Wanted confronts the forgotten history of Canadian enslavement of Black and Indigenous people by transforming detailed descriptions of enslaved people posted in advertisements by Canadian slaveholders into photographs that depict freedom seekers imagining and enacting liberty.

Wanted series 2011 – 2018
• 68” x 47” edition of 3
• Colour photograph on vinyl, lightbox

Full Description

Some of Canada’s earliest Black settlers were enslaved people yet their histories, dating back 400 years are conspicuously missing from the national narrative. WANTED confronts this erasure by presenting a visual and embodied archive of enslavement in Canada. Created in collaboration with Camal Pirbhai, WANTED draws from detailed descriptions found in advertisements posted by Canadian slaveholders in early newspapers. Rather than portraying these freedom seekers in the past where their lives are constrained by the violence and inhumanity of institutionalized bondage, we presented them in the future space of possibility they dreamed about as they set off on their journey to freedom. At first glance, the photos appear to be fashion photos but the text on the images is taken from the old newspaper ads displayed with them.

Exhibition & Touring History

Art Gallery of Windsor 2015 – WANTED was shown as part of Border Cultures 3

SixtyEight Art Institute 2017 – Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of Rough Trade

Art Gallery of Ontario 2017 – Part of Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood

Latcham Art Centre 2019 – Whitchurch-Stouffville, Canada, as part of Where We Stand.

Note: In Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood, WANTED was presented as a book, a large format wall print within the exhibition, large format signage outside the AGO, and a video loop at Yonge-Dundas Square.

Scholarly & Academic Writing

ASAP Journal, 2018 – Brown, Juanita. b.O.s. 8.2 / Wanted / Kimberly Juanita Brown
Read Article

Art Gallery of Ontario, 2017 – Nelson, Charmaine A. Re-imagining the Enslaved Eighteenth-Century Freedom Seekers as Twenty-First Century Sitters
Read Essay

Redmond, S. A. Unsettling National Narratives and Multiplying Voices: Art Museums as a Bold New Spaces for Social Advocacy and Decolonization, A Canadian Case Study, Museum Management & Curatorship, 2020.