Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario

Thin white text on a black background reads: Coming September 14, 2019 to March 1, 2020 Bodies in Translation and the Guelph Civic Museum present: Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario Guelph Civic Museum 52 Norfolk St, Guelph. Curated by: Mona Stonefish, Peter Park, Dolleen Tisawii'ashii Manning, Evadne Kelly, Seika Boye and Sky Stonefish

We invite you and your students to Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern OntarioThe exhibition will be featured at the Guelph Civic Museum from September 14, 2019 to March 1, 2020 and will offer guided tours and Q&A sessions to professors and courses addressing themes of diversity, inclusion, decolonization and reconciliation. You can book these in advance (details below) with the exhibition’s lead researcher Dr. Evadne Kelly, Post-doctoral Fellow at Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, University of Guelph, co-creator and co-curator of Into the Light, and Dawn Owen, Curator of Guelph Museums.

Museum Hours of operation are Tuesday – Sunday 10AM-5PM and Fourth Fridays of each month until 9PM. Admission is $6.00/person, and free on Fourth Fridays from 5PM-9PM.

Exhibition Overview

Into the Light examines local histories and ongoing legacies of racial “betterment” thinking in Southern Ontario that de-humanized and disappeared those who did not fit the normative middle-class lives of white, able-bodied settlers.

In the early to mid 20th century, eugenics (race improvement through heredity) was taught in a number of universities throughout Southern Ontario, including Macdonald Institute and the Ontario Agricultural College, two of the three founding colleges that formed the University of Guelph. Educational institutions played a significant role in the eugenics movement by perpetuating destructive ideas that targeted Indigenous, Black, and other racialized populations, poor, and disabled people for segregation in institutions, cultural assimilation and sterilization.

While eugenics sought to eradicate those deemed as “unfit,” this exhibition centres the voices of members of affected communities who continue to work to prevent institutional brutality, oppose colonialism, reject ableism, and foster social justice.

Into the Light is co-curated by Mona Stonefish, Peter Park, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, Evadne Kelly, Seika Boye and Sky Stonefish. This exhibition of artistic, sensory, and material expressions of memory aims to bring one of Guelph’s dark secrets, as well as stories of survival, out of the shadows and into the light.

Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario is co-presented by Guelph Museums and Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology and Access to Life at Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, University of Guelph.

Guided Tours and Q&A sessions

Guided tours and/or Question and Answer sessions with Dr. Evadne Kelly, Post-doctoral Fellow at Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, University of Guelph, Into the Light co-creator and co-curator, are available most Mondays and Thursdays by request. Guided tours with Dawn Owen, Curator of Guelph Museums may be available on other days by request. Tours and Q&A sessions are approximately 1-hour long however this timeframe can be adapted for your group. Please contact Museum Bookings at museum.bookings@guelph.ca to make arrangements in advance of your group visit to the exhibition and visit the Guelph Civic Museum Education Program page for more information on booking group tours.

Further Teaching and Learning Opportunities

Into the Light has great pedagogical value and potential for social justice-oriented faculty and students and content from the exhibition may be integrated into courses for both Fall 2019 and/or Winter 2020 terms. The exhibitionextends to studies in disability, decolonizing, social and political dimensions of bodies, difference, sexuality, archives,history of sociology, psychology and anthropology, history of public health, education, and domestic science,Canadian history and the history of science, race and racism, equity, human rights law and policy, and more.

Into the Light Public Events at the Civic Museum

  • Into the Light Opening Celebration

Friday, September 27, 2019 – 6PM – Free admission

Remarks, performances and reception. All galleries will be open.

  • In Conversation: Eugenics Retold

Saturday, October 26 – 2 PM – Civic Museum – Free admission

A conversation among eugenics activists and Into the Light co-creators and co-curators Mona Stonefish, Peter Park, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, Evadne Kelly, Seika Boye and Sky Stonefish, who work to prevent institutional brutality, colonialism, ableism, and social injustice. The conversation event will have ASL Interpretation and CART Live Captioning.

Access Information

  • For more access information and a visual story please see the Into the Light Access Guide available digitally and in print from Bodies in Translation at www.bodiesintranslation.ca and the Guelph Civic Museum.
  • Into the Light is a multi-sensory exhibition. The content of the exhibition can, to varying degrees, be accessed through smell, sound, touch, and sight.
  • Captioning and Transcripts: There will be captioning and/or transcripts for all audio media in the exhibition. These captions will be visible on or next to the media.
  • There will be narrative audio descriptions provided. Headsets are available throughout the exhibition.
  • There will be a relaxing space available on the second floor of the museum. There will be comfortable chairs in the space.
  • Please help us make this space as scent-free as possible by avoiding wearing scented body products and laundry detergents.
  • There is an all-gender accessible washroom on the main floor of the museum.
  • There is an elevator to get to all floors of the building, and the museum is wheelchair accessible.
  • There is free wi-fi and free parking.
  • American Sign Language (ASL): There will be ASL interpreters at the conversation with co-curators on October 26, 2019. The interpreters will be wearing a badge that says “ASL Interpreter.”
  • Communications Access Real Time Translation (CART): There will be CART live captions at the conversation with co-curators on October 26, 2019. The live captions will be projected.

Links and Social Media

Into the Light on Facebook

Guelph Museums

Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice

Bodies in Translation: Activist Art Technology & Access to Life

Bodies in Translation on Social Media: FacebookTwitterInstagram

Evadne Kelly: Dancing Spirit, Love, and War

We’re so excited to announce the publication of Evadne Kelly’s Dancing Spirit, Love, and War: Performing the Translocal Realities of Contemporary Fiji! Evadne is one of our brilliant postdoctoral researchers.

