AFK | Exhibitions

A Smile Split by the Stars

A Smile Split by the Stars is a collaborative narration of m. nourbeSe philip’s poem, “Meditations on the Declension of Beauty by the Girl with the Flying Cheek-bones.” Working within, across, and beyond colonial lexicons, the installation reads philip’s poem through, and as, different audio-visual-textual moments of revolutionary intent, wherein Black girlhood and Black femininity are, a priori, re-coding the aesthetic promises of modernity.

Please join us at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 12, 2025 for a poetry performance. This performance serves as a continuation of the conversation that the work in the gallery invokes, inviting philip to read her poems to us, reverberating through a show dedicated to her writing. We will thus expand and deepen our relationship to the text and the performer.

Curated by
Katherine McKittrick, Nasrin Himada, Sameen Mahboubi
Date / Time
April 4, 2025–
May 24, 2025
11:00AM – 5:00PM EDT
Location
Gallery 44
401 Richmond St West, Toronto ON M5V 3A8 Suite 120 TUE–SAT: 11AM–5PM SUN, MON: CLOSED
401 Richmond St West, Toronto ON M5V 3A8 Suite 120. Street level entrance, ramp, elevator, automatic doors, door width 34”. Gender neutral accessible (32”+) washrooms, stall, no automatic door. No accessible parking on site.

For a map to Gallery 44, click here

(ARTIST)

m. nourbeSe philip

Images Festival operates on land stolen from the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Tkáron:to is currently home to diverse Indigenous and Métis peoples as well as people who settle on this land. As part of Treaty 13 and the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Covenant, we acknowledge that we all eat from the same bowl and spoon, and must take only what we need, ensuring resources are available for all. 

As art workers, artists, and curators, we see the process of untangling ourselves from settler complicity as internal, structural, and ongoing. It is not something to be taken lightly. The inclusion of Indigenous artists and curators into our program is just the first step of necessary and deeper change. Extending from our organizational accountability work, we strive to not only undo forms of complicity, but also actively create an environment and infrastructure that can support Indigenous peoples who work with us. 

Images expresses our solidarity with Indigenous people on Turtle Island and globally. We are committed to continuing to learn, critique, and challenge the settler colonial structures we are complicit in.