Co-presented by Artspeak Gallery and Critical Image Forum, UBC: Artists Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Karice Mitchell explore themes of representation and legibility of form in contemporary art. In conversation with author and scholar Jasbir K. Puar, Professor Emerita at Rutgers University, faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia, the presentation invites critical reflection on their artistic practices and the material and theoretical frameworks that inform the ways they construct, contest, and reframe the politics of visibility.

Material + Visuality coincides with the Artspeak Gallery exhibition A Rose Into An Omen on view November 7, 2025 to March 14, 2026 at 233 Carrall Street in Vancouver.

Admission is by a suggested donation of $10-$20, courtesy of BMO Financial Group.

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Jasbir K. Puar is Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia, Extraordinary Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, and Professor Emerita at Rutgers University where she was faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department for 23 years. Puar is the author of the award-winning books: The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017), which has been translated into Spanish and is forthcoming in Portuguese, and Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007), available in French, Spanish, and Portuguese, and re-issued as an expanded version for its 10th anniversary (2017). Her articles have been published in journals such as Social Text and South Atlantic Quarterly, mainstream venues such as Al-Jazeera and The Guardian, and translated into more than 20 languages.

Tiona Nekkia McClodden (b.1981, Philidelphia, PA) [she/her] is a visual artist, filmmaker, and curator whose work explores and critiques issues at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and social commentary. McClodden’s interdisciplinary approach traverses documentary film, experimental video, sculpture, and sound installations. Most recently, her work has explored the themes of re-memory and narrative biomythography. Her works have been shown at Kunsthalle Basel, Guggenheim Museum in NY, the Institute of Contemporary Art-Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art (New York); the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); the New Museum (New York); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) – Berlin; MOCA LA; MCA Chicago, and MoMA PS1. Most recently, she is the recipient of the 2021-2023 Princeton Arts Fellowship. Tiona lives and works in North Philadelphia, PA, and is the Founder + Director of Philadelphia-based, Conceptual Fade, a micro-gallery and library space centering Black thought + artistic production.

Karice Mitchell (b. 1996, Toronto, ON) is a photo-based installation artist whose practice explores the representation of the Black femme body through found imagery and digital manipulation. Her work critically examines vintage Black erotic publications as culturally significant sites that negotiate the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. By recontextualizing archival material, Mitchell explores the cultural, political, and temporal complexities of Black femme representation, imagining new modes of agency and visibility. Her work has been exhibited at Franz Kaka (Toronto); Capture Photo Festival (Vancouver); The Polygon Gallery; (Vancouver), Francois Gheably (Los Angeles); Silke Lindner (New York), and Xxirja Hi (London). She currently serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Art, Art History and Theory at the University of British Columbia.

Banner Image: Karice Mitchell.