THE POETRY IS NOT A LUXURY SERIES BEGINS

T-Dot Renaissance and Accents Bookstore presents...POETRY IS NOT A LUXURY SERIES

Starting on Sunday, February 12th, T-Dot Renaissance in partnership with Accents Bookstore will be presenting a new series called Poetry is Not a Luxury.  For many of us in T-Dot Renaissance, art is not a hobby or a casual past-time.  It is an urgent and necessary practice for us to maintain our sanity, to regain perspective and to imagine greater possibilities.  This series will explore art as a "vital necessity of our existence." (Audre Lorde)  Featuring original works by members of the T-Dot Renaissance Collective, the series will explore the urgency of poetry in a multitude of forms; from the written word to the visual image.

The first night of the series will feature original works by T-Dot Renaissance members Kim Crosby and Quentin Vercetty

Where: Accents Bookstore - 1790 Eglinton Avenue West (Dufferin and Eglinton)

When: Sunday, February 12th, 6pm

Cover: $10

For more info, please check out the  flyer

Please save the upcoming dates of the series:

• April 15th featuring Amanda Parris, Ania Soul and Afrakaren
• May 10th featuring Kemba King, Nayani Thiyagarajah and Myk Miranda
• July 15th featuring Nadijah Robinson, Kayla Carter and David Delisca

twitter: @tdotrenaissance

FLIPPING THE SCRIPT!

The Visual Arts section of the Tdot Renaissance is around this central theme of flipping the gaze. Changing Perception. Reclaim and retelling the story the way it should be told by the one who experience the story. This idea ofcourse is not original as for centuries people have struggled, died and made sacrifices just to tell their own stories, the true story, our stories the ones they don't teach you in the colonial school system or his-story class which are usually very Euro-centric centered. 

Some of the artist who inspired me to tell like it is and flip the story and show/tell it how it should be or in the ideal way of how we'd like it to be.

Such Artist are;

D'bi Young 

who flips the idea of gender and being a black female.

Kevin "WAK" Williams

Who is a celebrate prominent painter and illustrator whose prints can be found in almost every Afrocentric household as his images show black love and a detailed man and womyn body in ways that have been seen often in many other popular artist's work.

 Hank Willis Thomas 

 He reapproipate and packages and expose the hidden messages that he feels are attached to certain brands and advertisments

Kehinde Wiley
 

A homosexual artist who flipped the script by illustrating black urban males in position and with posture of royalty and power layered with elegant Baroque and victorian influenced ornament designs.

There are many other ethnic artist who be flipping the script and flipping the gaze of what masses normally see and that is exactly what we who are apart of T-Dot Renaissance is doing and you can easily get a sense of that from this image that I create which is a reference to Leonardo Da Vinci's Virtuvian Man. Da Vinci's concept was to show the perfect porportioned man as he can fit in the standard shape of a sphere (the world) and a square (the universe). I decided to flip that script and show how even with imperfection and addatives we fit in our own world (an oval) and the universe still bounds us (rectangle) and to the heart beat of life we live as our drums is layered with symbolisms that sustain us like love, life, sexuality and other things.

 

t-dot renaissance, c'est quoi? - kemba king

calling yourself a renaissance says a lot.

and we have a lot to say.

t-dot renaissance is a group of emerging and blossoming multi-talented, multi-linguistic artists creating a new blueprint for young artists of colour in the city.

it's not to say that there has not been art and young people in toronto, but it is time that there is holistic, documented account of the politicised issues that affect young people of colour in the city. of course t-dot renaissance is global not just with the connections that the group and its supporters have, but because of the issues that will be presented.

t-dot renaissance will continue to create and challenge stories through macro-genres of film, performance and visual art. art outside of the box. kind of like an artistic rubik's cube.

so mark your calendars. the date is set. toronto. december 3rd - 4th, 2011.

details to follow...