginal Choice School. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Comparative Perspectives and Cultural Boundaries, at York University.
Angelique is a writer, artist, teacher, scholar, activist, and poet—born and raised in Nassau, The Bahamas. She identifies as an Afro-Caribbean woman, multi-racial Black, queer and sex-positive being, rooted in working-class struggle. Angelique earned her Ph.D. in English specializing in Caribbean literature, postcolonial studies, and women and gender studies at the University of Florida, and she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Africana Studies at New York University.
She is the author of the poetry and art collection Saltwater Healing – A Myth Memoir and Poems (Poinciana Paper Press, 2013). She is a Lecturer at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.
At the NE8’s OFFSite location at Hillside House—which opened on December 17th—both artists read from their body of work, which was an extraordinary and powerful performance; on the show, they will speak more about their work in the exhibition and outside our borders.
Tune in this evening to Guardian Talk Radio at 6:30 pm to hear more about Angelique and Charlotte’s work.
