MKG127 is pleased to present King Studio Photos an exhibition of new work by Deanna Bowen

Opening Saturday, October 12, 2:00 – 5:00 PM

King Studio Photos is a series of 12 large scale portraits of Black burlesque dancers from 1960-69. The portraits were shot at the now-defunct King Photo Studio, in Vancouver, BC. The studio passed hands and changed names several times until its closure in 1981. The 4×5 b&w Kodak negatives Bowen is working with are professional photos of dancers Abbey Petite, Sheila, Montika, as well as musician Frank Struthers. As with most of Bowen’s autoethnographic work, these images are connected to family in that Bowen’s maternal grandmother cared for Montika’s children when she worked.

Beyond the personal, this photo series documents the lives and presence of unknown black women and men in a city that consistently erases black people from its civic history and consciousness. That is to say, Vancouver is a city that maintains that there is no black community other than the eradicated Hogan’s Alley that was forcibly removed in the late 1960s. Overall, Canadian antiblackness actively relies upon a “no black people, no racism” mythology, and Bowen’s art practice does the work of excavating and mapping the purposefully forgotten thriving black communities that have since dispersed throughout the nation and the US. This series of photos does the additional work of mapping an under-researched circuit of cross border migration between British Columbia, Washington State and California, and extended migrations between British Columbia and the all-black (Afro-Creek) colonies in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Deanna Bowen first showed at MKG127 in the group exhibition Record Shop (2018) and King Studio Photos is Bowen’s first solo exhibition with MKG127. Bowen’s auto-ethnographic practice examines race, migration, historical writing and authorship. Bowen makes use of a repertoire of artistic gestures in order to define the Black body and trace its presence and movement in place and time. 

The artistic products of Bowen’s research have been presented at Western Front (Vancouver), Gallery 44 (Toronto), SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), Mercer Union (Toronto), Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, the Banff Centre, the Royal Ontario Museum of Art (Toronto), CAG (Vancouver) and most recently, the Art Museum at the University of Toronto where her project, God of Gods: A Canadian Play continues until November 30. Bowen has also received numerous awards, grants and fellowships including the 2014 William H. Johnson Prize and the 2016 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Her work are held in various collections including Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center at University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), Syracuse University (NY), Thames Gallery (Chatham, ON), McMaster University, (Hamilton, ON), Concordia University (Montreal) and Wedge Curatorial Projects (Toronto).

Bowen is featured on season 2 of CBC’s In The Making. The episode can be seen HERE.

Deanna Bowen would like the acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council.