Sharing Indo-Caribbean Stories
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
4:00 - 6:00 pm
Gallery 1C03 and Room 2M70 (second floor of Manitoba Hall), The University of Winnipeg
Do you have a story to share about your Indo-Caribbean ancestry?
Please join us for a guided tour of Heidi McKenzie's Reclaimed: Indo-Caribbean HerStories exhibition, followed by a community storytelling session!
Scholar Nalini Mohabir states that Heidi McKenzie's art "helps us reckon with our Indo-Caribbean mothers and grandmothers as well as with unspoken colonial histories [of indentureship]." For McKenzie’s Holding Ancestry artwork, she photographed herself and other Indo-Caribbean women in her community holding a photo of their foremother, and invited them to share a story about their ancestry. In doing so, McKenzie "reveals how we all live inside these histories."
To extend the impact of McKenzie's Holding Ancestry artwork and accompanying HerStories video interviews, we invite members of Winnipeg's Indo-Caribbean community to share a few words about your family history. If you are able, please bring an object that connects in some way to the story you would like to tell about your Indo-Caribbean heritage. It might be a photo of your ancestor or another possession that offers a starting point for your story.
Saint Lucien Nobel winning poet Derek Walcott, writes: “Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape. It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments, the cracked heirlooms whose restoration shows its white scars”. It is in this spirit of sharing these narratives with each other that we hope to foster intergenerational connections across and through the community.
If are you interesting in sharing your familial story at this event, please sign up here:
Sign up to Share Your Story
This event is free and open to anyone to attend!
We will begin at 4:00 pm in Gallery 1C03 where gallery Director/Curator Jennifer Gibson will give a tour of the exhibition. We continue at 4:30 pm in Room 2M70 where University of Winnipeg professors Dr. Emma Alexander (History) and Dr. Aarzoo Singh (Women’s and Gender Studies) will facilitate the main event. After watching a few HerStories videos, Indo-Caribbean audience members will be invited, if they wish, to take a few moments to share their story. We will then have time for conversation and refreshments.
We acknowledge support of the University of Winnipeg BIPOC Events Fund for making this event possible. Reclaimed: Indo-Caribbean HerStories and this event are presented as part of the Flash Photographic Festival.
GETTING HERE AND ACCESSIBILITY
If you plan to attend this event and require ASL interpretation or have other specific accessibility needs, please contact Gallery Director/Curator Jennifer Gibson as soon as possible.
Maps of The University of Winnipeg campus, including accessibility and parking maps, can be found at https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/maps/. Gallery 1C03 is located on the main floor of Centennial Hall at 515 Portage Avenue. Accessible, street level visitor entrances with auto door openers and ramps are via Portage Avenue, Ellice Avenue and Spence Street. The gallery doors are equipped with auto-openers. There is a gender-inclusive, accessible washroom less than 100 feet from the Gallery entrance.
Room 2M70 is located on the second floor of Manitoba Hall, marked with an "M" on the campus map. It is connected to Centennial Hall where Gallery 1C03 is located. From the Gallery, visitors walk about 200 feet down a hallway and may take an elevator in Manitoba Hall to the second floor. Room 2M70 is about 50 feet from the elevator. There is a gender-inclusive washroom inside the room.