Timothy Yanick Hunter

COOPER COLE is pleased to present a solo exhibition of the work of the Toronto-based artist Timothy Yanick Hunter. This is Hunter’s first solo exhibition at the gallery.

Timothy Yanick Hunter is interested in narratives that are not captured in formal archives. Using found images of the Caribbean and its diaspora that are often extracted from colonial structures—such as European postcards and museum collections—Hunter places photographs into configurations that centre diasporic consciousness over colonialism. The disjointed rhythms of his installations are intentionally anti-linear and leave gaps that reflect on that which is unknowable, due to cultural displacement and the fact that complete knowability is a colonial myth.

Within this artistic approach, Hunter pulls away from dominant historical frameworks and leans into speculating on the multiple lived experiences of those represented. The diverse material conditions of everyday life in the Caribbean and its diaspora are reflected through Hunter’s multimedia practice, which incorporates video, photography, found objects, concrete, and timber, among many other materials. Hunter presents these materials in a way that is reflective of his multichannel self-guided research. As a first-generation Canadian, the artist sees this study and bridge-building in the diaspora as a necessary task. By extension, screens are a major subject of the artist’s address for their centrality in our access to the world. Hunter questions the assumed neutrality of the screen by presenting them in experimental orientations and functions, causing the viewer to navigate them differently than in everyday life.

While making this work, Hunter became interested in, among other histories, the massive 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée in Martinique. The artist began to wonder what the days leading up to this eruption looked like, as well as life afterwards. Volcanic Spine includes images printed on textile, video footage displayed on different types of screens, and transparencies placed, unfixed, between fragments of marble and lucite, reflecting on traces of history in material layers as well as their precarity. The title Volcanic Spine references both this process of speculation, as well as the ‘lava spine’ of a volcano which sits beneath the surface. True to the artist’s practice, Hunter’s title moves between the didactic, the speculative, and the unknown.

Timothy Yanick Hunter (b. 1990 Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator. Hunter’s practice employs strategies of bricolage to examine non-neutral relationships relating to Black and Afro-diasporic experiences as well as concurrent strategies of decolonization. His approach alternates between exploratory and didactic, with a focus on the political, cultural and social richness of the Black diaspora. Hunter’s work often delves into speculative narratives and the intersections of physical space, digital space and the intangible. Hunter received his BA from the University of Toronto, and has been artist in residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario and PADA Studios in Barreiro, Portugal. He will be included in the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art, and has exhibited at Gallery 44, Toronto (2021); A Space Gallery, Toronto (2020); 92Y, New York (2020); Art Gallery of Guelph, Guelph (2019) and PADA Studios, Barreiro (2019); among others. Hunter lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.