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 up curatorial practice to non-Western traditions but also to bring together forms that might not have a natural affinity. She describes her practice as scrappy, experimental and unexpected worldmaking that started in a bright yellow kitchen. 

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3CU6Znk 

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3kiWzaw 

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM. 

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by The George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University; the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund; and Young Canada Works Building Careers in Heritage, a program funded by the Government of Canada.

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 to propel Rajni’s practice ‘to infinity and beyond’?

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3QKKxmv 

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3ZGpOnT 

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM. 

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by The George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University; the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund; and Young Canada Works Building Careers in Heritage, a program funded by the Government of Canada.

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 Acholi mosquito ‘nests’) as new modalities through which to navigate the past. These things and more shape a world where the ghost of Joseph Conrad is finally exorcised and a glorious, wild apparition of a woman without language is conjured in his place. She lives in the gaps on Juliane’s page, slides off the run-on lines and sits between the repetitions, only to emerge with her back turned as she walks into the crowd.

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3kpJJqQ 

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3Xhua38 

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM. 

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by The George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University; the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund; and Young Canada Works Building Careers in Heritage, a program funded by the Government of Canada.

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 to real people’s lives. The digital sphere is therefore an important part of history-making and the cultural record, and Chao’s practice has evolved from telling untold stories to holding colonialism to account.

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3CNDYtp 

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3IPym5Z 

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM. 

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by The George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University; the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund; and Young Canada Works Building Careers in Heritage, a program funded by the Government of Canada.

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 exhibition at Agnes (2022) Kosi shows how the agential repositioning of Black bodies as performers and storytellers serves a liberatory function.

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3H9Q3Mg 

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3XfAqbP 

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM. 

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by The George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University; the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund; and Young Canada Works Building Careers in Heritage, a program funded by the Government of Canada.

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 what it means to be an Indigenous poet living in Kingston. 

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3H66JnV 

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3GLhE53 

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM. 

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by The George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University; the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund; and Young Canada Works Building Careers in Heritage, a program funded by the Government of Canada.

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 reimagining society in the shape of us all, a society that cares for all its actors, both disabled and able bodied.

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3X7udP3 

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3IQDwi0 

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM. 

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by The George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University; the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund; and Young Canada Works Building Careers in Heritage, a program funded by the Government of Canada.

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 that nurture young artists’s minds and souls. How is Black feminist artistry fostered and what is the lifeblood that sustains it?

Show notes: https://bit.ly/3ZCU9np 

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3H8sOSE 

With Opened Mouths: The Podcast is hosted by Dr Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM. 

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez.

The podcast is supported by The George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University; the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund; and Young Canada Works Building Careers in Heritage, a program funded by the Government of Canada.

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 is back this January.

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 of community and the pain of blood memory. If you’ve ever been confronted with White institutional ‘quick-sand’, struggled with intergenerational trauma, and wondered how to work joyfully in a hostile creative field this one is for you!

Meet our guests:

Jason Cyrus analyzes fashion and textile history to explore questions of identity, cultural exchange and agency. He is the 2021 Isabel Bader Fellow in Textile Conservation and Research at the Agnes Etherington Centre, Queen’s University. This October he will present his research in History Is Rarely Black or White, an exhibition exploring Victorian cotton, slavery, and its ongoing legacies. 

Cyrus has a Master’s Degree in Art History and Curatorial Studies from York University and starts his PhD in the History of Art at Warwick University in October 2021. He has held research posts at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum. In January 2020, he curated York University’s first fashion exhibition, ReFraming Gender.

Cyrus currently lives on land that has been the home of numerous Indigenous Nations, including the Wendat, Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabek, and most recently the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Ezi (Ezinwanne) Odozor is a Nigerian-born writer, student support specialist, and anti-racist practitioner based in Toronto. Her work, both fiction and non-fiction, focuses on themes of identity, culture, gender, race, health and intimacy. Her writing has also been showcased in multiple exhibits, most notably in Oluseye’s “A Room Full of Black Boys,” which was featured on CBC.

Find more details on their exhibitions at Agnes: 

Spirit Banter: Ezi Odozor (on view 27 November 2021–30 January 2022): https://agnes.queensu.ca/exhibition/spirit-banter-ezi-odozor/ 

History Is Rarely Black or White (on view 27 November 2021–20 March 2022): https://agnes.queensu.ca/exhibition/history-is-rarely-black-or-white/

With Opened Mouths (on view 7 August 2021 to 30 January 2022): https://agnes.queensu.ca/exhibition/with-opened-mouths/   

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/3r3nh87 

The podcast is hosted by Qanita Lilla and produced by Agnes Etherington Art Centre in partnership with Queen’s University’s campus radio station, CFRC 101.9 FM. 

Original music by Jameel3DN, produced by Elroy “EC3” Cox III and commissioned by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2021.  

The graphic for the podcast is created by Vincent Perez. 

The podcast is supported by the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.