Three-Thirty: Ebti Nabag, Aaron Jones, Kelly Fyffe-Marshall
Doris McCarthy Gallery,
Lester B. Pearson Collegiate Institute, and Malvern Public Library, Toronto
October 3–December 18, 2020
It’s impossible not to see Ebti Nabag’s 24-foot-high portraits when you pass by two schools in the Toronto east-end neighbourhood of Scarborough. The piece, I’m Listening (2020), is of two teenaged Black girls sporting Air Jordans and athletic wear, standing side by side as they stare at their phones, displaying no interest in speaking to each other. Taken together, the size and colouring of the piece, as well as the demeanour of the subjects, command you to stop what you’re doing, and observe.
When imagining power, some, however, considers the power and autonomy of youths and the ways they enact their presence in the space and cities they live in. Scarborough-born curator and artist Anique Jordan interrogates these questions in the exhibition. The project is a multi-site, map-making exercise that connects different public spaces within Malvern, an east-end neighbourhood that has the highest population of youth in Canada. The exhibition reckons with how geographies are transformed by young people living at the margins of power.
