published in visual arts news
Artist and activist Kate MacDonald’s experiences growing up black in Nova Scotia shaped her into a fighter for marginalized voices: “Even since a very young age—I grew up in Halifax and being that it is a smaller city I faced some ostracization,” she says.
“I feel like through this young narrative that I had to create for myself, the seedlings for something were already in motion.” That something was The Magic Project, an initiative with the goal of highlighting the voices of marginalized communities and challenging stereotypes through facilitating self-determined representation. “The goal is to make everyone feel like they have a voice and that they matter,” explains McDonald.
MacDonald launched The Magic Project in December 2016 with Emma Paulson, who by contrast has settler ancestry and came to Halifax by way of British Columbia and Ottawa. For Paulson, it was their mother’s lessons of treating others with respect that instilled similar values: “That’s what The MagicProject basically boils down to for me, listening to others perspectives and lifting the unheard voices up to a place where they feel heard and respected,” she explains.
The artists of The Magic Project identify and work closely with the queer community, working with artist-run centres who have been striving to position marginalized voices more centrally to their programming. For The Magic Project, navigating Halifax’s arts scene has not always been easy.
“In the beginning there were a few local places that didn’t deem our art acceptable, and really passed judgment on the perspective from which we were creating it,” recalls Paulson. “That was really tricky to navigate, especially for Kate, as there were non-black individuals heavily criticizing the Afrocentric perspectives we were trying to lift up and get out there.” But they found allies in local artist-run organizations such as Eyelevel, who Paulson says “has been one of the best galleries to work with, as they respect the positions that we are coming from and wish to highlight voices like Kate’s and myself.”
Their work together began with the photo series Black Girls Are Magic, growing into an artist collective that instigates events where questions of accessibility and representation are brought to the forefront of social media and community discussion.
“Photography was the method and photography was the answer” MacDonald reflects on the genesis of The Magic Project, describing how gathering people from marginalized communities for photo shoots became their foundation. “Everyone’s had an experience with a photograph, photographs have been carried through generations.” It is through this medium’s accessibility that The Magic Project is able to repurpose a spectrum of representations. They see the importance of rooting their work in self-representation, engaging photographers who are from the subject’s community acts not only as a way of cultivating trust and comfort in their subjects, but of transforming this process of art-making into the art itself. There is an inextricable performativity to the way that these artists approach their work. The photo shoot becomes a gathering where meals and conversations are shared – and these moments of sanctuary are easily translated in their powerful and emotive photographs.
Drawing on this idea of curating space, MacDonald and Paulson began hosting workshops and discussions. During the Obey Convention they hosted Obaby at the Khyber Centre for the Arts. This multi-sensory installation explored what a true all-ages art event could be. As youth educators at the Uniacke Centre for Community Development, creating work that was driven by the ways children understand the world was important to both artists. The artists created a sensory forest of bubbles, pool noodles and scented goop – constantly playing and facilitating the space to invite noise and destruction. Paulson notes that the kids immediately wanted to tear apart and rebuild the space, building relationships with the objects and being thrilled to discover that they could take things with them when they left. “The next day we found one of our pool noodle trees stuck in the ground on Quinpool.”
Their work is a harmonious merger of art and activism—creation and presentation, audience and artist are all fundamentally linked. Their work invokes mechanisms of intervention and relational aesthetics as they toe the line between instigator and artist. Their projects seemingly conjure a lack of ownership, and a mantra of The Magic Project is “everybody counts—every single person and every single experience counts all of the time.” Their events are driven by motives that are far from any kind of ownership or ego, they don’t press an agenda or views on participants but focus with careful intention on holding space in a multitude of interpretations. They hold social and professional space for the artists whom they highlight, and space in their discussions for the audience to bring forward their own views, however uncomfortable and challenging.
In September of 2017 they facilitated a discussion on art, activism and race relations at FLOTILLA, the bi-annual conference of artist-run centres. This talk was part of Eyelevel’s Food for Thoughts series, and played on both the gallery and the conference’s intent to disrupt the typical artist talk or professional conference. Cognizant of their audience – professional artists, curators and cultural workers – The Magic Project set out a finely-crafted space serving hors d’oeuvres and cocktails in a local couple’s well-appointed living room. Like all of their events they brought their respective backgrounds as visual and performance artists, evident in their awareness of colour, lighting and their position with respect to the attendees; energetically bouncing conversations off of one another and around the room. The Magic Project believes that this artistic handling of community spaces lends itself to doing everything with intention. What serves to create the warm and welcoming atmosphere which enables challenging dialogues to occur simultaneously creates installation and performance.
These havens for art and discussion welcome opposing views and heightened emotions in the subtext of an unspoken but mutually agreed-upon conduct. The Magic Project relishes discomfort with the topical issues addressed and are able to do so because of their sensitive and careful handling of curated scenarios. Where their individual practices and community activism intertwine is a place that rejects exclusion in all of its institutional, compartmentalized or academic forms – embracing instead collaboration, humour and healing magic.