Jessica Karuhanga  

The Body is a Channel 

My talk will focus on what geopolitical conditions of art history inform how Black artists perform and represent their bodies. Black performing artists use their bodies as material. These artists “perform object-hood,” as Uri McMillan articulates, so that the impact of these enactments might leave an indexical trace, an impression, or a mark. Photographic documentation of these acts aims to preserve their liveness and presence while also serving an essential evidentiary function. Black performers' “absented presence” precludes their tangibility and inclusion in canonical frameworks of cultural production. 

Biography 

Jessica Karuhanga is a first-generation Canadian artist of British-Ugandan heritage who addresses politics of identity and Black diasporic concerns through lens-based technologies, sculpture, writing, drawing, and performance. Karuhanga’s work has been presented at venues including Warehouse9 (Copenhagen, DK), Sarajevski Otvoreni Centar (Sarajevo, BA), Mitchell Art Gallery (Edmonton), Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa), Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Onsite Gallery (Toronto), Remai Modern (Saskatoon), Pallas Art Projects (Dublin, IE), WNDX Festival (Winnipeg), ROM (Toronto), and Goldsmiths University (London, UK). Her work is also in public collections (Museum London, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery). She holds a BFA (Western University) and an MFA (University of Victoria) and is an Assistant Professor at Western University.