Deanna Bowen is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist whose 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. In recent years, Bowen’s work has involved rigorous examination of her family lineage and their connections to the Black Prairie pioneers of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Creek Negroes and All-Black towns of Oklahoma, the extended Kentucky/Kansas Exoduster migrations and the Ku Klux Klan.
Most recently, the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver hosted Bowen’s solo exhibition A Harlem Nocturne, (which has traveled since to the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, OBORO in Montreal, and the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff), the University of Toronto hosted God of Gods: A Canadian Play (this exhibition was also included in 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art), and the Kitchener – Waterloo Art Gallery hosted Black Drones in the Hive. The artistic products of her research have also been presented at Western Front (Vancouver), Gallery 44 (Toronto), SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), Mercer Union (Toronto), the Banff Centre, the Royal Ontario Museum of Art (Toronto), the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, and the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia). Her 2017 Mercer Union (Toronto) exhibition ON TRIAL The Long Doorway was awarded the 2018 Ontario Association of Art Galleries’ Monographic Exhibition of the Year award. Bowen has received numerous awards, grants and fellowships including the 2014 William H. Johnson Prize, 2016 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a 2017 New Chapter Grant, and a 2018 Canada Council Concept to Realization Grant.
Bowen was included in the summer group exhibitions at MKG127, Record Shop in 2018 and Somebody, curated by Liza Eurich in 2019. Bowen’s first solo exhibition with MKG127, King Studio Photos, opened in October, 2019. Her work can be found in the collections of the McMaster Museum of Art, the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, The Art Museum at the University of Toronto, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Remai Modern, Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank and Scotiabank among many others.
In 2020 Deanna Bowen received the Governor General’s Award in visual arts, and in 2021 she was awarded the Scotiabank Photography Award. On the occasion of receiving this award, Steidl has published a monograph encompassing her practice to date.
- Charles Guilbert, “Profils – Deanna Bowen,” Vie Des Arts, January 13, 2021.
- Jacob Gallagher-Ross, “Twilight of the Idols,” Yale Theatre Review, November 1, 2020.
- Pablo Larios, “Why the Real 11th Biennale Happens Outside the Institution,” Frieze Magazine, September 25, 2020.
- Deanna Bowen and Maya Wilson-Sanchez, “A Centenary of Influence,” Canadian Art, April 20, 2020.
- Maya Wilson-Sanchez, “Blackface, Brownface and Redface in the Arts: A Bibliography,” Canadian Art, October 9, 2019.
- Laurence Butet-Roch, “Reckoning with Canada’s History of Whitewashing,” Aperture, June 8, 2019
- Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud, “To Salvage an Archive,” Canadian Art, June 6, 2019
- Vanessa Lakewood, “I continue to shape: Maria Thereza Alves, Deanna Bowen, Cathy Busby, Justine A. Chambers, Nicholas Galanin, Ame Henderson, Maria Hupfield, Jessica Karuhanga, Lisa Myers, Michalene Thomas, Joseph Tisiga, Charlene Vickers,” C Magazine #141, Spring 2019.
- Ayesha Habib, “A Harlem Nocturne,” NUVO Magazine, April 19, 2019.
- Robin Laurence, “At the Capture Photography Festival, Artist Deanna Bowen Resurrects Vancouver’s Historic Black Community with A Harlem Nocturne,” The Georgia Straight, April 3, 2019.
- Connor Garel, “Why Have There Been No Great Black Canadian Women Artists?” Canadian Art, January 10, 2019.
- Bart Gazzola, “Contested Narratives / Absence Omission Redaction,” The Sound, July 12, 2018.
- Anaïs Duplan, “Communication after Refusal: The Turn to Love and Polyvocality,” MICE Magazine, June 2018
- Emmanuelle Andrews & Katrina Sellinger, “‘They’re all conjurors’: A Conversation with Deanna Bowen & Cecily Nicholson,” The Capilano Review 3.32, Spring 2018.
- Jas M. Morgan, “Art in 2017: A View from Turtle Island,” Canadian Art, December 28, 2017.
- Valerie Hill, “Artist uses family conflict and an unknown element of history as inspiration for her work,” Waterloo Region Record, October 22, 2017.