With Opened Mouths: The Podcast

Earth Song: ElizaBeth Hill

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 09:00:29 +0000

ElizaBeth Hill talks with Qanita Lilla and guest host Sebastian De Line about her music practice that spans multiple decades. She shares how her songwriting and multimedia artworks reflect her Mohawk culture, are connected to both her spiritual and physical environment, and how they are influenced by her collaborators.

Music highlighted in this episode:

ElizaBeth Hill. “Peacemaker’s Lullaby.” Peacemaker’s Lullaby, 2005, #6. Courtesy of the artist.

Writing Between Language: Sadiqa de Meijer

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 09:00:43 +0000

Sadiqa de Meijer writes between two languages. She has a keen emotional awareness of both Dutch (her mother tongue) and English (the language of her adoptive country). In this conversation with Qanita Lilla, Sadiqa talks about writing “between” these two languages and of having to balance their stylistic tendencies. Interspersed with readings from Sadiqa, we learn about her life enriched by the pain and joy of cultural pluralism.

The Joy of Language, Paint and Yarn: Emebet Belete

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 09:00:06 +0000

In this episode, Qanita Lilla talks with Emebet Belete about her community-driven art projects and her passion for arts education. Emebet shares how her art has been influenced by her youth in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, global travels, and how her art practice has evolved to include large-scale projects which cover pieces of public infrastructure through a process called “yarn storming.”

Threnody for the Khoisan: Garth Erasmus

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 09:00:41 +0000

In this episode, Garth Erasmus, South African artist and musician talks with Qanita Lilla about how the experience of apartheid and forced removals shaped his artistic practice. He talks about navigating a white world and of balancing the urgent need to respond to the trauma of apartheid while cultivating his artistic voice. Sound work and music provided a useful medium toward healing for Garth, and it allowed a means towards embracing an Indigenous Khoisan identity.

Music highlighted in this episode:

Garth Ersamus. “Threnody for the KhoiSan.” Threnody for the KhoiSan, TAL, 2024, #7. Courtesy of the artist

Painting as a Refuge: Jega Delisca

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 10:00:50 +0000

Artist Jega Delisca talks with Qanita Lilla about his portraiture practice and how he makes his sitters feel seen by empathizing with their vulnerability. He talks about the importance of building rapport and trust but also of activating a balanced understanding of Black masculinity. Jega’s artistic practice challenges male emotional blindness and he talks about how he moved from painting portraits of others to opening his apartment as a gallery and becoming vulnerable himself.

We Have Always Been Here: Faten Nastas Mitwasi

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 30 May 2025 10:00:41 +0000

Faten Nastas Mitwasi talks with Qanita Lilla about growing up in Bethlehem in occupied Palestine, the artistic sensibilities she inherited from her parents, and establishing a career as an artist, curator, scholar and arts administrator. Faten shares the physical and emotional challenges of attending art school in Israel and the joys of making site-specific and community-engaged art in Palestine and around the world. This conversation shows that contemporary Palestinian art is rich in humor, experimentation and full of hope for the future.

Migratory Routes: Jill Glatt

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 14:11:32 +0000

Jill Glatt speaks to Qanita Lilla about her large textile pieces informed by local ecologies, community and sustainability. Her practice emphasises the pathways and airways that both seeds and people navigate before they settle. Jill’s work weaves storytelling and botanical dyes together in ways that bring the outside world into the museum space. In this episode, they talk about personal and artistic journeys and the joys of teaching art.

Art As Experience: Jessica Karuhanga

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 10:00:43 +0000

In this episode, Qanita Lilla talks with Jessica Karuhanga about her creative journeys from Sarnia, in south western Ontario to London, Ontario. Jessica talks about how her personal geographies shapes her artistic practice. She also talks about Black embodiment, about the audible demands of space, and of moving toward art as experience and embodiment.

