Events > Exhibition

19 Jun. - 31 Aug. 2021

Slavery, Geography and Empire In Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montréal and Jamaica by Charmaine A. Nelson

Artist
David Hartt
Curator
Jonathan Middleton

Art Metropole Artist-Writer poster series
David Hartt’s poster project for Art Metropole is designed as an advertisement for art historian Charmaine A. Nelson’s book Slavery, Geography and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica (Routledge, 2019).

The project incorporates a photograph Hartt made in Jamaica and uses the language of guerrilla street-art advertising campaigns, which are usually the domain of music and fashion brands, to instead promote an academic text that confronts the history of systemic racism in pre- and post-colonial Canada. Hartt’s project points to his own perspective as a black Canadian now living in the United States, responding to recent events in the US, but also to how these histories are usually suppressed, and how systemic racism continues to be deeply embedded within Canada as well.


Slavery, Geography and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica from Art Metropole on Vimeo.


David Hartt (b. 1967, Montréal) lives and works in Philadelphia where he is an Assistant Professor, in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. His work explores how historic ideas and ideals persist or transform over time.

Forthcoming solo exhibitions include The Histories at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Coloured Garden at The Glass House, Connecticut and the group exhibition, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

His work is in the public collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, The RISD Museum, Providence, The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa and The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

In 2018 Hartt was the recipient of both a Pew Fellowship and a Graham Foundation Fellowship, in 2015 he was awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant, in 2012 he received an Artadia Award and was named a United States Artists Cruz Fellow and in 2011 he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award.

Hartt is represented by Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, David Nolan Gallery, New York and Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin.

Jonathan Middleton is an artist, curator, and publisher working between Toronto and Vancouver. Middleton served as Executive Director of Art Metropole between 2019 and 2024. He previously worked as Partner and Editor-At-Large at Information Office, a Vancouver-based design and publishing studio. He served as Director/Curator of Vancouver’s Or Gallery from 2007 to 2017, during which time he established the Or’s bookstore (2011-) and Berlin satellite space (2010-2015). Middleton also served as Director/Curator of the Western Front Exhibitions Program (1999-2005), and was a founding member of the art periodical Fillip in 2004, serving on its editorial board and as its first publisher until 2008. He maintains an active art practice and has exhibited and screened his work at the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), VIVO Media Arts, Vancouver International Film Festival, Inside Out, Moving Pictures, the Chicago International Film Festival, Dazibao (Montreal) and Konsthalle 323 (Stockholm). He was a founding member of the Artist Run Centres and Collectives Conference (ARCA).
  1. Slavery, Geography and Empire In Nineteenth-Century
  2. Slavery, Geography and Empire In Nineteenth-Century
  3. Slavery, Geography and Empire In Nineteenth-Century Marine Lands
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