waynedunkley: living archive of a social practice

Selected Projects, Articles, Interviews

(1996-2018) – the degradation and removal of the/a black male: sharemyworld.net

The artist took a photograph of his face and altered it to resemble escaped slave advertisements posted in the 17th century Montreal Gazette. Slave owners would buy space and place these drawings as ads in papers in order to hunt for escaped slaves. By recontextualizing the escaped slave poster, the artist references the history of slavery in Canada and the United States as well his own contemporary feelings of being studied, dehumanized, and pursued.

Over four years, 400 photos were posted in Toronto, Ontario and Montreal Quebec. The posters were torn down, covered up, defaced and written on by the public. Each response stimulates the viewer to consider their own responses to the/a black male. To provoke thought on the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which the black male is acknowledged or ignored.

Photo documentation of the posters was integrated with stories of racism and othering shared by the artist and visitors to the website sharemyworld.net (1998-2018). The artist created interactive storytelling books using stories chosen from hundreds shared from all over the world. This is an early Internet example of community engaged interactive web art. Created in Macromedia Flash the screenshots below represent all pages from the website.

These posters were placed on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaty signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands in the place called Toronto, and on the land located on unceded Indigenous territory where the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of the lands and waters in the place called as Montreal.

“(Re)Encoding Race: Black World-Sense in Wayne Dunkley’s the degradation and removal of the/a black male” in AfroGEEKS: Beyond the Digital Divide, Eds. Anna Everett and Amber J. Wallace, Santa Barbara: Center for Black Studies Research, 2007: 101-11.

Dunkley, Wayne. 2005. “Creating Space: Web Art Practice”. Leonardo Volume 38, Issue 4  August 2005. https://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-abstract/38/4/276/44848/Creating-Space-Web-Art-Practice?redirectedFrom=fulltext

(2025) Reel Causes: A Night of Obsidian, Rio Theatre, Vancouver, BC

The artist sharing on themes of community, identity, belonging and healing in the practice. Photos by jimpinu.

community postering workshops & group facilitation

The artist’s practice includes facilitating workshops where participants create posters of themselves and post them in the community together. Participants also enter facilitated group conversation and journalling to reflect on the process over time.

(2004) – Feel: The Longing for Home

A meditative story-sharing web-based artwork using animated image and text commissioned by the Banff New Media Institute. Concept, poetry, photography, Wayne Dunkley, interactive and graphic design and photography Myron Campbell. Feel also featured intimate writings and interviews from a select cast of Canadian artists on the notion of home. Created in Macromedia Flash.

(2018-2019) – #whatdoyoufeelwhen

#whatdoyoufeelwhen was a Canada-wide campaign that saw one thousand 24”x 36” posters of the artist’s portrait posted in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal. Images from this project are then used to subvert, reconfigure and infuse new meaning to the digital space of Instagram. The artist traveled across Canada to engage the public while standing in front of the posters. He also created written text interventions on the posters themselves.

The poster uses the artist’s own face that has been altered to resemble pen and ink drawings published in the 17th century Montreal Gazette. Slave owners would buy space and place these drawings as ads in papers in order to hunt for escaped slaves. By recontextualizing the escaped slave poster, the artist references the history of slavery in Canada and the United States as well his own contemporary feelings of being studied, dehumanized, and pursued.

These posters were placed on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations known as Vancouver, the traditional territories of the people of the Treaty 7 region and home to Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III known as Calgary, the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaty signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands in the place called Toronto, and on the land located on unceded Indigenous territory where the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of the lands and waters in the place known as Montreal.

Yoo, Diana. 2022. “On the Paradox of the Unrepresentable: The Trauma Narratives in Robert Houle’s Sandy Bay Residential School Series and Wayne Dunkley’s #whatdoyoufeelwhen”. YU-WRITE: Journal of Graduate Student Research in Education 1 (1). https://doi.org/10.25071/28169344.7

(2021) trailencounters

Commissioned in 2022 by the Grey Zone Collective, trailencounters was a web-based visual and audio exploration of feelings, memories and experiences of hiking in rural Ontario from a variety of perspectives, primarily BIPOC voices. Participants could scan the QR code and be taken to a website to share their own trail encounters. trailencounters was co-created with Candace Elder.

The stark and harsh juxtaposition of the “keep away” signage emblazoned with the artist’s face is intentionally jarring, disrupting the bucolic calm one normally expects with greenery. The signage acts as a stand in for the project creators’ own feelings of unease and discomfiture experienced at times on trails. For the creators, the trail is a place of encounter with the self even more so than with other people.

The images relay a sense of calm but also convey the notion of an underlying threat. This threat comes from feelings of exposure, lack of safety and not knowing what will greet you around the next turn. These feelings are independent of a hiker’s background, but can be exacerbated by skin colour, gender expression or other visually distinct features. trailencounters also asks us to reflect on the question of “whose land is it anyway?”, given the state of Indigenous land claims and the ever-present reach of land appropriation colonialism.

We would like to acknowledge the Traditional Territory of the Anishinabek Nation: The People of the Three Fires known as Ojibway, Odawa, and Pottawatomie Nations. We give thanks to the Chippewas of Saugeen, and the Chippewas of Nawash, now known as the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. We acknowledge them as the traditional keepers of this land and thank them for caring for this place as the stewards of this territory which many call home.