94 Chestnut at the Crossroads, 2016

94 Chestnut at the Crossroads,  4-part series, 2016. Digital C-print, 36” x 36”. 

The portrait series, 94 Chestnut at the Crossroads, a site specific work taken in front the barricade of the old church grounds, features a woman dressed in mourning clothing creating a literal crossroad with her body where we can imagine a center point where the visible and the invisible might meet. 

Here a young Black woman in Victorian mourning dress is barred entry to a site of profound and sacred ancestral significance to Toronto’s Black community. Blocked by a hoarding that encloses the site of the former British Methodist Episcopal Church at 94 Chestnut Street, clockwise the woman rotates to the four cardinal points. Beneath her feet and on the wall behind her, diagrams in chalk, based on West African and Haitian symbols, call the spirits to gather and be acknowledged and witness her creation of a crossroad. Two black hands raised behind her cast a memory of recent calls to action from Black communities.  Anique Jordan has produced a powerful image of resistance against the violent systemic erasure of Black histories and bodies in the city. 

94 Chestnut at the Crossroads is part of the Wedge Curatorial Projects collection.