Sept 26 | 2026 Fall Exhibitions Opening Reception
Saturday, September 26, 2026
2 PM to 4 PM
Free | Registration not required
About the Program
Celebrate the opening of our Fall Exhibitions with an afternoon of art and conversation inspired by the work of Anique Jordan. Enjoy Caribbean cuisine, hear directly from the artist during a special talk, and take part in a hands-on art-making activity inspired by the exhibition.
The afternoon also features Desires Are Needs by Farhia Tato, a collaborative, improvisational poetry and sound work exploring how history and memory move across time.
“Our aim is not to disperse things from their categories but to dissolve the tenses from which arrangement becomes possible.”—Farhia Tato
About “I Think This Means I Could Fly”
In I Think This Means I Could Fly, Anique Jordan considers how truth is made, inherited, and given form. The exhibition grows from Jordan’s research into the Flying Africans—stories of enslaved people who escaped bondage by taking flight—and connections between the Gullah Geechee communities of the Carolinas and her family history in Trinidad. Jordan asks what becomes possible when ancestral narratives, dreams, and spiritual knowledge are approached as truth-telling systems.
Through photography, performance, and installation, Jordan develops a visual language of glitches, shadows, blurs, portals, and disjointed bodies. Monumental photographs, rearrangeable light boxes, and images printed on glass blur the boundaries between reality and the seemingly impossible. Here, flight is at once movement, refusal, and a way of knowing. Jordan invites us into a world governed by other rules, where history may be dreamed and remembered, belief becomes material, and the marvelous offers its own account of what happened.
Curated by Essence Harden.
About “Framing Identity”
Curated as a companion to I Think This Means I Could Fly, Framing Identity features photographic works by Joi T. Arcand, Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Anique Jordan, Esmaa Mohamoud, John Reeves, and Katherine Takpannie.
Bringing together diverse photographic practices, the exhibition examines the ways individuals and communities construct, negotiate, and assert identity. Through portraiture, documentary photography, and conceptual approaches, the artists offer nuanced reflections on memory, belonging, resilience, and representation.
This exhibition features photographic works from the collections of both the Varley Art Gallery of Markham and Markham Public Art.
Curated by Anik Gluade.
Image credit:
Anique Jordan, Flight Pattern 4 (detail), 2026. Photograph. Courtesy of the artist.