World-Making with Our Hearts: Anthony Gebrehiwot

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 11:00:31 +0000

In this episode, artist Anthony Gebrehiwot and Qanita Lilla talk about his photography and digital art practice. Anthony describes the future-thinking themes of his work as being premised on the possibilities of a community of “like-hearted” people who can uplift each other towards new modes of living. Together, they talk about his artworks, Mahaba (2024), an ongoing research project that is shared in its early phases as part of Ukutula: Our Timeless Journeys on view at Museum London, and Echoes of Devotion (2024), a digital mural on the Queen’s University campus.

Anthony Gebrehiwot’s Mahaba (2024) is on view as part of Ukutula: Our Timeless Journeys (21 November 2024- 11 May 2025), a travelling exhibition, developed by Agnes and hosted by Museum London.

Currents of Liberation: Camille Turner

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 11:00:30 +0000

In the inaugural episode of season three, artist Camille Turner talks with Qanita Lilla about how she balances humour, healing and storytelling to recover Black histories in Canada. In her work, Camille lovingly assembles the detritus of the archive, with its sparse and often painful accounts of Black life. She invokes personas and performance, like in Miss Canadiana and Afronautic Research Lab, Camille navigates the currents of submerged histories and resurfaces stories lost in the archive. As the Afronaut and Miss Canadiana fall into the past, they project the future and conjure new liberated possibilities.

Camille Turner’s Nave (2022) is on view as part of Ukutula: Our Timeless Journeys (21 November 2024- 11 May 2025), a travelling exhibition, developed by Agnes and hosted by Museum London.

Season 3: Trailer

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 11:00:55 +0000

Have you ever wondered: What is the purpose of an artist in the world today?

We are back with a third season of With Opened Mouths: The Podcast. The podcast that makes space for artists, poets, performers, activists and curators to speak for themselves. I’m your host Qanita Lilla, Associate Curator, Arts of Africa at Agnes Etherington Art Center.

Join us as we hear stories about creative visions that powerfully convey why art and artists are critically important right now. In this season my guests and I discuss: ways of being in the world, possibilities for liberatory futures, the essential nature of collective practice and the need for Spiritual growth—all as means for Survival!

Episodes of With Opened Mouths are released monthly, and you can find them on Digital Agnes, CFRC’s website and on your favourite podcasting platform starting in January 2025!

Make sure to subscribe now so that you don’t miss a single episode!

Outrageous Worldmaking from a Bright Yellow Kitchen

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 09:00:27 +0000

Emelie Chhangur, Director Curator of Agnes Etherington Art Centre talks with Qanita Lilla about her radical curatorial practice. Growing up in Paris, Ontario in an assimilationist paradigm, she talks of harnessing experimentation and rejecting the confines of the status quo. Emelie’s lived experience of cultural mixing and of negotiating multiple worlds allows her to open up curatorial practice to non-Western traditions but also to bring together forms that might not have a natural affinity. She describes her practice as scrappy, experimental and unexpected worldmaking that started in a bright yellow kitchen.

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3CU6Znk

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3kiWzaw

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by The George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University; the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund; and Young Canada Works Building Careers in Heritage, a program funded by the Government of Canada.

Travelling in a Multiverse of Hybridity

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 09:00:32 +0000

In artist Rajni Parera’s marbled landscapes, mutant travellers traverse interstellar terrains as regal environmental combatants. Hers is a multiverse of jewel-coloured intensity, of hairy spoons and delicate seed pods all of whom co-exist as equals in a realm where only the gentle survive. Which life events birthed these ideas and which everyday materialities were harnessed to propel Rajni’s practice ‘to infinity and beyond’?

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3QKKxmv

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3ZGpOnT

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

Drawing Power From Poetry

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 09:00:27 +0000

For poet Juliane Okot Bitek storytelling was always in the air. In this episode, she shares with Qanita Lilla that stories have the power to transform who we are and how we situate ourselves in the world. Juliane describes the precarity of belonging, the unexpected joys of ‘unsettlement’, intergenerational memory (contained in the beauty of Acholi mosquito ‘nests’) as new modalities through which to navigate the past. These things and more shape a world where the ghost of Joseph Conrad is finally exorcised and a glorious, wild apparition of a woman without language is conjured in his place. She lives in the gaps on Juliane’s page, slides off the run-on lines and sits between the repetitions, only to emerge with her back turned as she walks into the crowd.

