Syrus Marcus Ware waters and tends to the seeds of the revolution through the multiple channels his work takes as an activist, artist, educator, scholar, and DJ. A core team member of Black Lives Matter \u2014 Toronto and a co-founder of Toronto\u2019s Prison Justice Action Committee, Ware\u2019s art practice is in many ways inextricable from his activism, as both interconnect to build community, honour Black queer and trans experiences, and, in his own words, \u201c [tisser] [weave] narratives of hope\u201d in working towards an abolitionist future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His latest body of work approaches the intersecting crisis of racism and climate change by \u201c[pr\u00e9supposant] that Black and Indigenous people survive. We survive climate change. We survive white supremacy. We survive capitalism. We survive and we thrive.\u201d As part of his two-part contribution to the Toronto Biennial of Art in fall 2019, Ware created Antarctica<\/em>: an immersive installation activated by a performance set in 2030, where the effects of the Anthropocene have drastically worsened. The performance features three racialized activists \u2014 played by Yousef Kadoura, Dainty Smith, and Ravyn Wngz \u2014 sent by their countries to terraform the Southern continent. As the protagonists wrestle with their mission to colonize, they defect to start a new life on their own, finding strength in their relations with one another as the antidote to facing the end of the world. The eight-channel video Ancestors, Can You Read Us? (Dispatches from the Future) <\/em>continues this speculative narrative by travelling further into the future, to 2072. Here, the great-grandchildren of today\u2019s activists find a way to send a message of love but also of warning to their ancestors, urging them \u201cTo take back the earth from the capitalists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The video becomes a portal to the post-apocalypse, casting members of Ware\u2019s community as the succeeding generations in a radiant future of self-determination and freedom. Ware\u2019s work, at its core, emanates the love he has for his community across generations. While continuing the legacy of his activist-ancestors, he celebrates his comrades in the current struggle for Black liberation, building an archive for the future \u2014 its seeds of change already taking root in the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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