Afronautic Research Lab<\/em>, Family Matters<\/em>, HUSH HARBOUR<\/em>, The Resistance of Peggy Pompadour<\/em>, TimeWarp,<\/em> and Miss Canadiana<\/em> are undoubtedly among Camille Turner\u2019s major works. Falling within the tide and aesthetic of Afrofuturism, Turner\u2019s artistic strategy, in both her performances and installations, oscillates between speculative fiction, non-Western cosmologies, mythology, science fiction, technology, and history and opens a field of myriad possibilities. This stance allows her to challenge the grand narratives of Canadian history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The origins of Turner\u2019s work can be traced to a reflection on Canadian identity, slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and the roots of anti-Black racism in Canada. Exploring the notions of race, space, and belonging, like a griot or storyteller, she reconstructs Black history in the country. Indeed,Afronautic Research Lab<\/em>melds performance art with social practice to highlight archival evidence and documentaries, revealing significant chapters dissimulated from the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the Black Lives Matter<\/em> movement, Turner\u2019s work is based on an expansion of the imaginary and our capacity to envisage new worlds. In these truly dystopian times, the convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the precarious living conditions of racialized groups has exposed the disproportionate risk of infection and premature death facing Afrodiasporic peoples. In parallel, global revolts against police brutality and the destruction of monuments memo-rializing the history of slavery challenge the blatant disre-gard for the lives of Black people, who embody what Saidiya V. Hartman calls \u201cthe afterlife of slavery.<\/em>\u201d Evidently, a new order needs to be conceptualized. The imagination of artists has always played a crucial role in urging us toward a utopian existence. And this is where Turner\u2019s artistic force resides, contesting the status quo and provoking critical reflection on history, slavery, the afterlife of slavery, the past, the present, and the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from the French by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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