Join us for a poetry reading with m. nourbeSe philip, continuing the conversation inspired by the exhibition. This special event invites philip to read her work, followed by a celebratory set from DJ TAMIKA. Together, poetry and sound will reverberate through the exhibition that is dedicated to philip’s writing, expanding and deepening the relationship between text, sound and space.
A Smile Split by the Stars is a collaborative narration of m. nourbeSe philip’s poem, “Meditations on the Declension of Beauty by the Girl with the Flying Cheek-bones.” Working within, across and beyond colonial lexicons—the installation reads philip’s poem through and as different audio-visual-textual moments of revolutionary intent, wherein Black girlhood and Black femininity are, a priori (‘from what is earlier’), re-coding the aesthetic promises of modernity.
Exhibition and Programs in partnership and co-produced with Agnes Etherington Art Centre and Modern Fuel. Co-presented with Images Festival, the Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University and the Revolutionary Demand for Happiness Working Group.
Born in Tobago, m. nourbeSe philip is an unembedded poet, essayist, novelist, playwright and independent scholar who lives in the space-time of the City of Toronto where she practised law for seven years before becoming a poet and writer. Among her published works are the seminal She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks; the speculative prose poem Looking for Livingston: An Odyssey of Silence; the young adult novel, Harriet’s Daughter; the play, Coups and Calypsos, and four collections of essays including her most recent collection, BlanK. Her book-length poem, Zong!, is a conceptually innovative, genre-breaking epic, which explodes the legal archive as it relates to slavery. Among her awards are numerous Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council grants, including the prestigious Chalmers Award (Ontario Arts Council), the Canada Council’s Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award (Outstanding mid-career artist), as well as the Pushcart Prize (USA), the Casa de las Americas Prize (Cuba), the Lawrence Foundation Prize (USA), the Arts Foundation of Toronto Writing and Publishing Award (Toronto), the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award for Children (Toronto). She has been a finalist for the Dora Award (Canada), the National Magazine Award (Canada) and the Max and Greta Abel Award for Multicultural Literature (Canada). Her fellowships include Guggenheim, McDowell, and Rockefeller (Bellagio). She is an awardee of both the YWCA Woman of Distinction (Arts) and the Elizabeth Fry Rebels for a Cause awards. She has been Writer-in-Residence at several universities and a guest at writers' retreats. M. NourbeSe Philip is the 2020 recipient of PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. In 2020 she was made a Fellow of the Modern Language Association (MLA); in 2022, she was awarded the Canada Council Molson Prize for Literature; in 2023 she was awarded an honourary Doctor of Laws by Queen’s University, and in 2024 was the recipient of a Windham-Campbell Award in poetry.
Tamika Bernard is a movement coach and multidisciplinary creative hailing from New York City and currently based in Toronto. Her personal and professional practices are rooted in a holistic inclusion of identity and experience. She uses music, video and other digital media to promote alternate, creative approaches to movement.
