Accessibility Day at FOFA Gallery + Artist talk with Po B. K. Lomami x eunice bélidor + Esse launch

Sendy-Loo Emmanuel is a visual artist, dancer, and cultural worker living with visual impairment and dyslexia. She has been navigating the arts since the age of three. Currently a PhD candidate in Communication at UQAM, her research, Being Black and Neurodivergent: Between Masking and Affirmation, examines disability through frameworks developed by and for Black researchers. She is the founder of WECAN, an organization supporting Afro-descendant artists, and brings sixteen years of experience across banking, visual arts, and performing arts. Her work explores how art can open conversations and deepen inclusion within Black communities.

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Sendy-Loo Emmanuel est artiste en arts visuels, danseuse et travailleuse culturelle, vivant avec une déficience visuelle et la dyslexie. Elle navigue dans le milieu artistique depuis l'âge de trois ans. Doctorante en communication à l'UQAM, sa recherche Être·s noir·es neurodivergent·es—Entre masquage et affirmation examine le handicap à travers des cadres développés par et pour des chercheur·euses noir·es. Elle est fondatrice de WECAN, un organisme soutenant les artistes afrodescendant·e·s, et cumule seize ans d'expérience dans les domaines bancaire, des arts visuels et des arts vivants. Son travail explore comment l'art peut ouvrir des conversations et approfondir l'inclusion au sein des communautés noires.

Po B. K. Lomami (Pauline Batamu Kasiwa Lomami) is an undisciplinary artist-researcher and educator. From the Congolese diaspora in Belgium, they have been living in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal since 2017. Exploring rage and failure, Lomami’s artistic practice is articulated around the displacement of labor, the becoming of their subjectivity, and possible collective futures.

Interested in the process between action and inaction, they question people, institutions, and themselves through affection, strength, the absurd, the everyday, and data. They construct super-archives that do not fix the moment of action into a processed document but instead take the form of installative, video, sound, and electronic works that explore super-performativity as an opportunity to become sensitive to data again and to feel someone or something that is not, or is no longer, there.

Their work has been presented in Belgium, Sweden, New York, and Canada, and their texts have been published in French, Quebecois, and pan-African publications.

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Po B. K. Lomami (Pauline Batamu Kasiwa Lomami) est artiste-chercheure indisciplinaire et enseignante. Issue de la diaspora congolaise en Belgique, iel vit actuellement à Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal depuis 2017. Explorant la rage et l'échec, la pratique artistique de Lomami s'articule autour du déplacement du travail, du devenir de sa subjectivité et des futurs collectifs possibles.

S’intéressant au processus entre l’action et l’inaction, iel interroge les gens, les institutions et iel-même à travers l'affection, la force, l'absurde, le quotidien et les données. Iel construit des super-archives qui ne fixent pas le moment de l’action dans un document traité mais qui à la place prennent la forme d’œuvres installatives, vidéo, sonores et électroniques qui explorent la super-performativité comme une opportunité de redevenir sensible aux données et de sentir quelqu’un ou quelque chose qui n’est pas ou plus là.

Son travail a été présenté en Belgique, en Suède, à New York et au Canada et ses textes ont été publiés dans des publications françaises, québécoises et panafricaines.

Montréal-born eunice bélidor is a curator, author, and researcher. She is a scholar-in-residence at Concordia University, teaching in the Graduate Certificate in Curatorial Studies and Practice program. Her current curatorial methodology focuses on epistolary writing and its intersection with radical hospitality, care, and racial issues, and how letters can generate affective and speculative archiving. She has published essays and reviews in various publications, books and journals, notably in C Magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, Vie des Arts and Espace. Her exhibitions have been presented in Canada and Europe, more recently at Centre Clark, the MAI, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d'art Contemporain and at Galerie de l'UQAM. She is the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation–TD Bank Group Emerging Curator in Contemporary Art Award (2018). She has held curatorial and managerial positions at articule, the FOFA Gallery at Concordia University (Montréal), and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. She is the curator of Pictura, the Montreal painting trienniale, and she is currently a film curator and programmer at the Montreal International Arts Film Festival (FIFA).