Elements of a counter-exhibition

Excavating and countering a Canadian history and legacy of eugenics

Bibliographic Data

ID5017701
AuthorsEvadne Kelly (0000-0001-9427-785X, Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice University of Guelph Guelph Ontario Canada, corresponding author), Dolleen Tisawii''Ashii Manning, Dolleen Tisawii'Ashii Manning (Department of Philosophy and the Cultural Studies Program Queen's University Kingston Ontario Canada), Seika Boye (Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies University of Toronto Guelph Ontario Canada), C Rice (0000-0001-7490-8749, Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice University of Guelph Guelph Ontario Canada), Dawn Owens (Guelph Museums Guelph Ontario Canada), Dawn Owen (Guelph Museums Guelph Ontario Canada), Dawn E Owen (University of Guelph), Sky Stonefish (Anishinaabe jingle dress dancer, photographer, and activist Windsor Ontario Canada), Mona Stonefish (Anishinaabe Elder, artist, and Traditional Knowledge Keeper Windsor Ontario Canada), Mona Kahawane Stonefish (University of Windsor)
Year2021
Volume57
Issue1
Pages12-33
Publication date2021-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-5061 • E-ISSN: 1520-6696
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/jhbs.22081
PMID33493380
OpenAlexW3123255238
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited35

Into the Light, a recently mounted collectively curated museum exhibition, exposed and countered histories and legacies of 20th-century "race betterment" pedagogies taught in Ontario's postsecondary institutions that targeted some groups of people, including Anishinaabe, Black, and other racialized populations, and disabled and poor people, with dehumanizing ideas and practices. This article advances understandings of the transformative potential of centralizing marginalized stories in accessible and creative ways to disrupt, counter, and draw critical attention to the brutal impacts of oppressive knowledge. The "counter-exhibition" prioritized stories of groups unevenly targeted by such oppression to contest and defy singular narratives circulating in institutional knowledge systems of what it means to be human. The authors draw on feminist, decolonial and disability scholarship to analyze the exhibition's curation for the ways it collectively and creatively: (1) brought the past to the present through materializing history and memory in ways that challenged archival silences; and (2) engaged community collaboration using accessible, multisensory, multimedia storytelling to "speak the hard truths of colonialism" (Lonetree) while constructing a new methodology for curating disability and access (Cachia). The authors show how the exhibition used several elements, including counter-stories, to end legacies of colonial eugenic violence and to proliferate accounts that build solidarity across differences implicated in and impacted by uneven power (Gaztambide-Fernández

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Colonialism · CONTEST · Dehumanization · Disability studies · Eugenics · Exhibition · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Racism · Scapegoating · Scholarship · Sociology · Solidarity · Storytelling · Visual arts · Anthropology · Canadian Identity and History · Disability Rights and Representation · Gender Studies · History · Law · Museology · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics

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