Camille Turner, Afronautic Research Lab, (ongoing since 2016). Social practice / installation. Slides 2-5 by Garrett Elliott for Agnes Etherington Gallery as documentation of Arts Against Post Racialism, a SSHRC funded knowledge mobilisation project led by Phillip Howard in collaboration with Camille Turner. Slides 1, 6-9 by Toni Hafkenscheid for Otherworld at Art Museum
Afronautic Research Lab (2016 - ongoing)
The Afronautic Research Lab is a social practice project through which visitors encounter suppressed archival documents providing evidence of colonial Canada’s links to and participation in the transatlantic trade in African people, its ongoing legacies of anti-Blackness and Black resistance. In its travels Afronautic Research Lab gathers and shares local histories. The project, which is organised by Outerregion, a performance group founded by Camille in collaboration with her siblings Karen and Lee Turner has taken numerous forms in its various incarnations. Afronautic Research Lab: Newfoundland, pictured below for instance, is part of a body of work that explores the silenced history of 19 slave ships constructed in eighteenth century Newfoundland
Afronautic Research Lab Teachers Guide (2024)
The Afronautic Research Lab (2016–ongoing) is part of Camille Turner’s exhibition Otherworld, created by the performance collective Outerregion, led by Afronauts Camille, Karen, and Lee Turner. Inspired by the Dogon people’s deep astronomical knowledge, these Afronautic space travelers use the Lab to examine Canada’s connections to the transatlantic slave trade and ongoing anti-Blackness. The Lab contains archival materials, including 18th-century newspaper ads for escaped enslaved people, highlighting histories of Black resistance. Accompanied by a Teacher’s Guide by Dr. Natasha L. Henry-Dixon from York University, the Lab encourages critical engagement with historical sources. The guide is designed for both structured and independent learning, promoting inquiry-based exploration of historical thinking, including causes, consequences, and historical significance.
Afronautic Research Lab: Newfoundland (2019)
Afronautic Research Lab: Newfoundland burrows deep into the largely forgotten story of slave ships constructed in Newfoundland, linking the land historically to the political economy of the Triangular Trade. A time traveller from the Age of Awakening, played by Camille Turner, traverses the cliffs of the present, observing the ocean and all that it holds. She makes her way to a church, lays an offering for ancestors, and constructs the reading room from which participants are invited to read, reckon, and bear witness.
Cinematographer and Editor: Brian Ricks
Research Assistant: Alvin Luong
Developed and created through a residency at 2 Rooms Contemporary Art Projects in Duntara, Newfoundland and Labrador
Produced with the support of Catherine Beaudette and Winston James
Commissioned by the Bonavista Biennial (2019)