The Women’s Kit Regeneration - Exhibition
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 5, 7:00–10:00 PM
Curatorial Tour: Tuesday, October 17, 6:30 PM
Panel Discussion: Tuesday, October 17, 7:30 PM
REGENERATION celebrates the digitization and revival of The Women’s Kit an influential feminist education resource first produced in 1973 at OISE by Pamela Harris and collaborators. Through contemporary art responses by youth, students, and alumni, the exhibit bridges generations of feminist art practice, interrogates persistent inequalities, and celebrates intersectional identity through zines, printmaking, and visual storytelling. The event includes a website launch, opening reception, curatorial tour, and a public panel with artists and original creators.
25 artists drawing from the past bringing to the present, moment-by-moment expression forty-two years later a discovery much has changed and yet not enough
Originally produced in 1973, The Women’s Kit was a groundbreaking feminist education tool. This exhibition revives its legacy with new digital access and artistic responses, confronting what has changed and what hasn’t in over 40 years of feminist activism and art in Toronto.
Moderator
Noorin Fazal, FAC member and Learning Experience (LX) Designer.
Panelists
Will Carpenter
Toronto-based artist and fourth-year OCAD University student. A gay trans man, he centers gay and trans bodies and voices in contemporary art through sincere depictions of invented characters emblematic of contemporary gender and sexuality. Working primarily in oil and acrylic, his paintings incorporate internet and LGBT+ iconography rooted in youth and online culture, reanimating a medium often labeled archaic amid new technologies. Recent highlights include an independent Nuit Blanche project and a public artwork at Toronto’s Pride 2017 Streetfair in collaboration with Xpace and OCAD University.
Magda Uculmana-Falcon
Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist—actor, poet, painter, and photographer—and Afro-Peruvian cultural worker. For The Women’s Kit: Regeneration exhibition she created “Victoria,” a print dedicated to Victoria Santa Cruz, the Lima-born activist, choreographer, and playwright. Responding to the historical erasure of women of colour, particularly within Canadian educational institutions, her practice centers their representation. Her work foregrounds Afro-Latin narratives and addresses colonial legacies, aiming to educate audiences about the diversity of the Latinx community.
Pamela Harris
Photographer and writer focused on community whose work has been widely published, exhibited, and collected. In 1972 she co-produced Photographs of Women by Women, and in 1972–73 she initiated and produced The Women’s Kit at OISE. In 1973 she established a community darkroom in Taloyoak, Nunavut, teaching photography to Inuit craft-women. From 1984 to 1989 she documented the grassroots women’s movement across Canada, culminating in the exhibition and book Faces of Feminism. Her other projects include work on Newfoundland villages, the United Farm Workers Union, immigrant women working as nannies, and her extended family, with collections held by the Art Gallery of Ontario, National Archives of Canada, California State Library, McMaster University Gallery, and Toronto Archives.
OCADU Drawing and Painting — Current Students and Recent Alumni
Becca Wijshijer, Bethany Davis, Cristine Yunyk, Curtia Wright, Debora Puricelli, Iman Aziz Bhatti, Myra Merchant, Natalie King, Niloo Inalouei, Roxanne Curci, Wei Qi, Will Carpenter.
Youth Participants
Anne Vo, Edan Maxam, Isabel Morris, Jessica Chang, Jessica Zhang, Kira Nguyen Do, Magda U-Falcon, Maude Christie, Mia Yaguchi-Chow, Rainier Magtalas, Tina Gong, Vicky Wang, Sophia Xavion Alexis.
Partnerships
Anonymous donor (digitization of The Women’s Kit)
Ada Slaight Foundation (student artist support)
Ontario Arts Council – Arts Education Projects Grant