ADINKRA Presentations
Friday, November 6, 2026
Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora
OCAD University
205 Richmond St. W., Room 410, Toronto
ADMISSION: Members: $12.75 | Early bird: $15 (until Oct 24) | General: $20
6:30 - 9:30 p.m.
Ancestor
Gloria Blizzard
Gloria will be reading an excerpt from Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas: essays on music, memory, and motion — her powerful and deeply personal essay collection. Using traditional narrative and the tools of poetry, her essays hover at the crossroads where art, science, and spirit collide.
The Blackburn Art Project
Charmaine Lurch
Lucie and Thornton Blackburn escaped American enslavement in 1832. Their resilience and determination led them to establish the first taxicab service in 1830s York (now Toronto). By situating the Blackburns within the legend of flying Africans and Toni Morrison's literary depiction of death in Sula, Charmaine discusses her sculptural work-in-progress that honours them.
Doorways of Return:
On Spiritual Shame and Metaphysical Justice
Daphnée Nostrome
Colonial violence demonized African sacred knowledge, calling it uncivilized. While Black people increasingly work to reclaim their indigenous practices, many are still afraid of being shunned for doing so. This audiovisual presentation is an exploration of grief and metaphysical justice, which asks: How do we reclaim our ancestral inheritance and transmute this spiritual shame?
Public Displays of Affection
Karen Miranda Augustine
Karen Miranda's art project documents makeshift, spontaneous, and unconventional memorials encountered throughout Toronto. Personal yet often activist in nature, most of these tributes mark the passing of marginalized, murdered, and lesser-known individuals. They offer beautiful, radical expressions of dignity, remembrance, outrage, and love.
Black Femicide Matters:
Documenting and Preventing the Erasure of Black Life in Canada
Tope Adefarakan & Nicole De Jesus
This presentation provides a decolonial account of the murder of Black women, girls, and gender-expansive people in Canada, whilst also highlighting institutional gaps, data collection challenges, and some key historical events contributing to the erasure of Black life and death in Canada. Black femicide is also disucssed through the lens of indigenous Yoruba understandings of gender.
Archives as Sites of Reclamation
Bushra Junaid
Drawing on fragmentary records, family photos, oral histories, and visual culture, Bushra will discuss the ways she juxtaposes the archival with personal memory and transnational history to shine a light on Black diasporic histories in Atlantic Canada.
ADINKRA is supported by:
