Politics/Poetics of Migration: Gallery Opening

The Harriet Tubman Institute presents Politics/Poetics of Migration. This Black History Month exhibition invites artists to explore the complex histories, movements, and futures shaped by Black migration – voluntary and forced, historical and contemporary, local and global. From the Middle Passage to the Great Migration, from diaspora to return, this exhibition considers how movement defines Black life, culture, identity, and resistance.

This exhibition seeks artworks that engage both the political realities and the poetic imaginings of migration: displacement, being and belonging, borders and crossings, memory and transformation. Artists are encouraged to think expansively about migration – as a physical journey, a spiritual passage, a social condition, and a creative act.

In this political moment of renewed attention to migration, climate crisis, and global displacement, Politics/Poetics of Migration asks:

• How do Black artists trace, remember, or imagine migration?
• What new geographies of freedom and belonging are being formed?
• How do creative practices embody movement, survival, and reimagination?

Through the convergence of art, history, and lived experience, this exhibition aims to illuminate how Black mobility continues to shape the world’s cultural and political landscapes.

For questions or more information, please contact: Yasmine Espert and Muna-Udbi A. Ali at blackmigrationarts@gmail.com

This event could not happen without the kind support from the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC) and the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies (RCCS).