Join us for a closing conversation with Katherine McKittrick, Cristian Ordóñez, and Nasrin Himada, moderated by Aaliyah Strachan. Deeply anchored in nourbeSe philip’s profound poem, "Meditations on the Declension of Beauty by the Girl with the Flying Cheek-bones," this dialogue reflects on the processes and experimentation that shaped A Smile Split by the Stars.
This event invites participants to delve deeply into how artistic practices re-code and transcend aesthetic limits, considering the creative potential that emerges from cross-disciplinary dialogues and reaffirming beauty as a space of expansive, dynamic and liberatory possibilities.
Exhibition and Programs in partnership and co-produced with Agnes Etherington Art Centre and Modern Fuel. Co-presented with the Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University and the Revolutionary Demand for Happiness Working Group.
Katherine McKittrick is Professor of Gender Studies and Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. She authored Dear Science and Other Stories (DUP, 2021), and Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (UMP, 2006). She also edited and contributed to Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis (DUP, 2015). Recent projects include the limited-edition boxset, Trick Not Telos (2023) and the limited-edition hand-made book, Twenty Dreams (2024).
Nasrin Himada is a Palestinian curator and writer. Their practice is heavily influenced by their long term friendships and by their many on-going collaborations with artists, filmmakers and poets. Nasrin’s ongoing project, For Many Returns, experiments with writing as an act dictated by love, and typifies their current curatorial interests, which foreground desire as transformation, and liberation through many forms. Nasrin currently holds the position of Associate Curator at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University in Kingston (ON).
Cristian Ordóñez (b. 1976, Santiago, Chile) has lived in Canada since 2008. His work merges author photography, graphic design, and publishing, which he explores through self-managed projects and collaborations with artists, academics, architects, and organizations. His artistic practice explores both near and distant territories, gathering impressions of the world while examining the connections and dialogues between place, memory, and the notion of belonging.
Ordóñez’s work has been exhibited internationally, and his publications are part of the permanent collections of institutions including the National Gallery of Canada, MoMA, the San Telmo Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario, York University Libraries, the National Library of Chile, the State Library of Victoria, and the National Library of Australia. In 2023, he was awarded the Land Artist Residency Program by OMNE – Osservatorio Mobile Nord Est (Italy), where he is currently in residence. He was also the recipient of the Burtynsky Grant (Canada) in 2002, and was awarded the Urbanautica Institute Award in both 2021 and 2023. His work has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
