Liz Ikiriko: Flags of Unsung Countries
Art Gallery of South Western Manitoba
January 16, 2020 to March 14, 2020
Originating at Dunlop Art Gallery
Flags of Unsung Countries is a photographic installation exploring new ceremonies, migration and embodied archives. Photographed in Canada and Nigeria, the work functions as a rite of passage. The exhibition charts the process of understanding a father's struggles as an African immigrant challenged by mental illness living in the Canadian Prairies. The layered images intersect geography and memory in a search for a location of belonging. The work asks the questions: How do we reconcile displacement with a sense of rootedness on adopted homelands? What is required of a home - is it a geography, a structure, a memory? Do we choose to belong or does it choose us? Flags of Unsung Countries uses photography as a language and an archive to map a path of the African diaspora.
