Join us for the online event Style as Armour: Identity, Clothing, and Self-Fashioning as part of the History is Rarely Black or White speaker series hosted by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre.
Jason Cyrus is in conversation with Julie Crooks and Nigel Lezama to explore the use of style to both affirm one's personhood and challenge oppression. Together they examine archival tintypes Victorian cotton clothing, and contemporary portraiture to shine a light on clothing's important role in constructing Black identity.
About the Speakers
Jason Cyrus
Jason analyses fashion and textile history to explore questions of identity, cultural exchange, and agency. He is the 2021 Isabel Bader Fellow in Textile Conservation and Research at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. He has held research posts at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum. In January 2020, he curated York University’s first fashion exhibition, ReFraming Gender.
Julie Crooks
Julie's area of specialty is vernacular photography of West Africa and the diaspora. She is the Curator, Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Prior to joining the AGO in 2017, Crooks curated exhibitions for many organizations including BAND (Black Artists Networks in Dialogue) and the Royal Ontario Museum’s Of Africa project.
Nigel Lezama
Nigel is an associate professor in the Modern Languages, Literatures & Cultures department of Brock University. Examining how marginalized and peripheral fashion and luxury practices transform dominant culture, Lezama works at the intersection of fashion, luxury, literary, and cultural studies.