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3kpJJqQ

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3Xhua38

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

Imagining African Digital Futures

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 26 May 2023 09:00:18 +0000

In this episode, Chao Tayiana Maina shares her pathways into the digital humanities and metadata with Qanita Lilla. Framing new structures for African knowledges, she has combined a lifelong love of history with innovative technologies. For Chao, translating history into the digital sphere requires an understanding that information in the archives has a living relevance to real people’s lives. The digital sphere is therefore an important part of history-making and the cultural record, and Chao’s practice has evolved from telling untold stories to holding colonialism to account.

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3CNDYtp

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3IPym5Z

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

Manifesting Black Feminist Subjectivity

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 09:00:29 +0000

Visual artist Kosisochukwu (Kosi) Nnebe talks with Qanita Lilla about the rich sources of her artistic practice. Inspired by social theory as well as her lived experience, Kosi creates art that resists the easy consumption of blackness and allows instead for quiet, sometimes disturbing realizations to emerge. Referencing her video installation in the Brown Butter exhibition at Agnes (2022) Kosi shows how the agential repositioning of Black bodies as performers and storytellers serves a liberatory function.

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3H9Q3Mg

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3XfAqbP

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

Sweet Grass, Boiled Eggs and Table Manners

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 09:00:33 +0000

In this episode, poet Billie the Kid talks with Qanita Lilla about honouring stories as living entities. Through storytelling she manifests light, hope and joy. Billie’s practice takes us on a journey through a tapestry of family, poet communities, and resonant connections with mentors. The fundamental humour in her writing emerges as speaking back to what it means to be an Indigenous poet living in Kingston.

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3H66JnV

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3GLhE53

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

Access as Kindness

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 10:00:49 +0000

In this episode, performer and dramaturg, Yousef Kadoura speaks with Qanita Lilla about living an exuberant life as a disabled performer and of surrounding himself with networks of people who share affirmative joy. Expanding the idea of storytelling and re-defining disability, Yousef talks about navigating belonging in a field populated by able bodied performers, and reimagining society in the shape of us all, a society that cares for all its actors, both disabled and able bodied.

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3X7udP3

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3IQDwi0

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

One Person’s Uprising is Another Person’s Riot

CFRC Podcast Network — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 10:00:13 +0000

In a meeting of hearts, artists Winsom Winsom and Pamila Matharu talk with Qanita Lilla about their journeys and their ongoing mentor-mentee relationship. Winsom sheds light on her rich practice that traverses the globe, including her time in Kingston, and Pamila talks about Fresh Arts and finding her creative community. Together, they discuss vital pedagogies that nurture young artists’s minds and souls. How is Black feminist artistry fostered and what is the lifeblood that sustains it?

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3ZCU9np

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3H8sOSE

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

With Opened Mouths: Season Two Trailer

CFRC Podcast Network — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 22:00:32 +0000

We are back with a second season of With Opened Mouths: The Podcast, where we give artists, poets, performers, activists and curators a platform to speak about what motivates them to imagine new worlds. Subscribe now and join us every month as we listen to the sometimes-unexpected paths of these exceptional people. With Opened Mouths is back this January.

Bantering toward radically liberated futures

CFRC Podcast Network — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 10:00:59 +0000

Jason Cyrus, Ezi Odozor and Qanita Lilla talk together about the creative processes of curating, researching and writing in the Canadian arts sphere. Sharing the enriching journeys around Agnes’s exhibitions Spirit Banter, History Is Rarely Black or White and With Opened Mouths, this episode is about the urgency to have our voices heard, the joy of community and the pain of blood memory. If you’ve ever been confronted with White institutional ‘quick-sand’, struggled with intergenerational trauma, and wondered how to work joyfully in a hostile creative field this one is for you!

