AROBA: A Room Of Black Artists, in association with Workman Arts, brings to you a Black Mental Health Podcast Documentary Series. For this year, AROBA’s new podcast documentary series will feature a total of six unique episodes, each candidly focusing on experiences of addiction and resilience of Black Artists.
AROBA: A Room Of Black Artists, in association with Workman Arts, brings to you a Black Mental Health Symposium and Action Event. It is the first of an annual symposium that promotes Black mental wellness in the arts community. AROBA advocates wellness in Black communities by increasing awareness and reducing stigma around Black mental health issues. In this first symposium, AROBA will facilitate discussions around anxiety and depression experiences that Black Artists face as they navigate their lives and careers in the arts sector as a whole.
Last year, the AGO and Workman Arts partnered to present “Talking Back and Together”, a five-part video series exploring mental health awareness and advocacy through art. The resulting videos, which originally premiered on the AGO’s Facebook page, featured five artists with ties to Toronto/Tkaronto: Amanda Lederle, Hanan Hazime, Nicholas Ridiculous, Apanaki Temitayo M and Jenny Chen. All of them channel their creativity and lived experiences into a range of media including painting, drawing, movement, writing, music and poetry. Some even offer institutional critiques directed at the AGO and, more broadly, art in Canada.
Inspired by folk tales and allegories passed on from his grandparents in Ecuador, Salazar uses the symbol of the bird to explore themes of hope, freedom, and growth while reflecting on personal tragedy and collective trauma. Salazar asks us to meditate on the concept of human resilience, an idea especially pertinent as we begin to recover from the impact of the global pandemic.
Workman Arts’ online literary publication was created in partnership with Ryerson University’s Literatures of Modernity MA program.