The video provides an unusual opportunity to go with the artist on a walk-through of his powerful works about the African diaspora, and his own personal journey.

Talismans from African migrations

These objects are Oluseye’s “reimaginations of the talismans that Africans past and present have carried on journeys aross the Atlantic,” including on slave ships (one of them built in Canada).

The sculpture at the top of this post is “Mighty Peter,” Oluseye’s interpretation of the iconic, American image of Whipped Peter, an escaped slave. An 1863 photo of his savagely scarred back helped raise a national outcry against the cruelty of slavery.

Mighty Peter: Charcoal and pastel on vinyl print, nails, magnet, wood, brick, cowrie shells. 12 x 8 x 5¼ inches, 2024.

Learn More:

Oluseye’s website, here.

His Instagram, here.

Oluseye exhibition: BLACK EXODUS: WINTER ARRIVAL at Daniel Faria gallery.

Young is a renowned artist and author, whose work is exhibited and collected internationally. She spends her days creating miniature worlds from fine Japanese papers.

Since graduating from sculpture and printmaking at the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1995, Cybèle has been showing her work in galleries around the world, including New York, LA, Miami, London, Stockholm, Japan, Singapore, Korea and across Canada.

“I create exact miniature replicas of real life objects and abstract shapes,” Young says.

“Before the sculptures are sequestered to life under glass, I often animate their moving parts in stop motion film works, offering clues to their fictional history.” See the stop motion video below or on Vimeo here.

Her work resides in major collections around the world – including OMERS, Ernst and Young, BMO, Gryphon, Canadian Foreign Affairs and the Canada Council Art Bank – and in the private homes of collectors such as Ben Stiller, Noah Baumbach, and Christian Louboutin.

Cybèle Young’s website, here.

Her Instagram, here.

Her books, here.

Photos of Adrienne Trent’s  art were fed into an AI program, creating a unique result. Trent decided to create an actual sculptural collection based on the AI image. The tip for this installation came from a blog I follow (Graffiti Lux Art & More) and I will leave more explanations to that fascinating post (re-blogged below) from Resa McConaghy.

This is a look back at how Brian Jungen‘s monumental elephant sculpture made out of couches, and then bronzed, came to be. It was the first-ever public art commission by the Art Gallery of Ontario. Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill 2022 is a riveting work from one of Canada’s most creative artists.

Jungen is an award-winning sculptor of Dane-zaa and Swiss ancestry based in the North Okanagan of British Columbia. His first large-scale work in bronze, the elephant has been called a poetic tribute to the plight of captive creatures since it models a performing circus elephant.

Jungen decided to work with leather couches and chairs after seeing discarded furniture piled on Toronto sidewalks,” the AGO said at the time. “Finishing the work in bronze is both an homage to British sculptor Henry Moore – whose work Jungen has long admired and engaged with – and a material interest in how, over time, bronze comes to resemble leather,” the gallery said. Above, detail of the bronzed second hand couches and other furniture used.

The pandemic separated the artist from his work

Jungen completed a full-size prototype in his studio in early 2020, and it was transported to the Walla Walla Foundry in Washington state to be cast in bronze. But it had barely arrived at the foundry before the border closed due to the pandemic, and Jungen was separated from his work.

Jungen communicated with the foundry remotely, from across the border, on the details for completion of his work in bronze.

It was two years before Jungen saw his elephant again.

Watch the Couch Monster’s story in this YouTube video

Jungen was inspired by the story of Jumbo, a captive circus elephant killed by a train in St. Thomas, Ont., in 1885. “Jungen calls this creature a couch monster because captivity of any kind is transformative and will inevitably break the spirit and will of the captured,” the gallery said. The work’s Dane-zaa subtitle, Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill, translates as “my heart is ripping.”

The Couch Monster’s spot at the AGO is where Henry Moore’s Large Two Forms once sat. (This by the way is the sculpture often identified as the inspiration for Murray McLauchlan’s iconic song about Toronto: “Down by the Henry Moore” here, although many believe he meant the Henry Moore at City Hall.”)

Tragically, B.C. wildfires destroyed artist Brian Jungen’s studio in August, 2021. The Couch Monster installation was the studio’s final completed piece.

More about Brian Jungen in previous posts on Canadian Art Junkie, here.

His Instagram, here.

Brian Jungen at Catriona Jeffries gallery, here.

The Art Gallery of Ontario page on the Couch Monster, here.