Meet our guests:

Jason Cyrus analyzes fashion and textile history to explore questions of identity, cultural exchange and agency. He is the 2021 Isabel Bader Fellow in Textile Conservation and Research at the Agnes Etherington Centre, Queen’s University. This October he will present his research in History Is Rarely Black or White, an exhibition exploring Victorian cotton, slavery, and its ongoing legacies.

Cyrus has a Master’s Degree in Art History and Curatorial Studies from York University and starts his PhD in the History of Art at Warwick University in October 2021. He has held research posts at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum. In January 2020, he curated York University’s first fashion exhibition, ReFraming Gender.

Cyrus currently lives on land that has been the home of numerous Indigenous Nations, including the Wendat, Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabek, and most recently the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Ezi (Ezinwanne) Odozor is a Nigerian-born writer, student support specialist, and anti-racist practitioner based in Toronto. Her work, both fiction and non-fiction, focuses on themes of identity, culture, gender, race, health and intimacy. Her writing has also been showcased in multiple exhibits, most notably in Oluseye’s “A Room Full of Black Boys,” which was featured on CBC.

Find more details on their exhibitions at Agnes:

Spirit Banter: Ezi Odozor (on view 27 November 2021–30 January 2022): https://agnes.queensu.ca/exhibition/spirit-banter-ezi-odozor/

History Is Rarely Black or White (on view 27 November 2021–20 March 2022): https://agnes.queensu.ca/exhibition/history-is-rarely-black-or-white/

With Opened Mouths (on view 7 August 2021 to 30 January 2022): https://agnes.queensu.ca/exhibition/with-opened-mouths/

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/3r3nh87

The podcast is hosted by Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Embracing Synergies in Other Worlds

CFRC Podcast Network — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 10:00:34 +0000

Curators and artists, Amy Malbeuf and Jessie Ray Short talk with Qanita Lilla about the many joys of collaborating. Their expansive practice embraces new visions of Métis identity and looks to broaden our view of reality to the outer limits of the known universe. Which unseen forces led them to art and to each other? What keeps them connected?

Meet our guests:

Amy Malbeuf is a Métis visual artist from Rich Lake, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory currently living on unceded Mi’kmaq territory in Terence Bay, Nova Scotia. Through mediums such as animal hair tufting, beadwork, installation, performance, and tattooing Malbeuf explores notions of identity, place, language, and ecology. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in over forty shows at such venues as Art Mûr, Montréal, Winnipeg Art Gallery; Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe; and Pataka Art + Museum, Porirua, New Zealand. Malbeuf holds a Native Cultural Arts Instructor Certificate from Portage College and a MFA in Visual Art from the University of British Columbia Okanagan.

Jessie Ray Short is an artist, filmmaker and independent curator of Métis, Ukrainian and German descent. Jessie Ray’s practice involves uncovering connections between a myriad of topics that interest her, including, but not limited to, space and time, Indigenous and settler histories, Métis visual culture, personal narratives, spiritual and scientific belief systems, parallel universes, electricity, aliens and non-human being(s). Jessie Ray explores these topics using mediums such as film and video, performance art, finger weaving, sewing, writing and curating. She has been invited to show her work nationally and internationally, including at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, at La Chambre Blanche in Québec City, Art Mûr Berlin (a satellite exhibition of the Contemporary Native Art Biennial/BACA) in Germany, and at the Wairoa Maori Film Festival in New Zealand. Jessie Ray is deeply grateful to be based in oskana kâ-asastêki or Pile of Bones (also known as Regina) in Treaty 4 territory.

