Nya Lewis

Nya Lewis, also known as Nanyamka Lewis or Nya Williams or Nya Lewis Williams, is an independent curator, writer and artist of Trinidadian descent based in the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleiel Watuth First Nations, known as Vancouver.

Education

Lewis earned a Master of Fine Arts from the OCAD University, and as a graduate student, Lewis worked on the research team for the Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora.

Artistic Career

Lewis artistic practice is the “culmination of centuries of African resistance, love, questions, actions, study and embrace rooted in the theorization of the conditions of Black cultural production”. Lewis' work captures the multivocality of Black diasporic experience and aims to reimagine and reclaim community.

Lewis has made a number of contributions to the arts sector in Canada, and specifically in Toronto and Vancouver.

She is the founder of Ref. Gallery of African Descent (formerly BlackArt Gastown), a “nonprofit organization that facilitates opportunities between Black artists and public institutions—providing artist

mentorship”.

She was contracted as the first Black curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery to mount the exhibition Where do we go from here? They have also worked in curatorial or programming positions with the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, the Vancouver Public Library, the UBC Museum of Anthropology, Grunt Gallery and the Libby Leshgold Gallery and other institutions.

Lewis is currently the Director and Curator of Artspeak Gallery and a Curator in Residence at the Vancouver Art Gallery, where they will be conducting research towards the publication of a major work on Black cultural production in British Columbia.

She is also a board member of the Black Arts Centre and Co-Director AfroQueer Vancouver.

Select Curatorial Work

Where do we go from here?

As a guest curator with the Vancouver Art Gallery, Lewis curated this visual art exhibition addressing the gallery’s historical lack of engagement with Black artists and art work since its founding in 1931. Where do we go from here? ran from December 12, 2020 to June 13, 2021.

The group show included artists working with different mediums, including photography, painting, installation and mixed media. Many of the artists were exhibiting at the Vancouver Art Gallery for the first time, such as a Jessie Addo, Chantal Gibson, Jan Wade, Tafui, and Rebecca Bair.

Lewis’ own work formed the introductory piece of Where do we go from here? Their piece, titled “Commit Us to Memory”, featured multiple poetic texts printed on vinyl and adhered around the gallery’s third-floor rotunda, beneath its historic dome ceiling. Lewis' work juxtaposed the gallery’s “neoclassical architecture with Black thought” through the use of typography and negative space, such as placing the words “The Promise to the Black Canadian” directly opposite “The Myth of the Black Canadian.”  Gallery visitors also encountered phrases such as “CALL MORAL IMPERIALISM BY ITS NAME”.

Practice as Ritual / Ritual as Practice

Lewis co-curated this exhibition with Andrea Fatona. As part of its national tour, this travelling exhibition ran at the Libby Leshgold Gallery at Emily Carr University in Vancouver from September 15 to November 5, 2023, animated by a series of public event.

This exhibition brought together nine artists — Buseje Bailey, Marie Booker, Claire Carew, DZI..AN, Khadejha McCall, Mosa McNeilly, Chloe Onari, Barbara Prézeau Stephenson and Winsom Winsom — and commemorated their participation in the landmark 1989 exhibition Black Wimmin: When and Where We Enter.

List of Select Exhibitions

exhibit “Quilt of Hopes: Vancouver artists for Black liberation” (February 2021)

Museum of Anthropology. Nya standing with graphics for “To be Black in BC” Designing and installing a curved vinyl entrance wall for “Sankofa” (October 2021)

References

1. https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vmf-winter-arts-2023-tafui-present

2. https://www.ocadu.ca/news/centres-new-virtual-space-brings-black-art-forefront

3. https://nyalewiswilliams.com/new-page

4. https://nuvomagazine.com/magazine/autumn-2021/curator-nya-lewis-art-institution-in-the-aftermath-of-the-black-lives-matter-protests/amp

5. https://www.gallerieswest.ca/news/nya-lewis-to-head-artspeak-in-vancouver/

6. https://vancouverguardian.com/vancouver-artist-nya-lewis/

7. https://nuvomagazine.com/magazine/autumn-2021/curator-nya-lewis-art-institution-in-the-aftermath-of-the-black-lives-matter-protests/amp

8. https://pancouver.ca/vancouver-art-gallery-appoints-three-local-curators-in-residence-pantea-haghighi-makiko-hara-and-nya-lewis/

9. https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/black-canadians-brought-to-the-centre-at-vancouver-art-gallery

10. https://nuvomagazine.com/magazine/autumn-2021/curator-nya-lewis-art-institution-in-the-aftermath-of-the-black-lives-matter-protests/amp

11. https://medium.com/no-ducks/promissory-some-thoughts-on-nya-lewis-williams-commit-us-to-memory-e277209f3ced

12. https://libby.ecuad.ca/exhibitions/2023/practice-as-ritual.html

13. https://vancouversun.com/entertainment/local-arts/practice-as-ritual-show-commemorates-groundbreaking-exhibition-of-black-women-artists

14. https://vancouverguardian.com/vancouver-artist-nya-lewis/