Charles Campbell is a Jamaican born multidisciplinary artist, writer and curator based on lək̓ʷəŋən territory, Victoria BC. Using sculpture, sound, installation and performance, his work pulls at the threads of time. Finding channels into the past and future Campbell reconstructs broken somatic, communal and spiritual connections, creating spaces of solace and meaning for all of us living in the wake of slavery and colonization. Campbell’s artworks have been exhibited widely in the Caribbean, Canada and internationally. He is the recipient of numerous awards and holds an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College and a BFA from Concordia University.
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Artwork description
Those that pass through, remain, return is a three-year public art project honouring Concordia University’s and Montreal’s Black community. Recordings of the sound of breathing from senior members of the community, artists, activists and Concordia faculty and students form the basis of the work.
On the windows are towering colour saturated Breath Portraits, visualizations of the recorded breath. In the soundscape in the foyer songs from migratory birds from the Caribbean and African continent become a coded invitation to invoke our ancestors, while the breath underneath holds emotion, memory and presence. Campbell explains: “The breath counters the ongoing instrumentalization of Black bodies and the usual routes to validation: achievement, excellence, suffering, resilience…, here it is enough just to breathe. The birdsong stands in for the individuality and diversity present in the Black community, the new perspectives we bring and the many migratory routes we travel.”