At The Gallery / Oricha del Norte by Ruby Smith Díaz + Isha Adams

November 15th 2022 – January 12th 2023, Massy Arts will host, Oricha Del Norte, a new window exhibition organized by afro latina artist and educator Ruby Smith Díaz + queer Egyptian/East Indian artist Isha Adams that questions how displacement and enslavement change the ways in which African diaspora peoples honour their spirituality.

The Massy Arts Gallery is located at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday, 12pm to 5pm.
Entrance is free, and masks are mandatory.

To contact the gallery, send an email to: info@massyarts.com.

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The Show

The Transatlantic Slave Trade, and hundreds of years of colonization, have forced millions of African diaspora peoples to change the ways in which we honour our ancestors and practice our traditions.

When enslaved Africans were kidnapped from their homelands and brought to Brasil, many found that they needed to adapt their cosmology to honour the ancestors of the Indigenous communities of Brasil, and to honour the spirits or Orishas found on the lands that they were not familiar with.

Adapting and transforming the Orixas was found in many places throughout Latin America, sometimes even hiding them as Catholic figures, to be able to continue honour their traditions under the watchful gaze of Slavemasters and missionaries.

These acts of resistance held many communities strong, and can still be found throughout the diaspora to this day, as testaments to our will to survive and maintain our traditions.

In Oricha del Norte, artists Ruby Smith Díaz and Isha Adams use Afrofuturism reimagine Orishas through the lens of a camera, on amiskwaciy (treaty 6 land). Crowns that have been created by artist Ruby Smith Díaz also reflect the complexity of African diaspora identity, and honouring power, identity, and land on Turtle Island.

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The Artists

Isha Adams (she/they) is a queer Egyptian/East Indian artist raised in amiskwaciy (Edmonton, AB). Isha is a mental halth youth worker who is passionate abour creating decolonized safe spaces for self love and exprsesion.

Ruby Smith Díaz (she/hers) is an afro latina artist, educator, facilitator, and body positive personal trainer, living on unceded Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm land. She was born to Chilean and Jamaican parents in Edmonton – amiskwaciy and graduated from the University of Alberta with a degree in Education with distinction. Since graduating, she has found her passion using art and popular education as tools for activism, empowerment, and community building.

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