Prairie Life and LEGO voyage shown for Black History Month at RPL

In celebration of Black History Month, the Regina Public Library played host to two different exhibits in February.

One is the Black Prairies Exhibit — a display that showcases over 100 years of cultural production of Black artists in the prairies.

The other is the Building Black Civilizations exhibit which portrays the sea voyage of Mansa Abu Bakr II, the ninth ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa during the 1300s.

Abu Bakr II is the predecessor of Mansa Musa — who people might know as one of the wealthiest figures in human history. During his pilgrimage to Mecca from 1324-1325, he and his caravan gave away enough gold to decrease its value in Egypt for the next 12 years.

Before Musa came to power, Abu Bakr II abdicated the throne and set out on a voyage west to the Atlantic Ocean around 1312 with 2,000 ships. He was never seen or heard from ever again.

With the help of black LEGO blocks, the voyage of Abu Bakr II was brought to life by multidisciplinary artist Ekow Nimako, who is based in Toronto.

Inspired by the story, Nimako said it would be amazing to create an artistic portrayal of what might have happened.

“History does not know what happened to these 2,000 ships and his fleet so that left it with so much wonder, and for me as an artist — it gave me a large platform to just speculate and create artworks that would be able to just really interrogate this story and spread this fantastic tale,” Nimako said.

Nimako was born in Montréal but his parents are from Ghana.

In 2019, he was first approached by the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto to create artworks in response to its Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time exhibition, which was focused on the impact of West African kingdoms during medieval times.

Nimako said he developed a deep interest in researching kingdoms like the Mali Empire, Ghana Empire and Songhai Empire.

In 2022, he was approached by RPL’s Dunlop Art Gallery at the Central Branch and Nimako agreed to continue his work with a solo show with them.

The Black Prairies Exhibit is on display until May 14, while the Building Black Civilizations exhibit is currently going on a tour across Canada. As of Feb. 28, it was in Edmonton.

Nimako said he often uses metal and wood to underpin his artworks.

He incorporates hundreds of thousands of pieces to create his sculptures, saying the process can include lots of drawings and collecting images to conceptualize his vision.

“It does require a little bit of engineering and thought process to really execute this in the way that I want — to make sure that the artwork maintains its integrity,” he said.

“But ultimately, I just like to start building things and see where it goes.”

He said the display stresses the importance of recognizing West African history beyond the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

“Hearing a story about an Indigenous Black Muslim, extraordinarily wealthy monarch — who left that all behind to pursue adventure and true discovery that wasn’t based on conquest and enslavement is a far more powerful story that I think should resonate in history and the future beyond the singular narrative of enslavement,” Nimako said.

Black Prairies Exhibit

The Dunlop Art Gallery is hosting the Black Prairies Exhibit.

The Black Prairies Exhibit combines historical photos from the early 1900s with work from contemporary artists from the Prairies (Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba).

The exhibit also features work from a Black Manitoban photographer named William “Billy” Beal.

Alyssa Fearon, director and curator of Dunlop, said Beal arrived in the Swan River Valley between 1915 and 1925.

“He took a lot of photos of homesteading life and in that region, in southwestern Manitoba. And so, we’ve been able to access some of the glass plate negatives from his collection and those will be in the exhibition as well,” she said.

Fearon also said Dunlop has 20 or so photos borrowed from the City of Edmonton’s archives from the Frank B. Jamerson fonds. They show the first generation of Black people who immigrated from the United States to the Canadian prairies.

Millions had left the southern United States due to segregation and discrimination under Jim Crow along with violence such as lynchings and land dispossession.

“The Amber Valley community is one of the communities that African American people established during that time frame,” Fearon said.

“The photos that people will see in the exhibition highlight that first generation after the Great Black Migration. It was a dynamic time of community building. People were putting down roots in the region and so the photos are quite beautiful because they show that.”

The photos are largely uncredited, but they were collected by Jamerson.

Some of the more contemporary work on display was crafted by artists like Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, Cheryl Foggo, Anna Binta Diallo, Judah Iyunade.

Fearon said she asked these artists to consider working with a “lens-based” medium for their projects.

“They all kind of went in different directions with interpreting that criteria. People used photo, some people use video, some people created or printed digital collages,” she said.

“They all went in different directions, but I really wanted to highlight the the diversity of ways that Black prairie artists are working and also honouring the history of cultural production in Black communities in the prairies.”

RPL is also showing the short film “For Caesar” which is about the history of the Shiloh people — the first Black farming community in Saskatchewan.

Fearon said it’s important for people to learn about these communities, since Black Canadian history is part of Canadian history.

“People will be surprised to see what’s in the exhibition. Not a lot of people know about the history of Black communities in Saskatchewan and that the history goes all the way back to at least 100 years if not more,” she said.