Jorn Weisbrodt, artistic director of Luminato.Fernando Morales/The Globe and Mail
Is Luminato artistic director Jorn Weisbrodt planning to bring the controversial Exhibit B to Toronto?
Social media bubbled with rumours this week that white South African artist Brett Bailey's performance installation that features black actors chained and in cages was headed to Toronto's annual multi-arts festival.
Exhibit B was hailed by many critics as a powerful piece of anti-colonialist performance at the Edinburgh Festival last summer, but was shut down this fall in London at the Barbican Centre by anti-racist protesters who felt it revived the 19th-century "human zoos" it was intending to critique.
Trey Anthony, playwright of the hit Da Kink in My Hair, was one of several local black artists who posted on Facebook that she had been invited to a round-table discussion about the possibility of bringing Exhibit B to Luminato.
"My response to Luminato was, I would not support a show that chose to showcase Jewish people in gas chambers, all in the sake of art, because of the painful, and hurtful history of the Jewish community," she wrote. "Why would you think it ok to showcase the art of a white South African displaying black people in a zoo!"
Similar feedback – invited or not – followed elsewhere on Twitter and Facebook. "Yall are delusional if you think that a human zoo exhibit is going down in Toronto. DELUSIONAL," tweeted @kayypea, in a representative response .
In a statement, Luminato confirmed the festival had invited "a group of African-Canadian artists, scholars and community leaders" to a discussion planned for April 22 to "help us make a decision regarding Exhibit B." However, due to the response, both online and private, ahead of the discussion, "Luminato Festival has determined that 2016 is not the right time to present Exhibit B in Toronto."
The round-table will go ahead, however: "Exhibit B remains a project we are interested in discussing. Luminato Festival will continue with the planned April 22 meeting to discuss this piece and the larger questions that arise from this discussion."
This year's Luminato runs from June 19 to 28 at various Toronto venues.
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