Find more details on their exhibition Lii Zoot Tayr (Other Worlds) on view at Agnes from 7 August 2021–30 January 2022: https://agnes.queensu.ca/exhibition/other-worlds/

With Opened Mouths is on view at Agnes Etherington Art Centre from 7 August 2021 to 30 January 2022. Learn more about the exhibition on Agnes’s website: https://agnes.queensu.ca/exhibition/with-opened-mouths/

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/3rOmetc

The podcast is hosted by Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Soak Black Worry in a Bath of Black Laughter

CFRC Podcast Network — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 14:00:09 +0000

In this episode, Kingston raised spoken word poet Britta B. talks to Qanita Lilla about navigating a White world while growing up Black. Writing and performing was a necessary part of surviving the world Britta found herself in. She talks about the people and networks who helped her to hone her powerful voice and how her current work that focuses on issues of social justice motivates younger poets to find and express their own creativity.

Meet our guest:

Britta B. is an award-winning artist, poet, voice actor, and educator. In 2021, she won the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award, and was named COCA Lecturer of the Year. Britta holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and is currently working toward her debut collection of poetry. She lives in Toronto with her husband and dog.

Find Britta B. online: http://brittab.com/

With Opened Mouths is on view at Agnes Etherington Art Centre from 7 August 2021 to 30 January 2022. Learn more about the exhibition on Agnes’s website: https://bit.ly/3hg85ix

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/3tuSeSk

The podcast is hosted by Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Intimate Recollections of Black Lives

CFRC Podcast Network — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 09:00:43 +0000

Artist Oluseye’s sculptural Eminado or talismans reside within an inner chamber of With Opened Mouths. In this episode, he talks with Qanita Lilla about his enduring ties to Africa, to black rubber and to things that give both pleasure and pain. Oluseye’s “diasporic debris” are not only the generative materials used to conjure Black journeys but are also symbolic of his broader artistic practice.

Meet our guest:

Oluseye’s work embraces the magnitude and polyvocality of Blackness and the ways in which it moves across space, place, and time, shaping and shifting the world. Centering Yoruba cultural references, he bends the ancestral with the contemporary and rejects the binary distinction between the traditional and the modern; the physical and the spiritual; the past and the future; what is new and what is old. He imbues everyday objects with the mythic in an attempt to reinforce African rituals and philosophies as living, complex, and valid traditions of the human consciousness. He has exhibited at The Art Gallery of Ontario, Patel Brown and is debuting a new body of work at MOCA, Toronto which is on until January 2022.

Find Oluseye online: http://www.olu-seye.com/

With Opened Mouths is on view at Agnes Etherington Art Centre from 7 August 2021 to 30 January 2022. Learn more about the exhibition on Agnes’s website: https://bit.ly/3hg85ix

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/3oZebZa

The podcast is hosted by Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Our Journeys Are Our Stories

CFRC Podcast Network — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 15:59:35 +0000

In episode three, Sebastian de Line, Associate Curator Indigenous Care and Relations at Agnes speaks with Qanita Lilla. They speak of life’s journeys and of what led Sebastian on their current path. What becomes clear is that one single path is not part of Sebastian’s life-trajectory. The tapestry of their life shows the importance of cultivating technical skill and competency, but more importantly, it is about recognising what you love and using it to find your place in the world.

Meet our guest:

Sebastian De Line (he/they) is an artist and an Associate Curator at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Alongside this, Sebastian also works as a Teaching Fellow for the Dept. of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Queen’s University. His/their doctoral research focuses on the manufacturing of Capitalist values and economies that transform agential Indigenous and racialized Ancestors into labouring “objects” of extraction, accumulation and consumption determined by acquisition criteria within museum collections. Publications include the Journal of Visual Culture and Junctures.

With Opened Mouths is on view at Agnes Etherington Art Centre from 7 August 2021 to 30 January 2022. Learn more about the exhibition on Agnes’s website: https://bit.ly/3hg85ix

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/3E1qE3A

The podcast is hosted by Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

The Art of Black

CFRC Podcast Network — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 17:29:08 +0000

In the second episode, Qanita Lilla speaks with rapper and social activist, Jameel3DN. Jameel is the artist behind the incredible song, “The art of Black,” composed for With Opened Mouths: The Podcast. They speak about his life journey, of overcoming intergenerational obstacles, of developing his voice as a Griot (storyteller) and of reaching an understanding of the collective good.

