The Transformative Memory International Network (TMIN) held a MemoLab in Toronto from June 18 to 22, 2024, bringing together more than 40 artists, activists and scholars in an experimental space involving artistic creation, knowledge exchange and emplaced learning at sites of memory. “Difficult Archives, Difficult Memories: Transformations in Black and Indigenous Worlds” hosted participants from Colombia, Uganda, Indonesia and Canada to discuss the themes of absence in the archive, land dispossession, as well as lived, felt, embodied memories. Artists, community works, and museum directors from Butterflies in Spirit, the Africville Museum, Black Urbanism Toronto and the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre contributed to our discussions of the Canadian context.
The Toronto Memolab featured TMIN Learners Network Gathering and the first TMIN Traveling Exhibit titled “Mapping and Reimaging: Difficult Archives, Difficult Memories,” with artwork from Uganda, Palestine, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Indigenous territories worldwide, Cuba, and Colombia. You can read more about the Memolab and the Exhibit here. Funded by a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Grant, TMIN is co-lead by Professors Erin Baines (SPPGA) and Pilar Riaño-Alcalá (Social Justice Institute). The Toronto Memolab was co-organized with TMIN members Dr. Kamari Clarke (Transnational Justice Project at the University of Toronto), Dr. Juliane Okot Bitek (Queens University) and Elizabeth Shaffer (The University of British Columbia).
