Join us for a conversation between God of Gods: A Canadian Play artist Deanna Bowen and Maya Wilson-Sanchez on mining the archive for the play The God of Gods (1919), a play written and directed by Carroll Aikins (1888-1967), founder of the first national theatre in Canada and artistic director of Hart House Theatre (1927–29).
Aikins’ play, staged at Hart House in 1922, projected the horrors of war into a loose adaptation of Romeo and Juliet — using ‘native’ motifs. Deanna Bowen’s film is a conversation by Indigenous artists and writers John G. Hampton, Peter Morin, Lisa Myers, Archer Pechawis, and cheyanne turions.
Speakers
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Deanna Bowen
Artist
Deanna Bowen is a descendant of the Alabama- and Kentucky-born Black Prairie pioneers of Amber Valley and Campsie, Alberta. Bowen’s family history has been the central pivot of her auto-ethnographic interdisciplinary works since the early 1990s. Her broader artistic/educational practice examines history, historical writing, and the ways in which artistic and technological advancements impact individual and collective authorship.
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Maya Wilson-Sanchez
Writer, researcher, and curator
Maya Wilson-Sanchez is a writer, researcher, and curator based in Toronto. Her writing has been published in The Senses & Society Journal, Canadian Art, the Journal of Visual and Critical Studies, and in the anthology Other Places: Reflections on Media Arts Practices in Canada(PUBLIC Books, 2019). Maya has worked in collections, research, programming, and curatorial research roles at Gallery TPW, the Art Gallery of Ontario, OCAD University, Onsite Gallery, Xpace Cultural Centre, and the Royal Ontario Museum. Her research for Deanna Bowen’s God of Gods: A Canadian Play significantly contributed to the formation of this exhibition and all its contents. Maya is the inaugural recipient of the Art Museum’s Curatorial Residence Award.