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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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.
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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), […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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? […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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