Melissa General and Jessica Karuhanga — Reorienting Futurities

How can we reimagine futures together, and collectively script narratives of place that magnify undercurrents from the past? Featuring work by both General and Karuhanga, this installation contemplates submerged histories while the artists assert their physical bodies in movements on the land. In a still from her video Reclamation, General turns away from the viewer and towards the lake, enveloping herself in the train of a long red cloth to gesture to the resilience and continuity of Indigenous legacies. In a still from her video being who you are there is no other, Karuhanga critically centres Black female bodies within the terrain of Tkarón:to/Toronto’s suburbs, contesting the erasure of Black bodies and presence on the north shores of the Niigaani-gichigami/Lake Ontario region. Together, General and Karuhanga perform land-based actions near the city’s waterways, situating their bodies at the confluence of history, water and land.