Future Diasporas is a publication that celebrates the stories of racialized diasporic artists as they reconcile with their past, negotiate the present amid Tkaronto/Toronto’s unaffordable urban landscape, and make space for just and flourishing futures.
By drawing on conversations with eight racialized diasporic artists and highlighting their artwork, this publication shares deeply personal stories about diasporic identities and ancestral histories, commemorative art practices, migratory patterns, and displacements. The artists share challenging experiences facing institutional racism, tokenism, precarity, and access to affordable space in Toronto. Specific community cultural spaces such as 888 Dupont, 187 Augusta, and Xpace Cultural Centre are explored as places that cultivate togetherness yet experience shifting challenges, needs and desires. Two visions, each with three actionable recommendations, provide generative ideas for building supportive systems and making space for generations to come. Overall, this project calls for a cultural shift that is centered on understanding the past, building collective agency in the present, and re-imagining the future diasporas.
Author-Curator: Alycia Shanika Doering
Cover & Contributing Artist: Bianca Weeko Martin
Contributing Artists: Waard Ward, Mirusha Yogarajah, Philip Leonard Ocampo, Jana Ghalayini, Hima Batavia, Tamara “Solem” Al-Issa, & Cathleen Calica
7.5" x 9.65"; Perfectly bound coated soft cover publication; 162 pages of digitally printed colour; ~65% artwork & visuals, ~35% storytelling.
Toronto, Canada; 2023