The Transformative Memory International Network (TMIN), led by professors Pilar Riaño-Alcalá (GRSJ) and Erin Baines’ (SPPGA), hosted the Memolab “Difficult Archives, Difficult Memories. Transformations in Black and Indigenous Worlds” in Toronto on June 18-22, 2024.
The international Memolab was held in collaboration with Dr. Kamari Clarke (Transnational Justice Project at the University of Toronto), Dr. Juliane Okot Bitek (Queens University) and Dr. Elizabeth Shaffer (University of British Columbia) and included participants from Colombia, Uganda, Indonesia and Canada.
During the MemoLab, participants interrogated absence in the archive as well as its possibilities and engaged with questions around absence and presence, land dispossession, as well as lived, felt, embodied memories of bodies, land and landscapes.
The Toronto Memolab featured the first TMIN Traveling Exhibit titled “Mapping and Reimaging: Difficult Archives, Difficult Memories.” Coordinated by GRSJ PhD student Alejandra Gaviria, the exhibit built upon the work that both Alejandra and David Ng (GRSJ PhD Candidate) conceptualized as Graduate Research Assistants for TMIN, and featured works from Uganda, Palestine, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Indigenous territories worldwide, Cuba, and Colombia.
Photo credit: Erin Baines