Listen to “The Art of Black” in its entirety here: https://bit.ly/3AXz1Lx

Song lyrics: https://bit.ly/3genHTe

Meet our guest:

Raised in Toronto’s west end, Jameel3DN discovered solace through storytelling at a young age. His Jamaican background instilled in him the importance of “feeling” in the performance arts. It is something he has carried with him closely while making music throughout his career. What began as an outlet for jotting down the on-goings of each day as a child, transitioned into poetic stanzas that unveiled the observations and life lessons of adulthood.

Holding nothing back, Jameel3DN’s rhymes are candid spitfire tales of his experience as a black man. He takes listeners on a ride as he sheds light on the obstacles he has faced that are often tied to the color of his skin. His last four projects was a four part series called “Letters Form Words Speak” . The tetralogy of projects invites you to take a journey with him through his most trying experiences. Though he doesn’t come out the other end unscathed, he is a better man for it.

As a father of three kids, the emcee understands the weight of his words, and uses them to share messages that encourage personal and communal elevation rather than conformity, especially within the Black community. Flipping through to the next chapter Jameel3DN has faith in the path he’s chosen and wants his music to be received with an open mind and a clean heart.

Find Jameel3DN online: https://www.instagram.com/jameel3dn/

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/3m1VHWy

The podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

The Hidden Museum

CFRC Podcast Network — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 03:11:03 +0000

In this inaugural episode Dr Qanita Lilla introduces the main themes of this podcast. She describes a museum space that mirrors all our lived experiences and discusses what led her into the museum field in the first place. Together with Jenn Nicoll she visits the subterraneous world of the vault.They speak about the role of storage, conservation and collection care. Jenn offers unexpected insight into the changing role of museums and how her work allows her to express her voice.

Meet our guest:

Jennifer Nicoll is a Kingston-based museum professional. Since 2007 she has overseen the care of Agnes’s permanent collection in her role as the Collections Manager and coordinated Agnes exhibitions. Previously she worked as the Education Officer at the Woodstock Museum NHS in Woodstock, Ontario as well as holding a number of museum collections positions in Vermont, including a Mellon fellowship in the conservation laboratory at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. Jennifer has a BAH in Classical Studies from Queen’s University and a diploma in Collections Conservation and Management from Fleming College.

Meet our host:

Dr Qanita Lilla is a curator, researcher and writer with a PhD in Visual Arts from Stellenbosch University, South Africa (2018). She has worked in both state-funded and community museums for over a decade, in exhibitions, programs and research. In her work she looks to make sense of and provide alternatives within an exclusionary museum world. She is interested in representations of racialized minorities, excluded epistemologies, the life of objects within collections, and depictions of traumatic histories, as well as the social roles of museums. Most recently she worked for a heritage consultancy, tasked with designing the permanent exhibitions for the new National Museum of Lesotho, researching and writing about restitution and provenance. She was also guest lecturer in Art History at the University of Cape Town, teaching the course “Decolonising Art Museums,” which explored the colonial violence embedded within South African art museums.

Learn more about Agnes’s collection here: https://agnes.queensu.ca/explore/collections/overview/

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/3AEOikS

The podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM.

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

Ocean sound is by noise.inc and is licensed under CC-SP1.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

‘With Opened Mouths: The Podcast’ Coming Soon!

CFRC Podcast Network — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 14:08:50 +0000

In this brief introduction, With Opened Mouths: The Podcast host Dr. Qanita Lilla, Associate Curator, Arts of Africa highlights to scope of this innovative new podcast series featuring discussions with artists, musicians, curators and spoken word poets about the expression of their practice.

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with CFRC 101.9 FM. This limited series podcast will be released monthly.