The cover of Evadne's book, in black and golden yellow. 4 dancers in grass skirts and making fists are at the top, above the title and author in yellow block print.
The cover of Evadne’s book, in black and golden yellow. 4 dancers in grass skirts and making fists are at the top, above the title and author in yellow block print.

This text explores meke, a traditional rhythmic dance accompanied by singing, signifies an important piece of identity for Fijians. Despite its complicated history of colonialism, racism, censorship, and religious conflict, meke remained a vital part of artistic expression and culture. Evadne Kelly performs close readings of the dance in relation to an evolving landscape, following the postcolonial reclamation that provided dancers with political agency and a strong sense of community that connected and fractured Fijians worldwide.

Through extensive archival and ethnographic fieldwork in both Fiji and Canada, Kelly offers key insights into an underrepresented dance form, region, and culture. Her perceptive analysis of meke will be of interest in dance studies, postcolonial and Indigenous studies, anthropology and performance ethnography, and Pacific Island studies.

Available for purchase now wherever you buy your books, and you can also read an excerpt on Google Books.

Exploring Accessibility in the Canadian Theatre Landscape

Cover image of report with woman performing on a wheelchair

We’re so excited that the Relaxed Performance report we wrote in collaboration with British Council Canada is now out in the world!

Relaxed Performance (RP) is an accessibility practice which “invites bodies to be bodies” in theatre spaces, including in their movement and vocalizations. RP also involves technical modifications, which were introduced in RP training sessions across Canada over the past several years.

The report was written by Andrea LaMarre, Carla Rice, and Kayla Besse.

Click here for the report.

Image description: the cover image of the “Relaxed Performance: Exploring Accessibility in the Canadian Theatre Landscape” report. The background is black, and the text is white. The British Council and BIT logos are at the top. The photo is of Erin Ball, a performer with prosthetic legs, balancing on her hands on top of a wheelchair. She has tattoos on her arms, and is wearing a black body suit and looking directly at the camera.

Cripping as Disrupting

Performer with prosthetics doing a hand stand on wheelchair
Erin Ball performs in Crip Shorts. Photo: Michelle Peek Photography courtesy of Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology & Access to Life.

“The theme of disruption carried throughout the symposium with discussions about breaking down exclusionary environments and practices, and the silos that enclose Deaf, Disabled and Mad arts. While the contemporary art world often touts diversity and equality, the spaces in which it’s programmed and the rules by which it’s governed often operate on white, settler and patriarchal models. The mission of disabled artists and their allies is not only to increase visibility for marginalized artists but to break down, or crip, the colonial and ableist structures that have alienated them.

For example, methods of Relaxed Performance, as discussed by Andrea LaMarre, Carla Rice and Kayla Besse, subvert the ableist gaze in theatre. It strives to change the etiquette on what it means to be “a good audience member” in an artistic medium which the speakers identified as having a long history of exclusion and exploitation of marginalized individuals. Having proper interpretation, allowing audience members to speak or come and go from the theatre as needed, or having the actors address the audience are some of the methods they propose to increase access. They also noted that in order to have better representation of deaf or disabled actors, they must first foster deaf or disabled audience members. Inclusion has to start at the door, not in a report or as a one-off on the marquee.”

Excerpt from On the Complexity of Cripping the Arts written by Christiana Myers and published in Canadian Art.

Off the Cuff: Mnidoo Infinity Squeezed through Finite Modulations

Bodies in Translation is pleased to be co-presenting Off the Cuff: Mnidoo Infinity Squeezed through Finite Modulations, a special presentation by Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning (McGill University).

In this talk, Dr. Manning will discuss her dissertation on mnidoo-worlding or mnidoo-consciousnessing and its temporal bending interrelational ethics, specifically its implications for disability studies.

Image of Dolleen ManningDolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning is a member of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nations, an artist, scholar, and youngest of twelve. She is a postdoctoral fellow with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), hosted by the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas (IPLAI) at McGill University. Manning received her PhD from the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at the University of Western Ontario, and holds graduate degrees in contemporary art (MFA, Simon Fraser, 1997) and critical theory (MA, Western, 2005). She works at the intersection of Anishinaabe ontology and epistemology, critical theory, phenomenology, and art.

Thinking Spaces: The Improvisation Reading Group and Speaker Series and Bodies in Translation are hosting this event on Thursday April 5, 2018, 3:30-5:00pm, at the Art Gallery of Guelph at 358 Gordon St.

This event is free and open to the public.

The Thinking Spaces Improvisation Reading Group and Speaker Series is a project of The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, a partnered research institute comprised of 56 scholars from 20 different institutions, hosted at the University of Guelph (with project sites at McGill, Memorial, Regina, UBC, and University of California – Santa Barbara). The Institute’s mandate is to create positive social change through the confluence of improvisational arts, innovative scholarship, and collaborative action. (www.improvisationinstitute.ca)

The Art Gallery of Guelph (AGG) is one of Canada’s premier public art spaces, engaging audiences with innovative artists and ideas from around the world. Through a rigorous and collaborative artistic program that positions visual culture in an ever-changing cultural landscape, the gallery supports social exchange and shapes public discourse.

For questions about the presentation or reading group, please contact Justine Richardson, Project Manager, International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, (519) 824-4120. Ext. 53885, or improv@uoguelph.ca