A Harlem Nocturne
A Harlem Nocturne
Deanna Bowen
2019
Vancouver, British Columbia
Exhibition
A Harlem Nocturne is an exhibition by Deanna Bowen that presents artifacts of Black life in Vancouver, Canada. Bowen re-asserts the presence of Black communities in Vancouver's Hogan Alley while providing traces for understanding their absence in official national narratives. The exhibition utilizes a combination of artworks that reappropriate, reframe, and make use of archival material, and more traditional museological displays of archival material unaltered. Through positioning archival records of the strong presence of Black networks in Vancouver's nightlife alongside archival materials pertaining to societal and institutionalized racism, the exhibition furthers Bowen’s approach to art making as a method to write and rewrite history.