Black Femme: Sovereign of WAP and the Virtual Realm, Mar 5 – Apr 10, 2021

“Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is atechnical standardfor accessinginformation over a mobile wireless network. Not to be confused with Wireless access point. Wireless Access Point (WAP), or more generally just access point (AP), is a networking hardware device that allows other Wi-Fi devices to connect to a wired network.As a standalone device, the AP may have a wired connection to a router, but, in a wireless router,it can also be an integral component of the router itself.”

Canada is pleased to present Black Femme: Sovereign of WAP and the Virtual Realm, a group show featuring work by Caitlin Cherry, Delphine Desane, Emily Manwaring, Kenya (Robinson), Sydney Vernon, and Qualeasha Wood.

Black Femme is a celebratory exhibition focusing on a group of six black female-identifying artists whose practices challenge and dismantle the restrictive societal confines imposed on the black femme body, both in the virtual realm and IRL. The works in Black Femme, a combination of painting, video, textiles, and drawing, have been brought together to create a deconstructive discourse around femininity, sexuality, and gender politics through a post-internet lens. A live performance will mark the midway point of the exhibition, and will be virtually broadcast. Further details will soon be announced.

About the artists:

Caitlin Cherry (b. 1987, Chicago, Illinois) draws on painting, sculpture and installation in her multifaceted practice, coalescing into articulate and alluring representations of Black femininity. Filtering these media through layers of digital manipulation, her work draws parallels between Black femme bodies, frequently commodified and positioned as sexual assets, and the seductiveness of art objects in the commercial gallery circuit. Cherry is currently Assistant Professor of Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University and the founder of the new online program Dark Study, a contra-institutional space for radical learning about art and theory. Her paintings have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Performance Space and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among other institutions of note. She is a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Fellowship Residency and Leonore Annenberg Fellowship.

Delphine Desane (b. 1988, Paris, France) In January 2020 Desane’s artwork was featured on the cover of Vogue Italia magazine. Her portraits of women are drawn from her own experiences of motherhood and Black womanhood. ⁣Exhibitions include CFHILL Art Space, Stockholm, Sweden, April 2020; PENSKE projects, LA; Luce Gallery, Torino, Italy; and at the POCO A POCO in Oaxaca, Mexico, 2020. Desane received her bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design at Studio Berçot in 2008.

Emily Manwaring (b. 1999, Queens, NY) lives and works in Queens, NY. She has been included in exhibitions at POWRPLNT (Brooklyn, NY); Houghton Jr. Gallery, New York, NY; and 41 Cooper Gallery, New York, NY.

Kenya (Robinson) (b. 1977 Landstuhl, Germany) lives and works in New York, New York & Gainesville, Florida). Kenya graduated from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Madison, ME), the Yale School of Art with an MFA in Sculpture (New Haven, CT), and the Los Angeles Trade Technical College with an Associate of Arts in Apparel Design and Production (Los Angeles, CA). Her practice investigates the triangulation of gender, consumer capitalism, and race in America through performative action and sculptural gesture. (Robinson)’s work is in public collections at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Deutsche Bank Collection of Works on Paper, The Santa Fe College Museum of Art, and the Peggy Cooper Caferitz collection. Awards and residencies include The Orlando Museum of Art’s ‘Florida Prize in Contemporary Art,’ The Kohler Arts and Industry Residency, a Pioneer Works Residency, a Triangle Arts Residency, and grants from Creative Capital, and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation.

Her sculpture and performances have exhibited at The Kitchen (New York, NY), Pioneer Works (New York, NY), the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (Brooklyn, NY), the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Brooklyn, NY), Deutsche Bank (New York, NY), The Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), The Kitchen (New York, NY), The High Line (New York, NY), MoMA PS1 (Queens, NY), Sid Gold’s Request Room (New York, NY), The Royal Peacock (Atlanta, GA), and in Terence Nance’s HBO series, Random Acts of Flyness.

Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Village Voice, The Paris Review, ARTnews, The New Yorker, PHILE Magazine, The Orlando Sentinel, artcritical, Essence Magazine, and Hyperallergic.

Sydney Vernon (b. 1995, Prince George’s County, MD) lives and works in New York, NY. Her work was previously exhibited at Thierry Goldberg Gallery, NY; Peg Alston Fine Arts, New York, NY; Prince George’s County African American Museum and Cultural Center, Brentwood, MD; and The White Room, Washington, DC.

Qualeasha Wood (b. 1996 Long Branch, New Jersey) lives and works in Detroit, Michigan. This spring, Qualeasha Wood will complete her MFA in Photography at Michigan’s Cranbrook University; she holds a BFA in printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work spans sculptural, textile, and digital media and suggests realities around living in the black female body that do and might exist. Wood utilizes a range of traditional craft and contemporary digital materials to create intricate dialogues across time and present novel perspectives on the black self. Qualeasha has exhibited at the Trout Museum of Art (Appleton, WI), NADA Miami Beach 2020, Kendra Jayne Patrick for Metro Pictures (New York, NY), Cooper Cole (Toronto, ON); New Image Art (Los Angeles, CA); Gluon Gallery (Milwaukee, WI). Wood will make her New York solo debut with Kendra Jayne Patrick in September 2021

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