London Inc. May/June 2021 - 16

Upfront Art & Design

MAKING
SPACE

The art world demands
that all artists pay their
dues - but it can be doubly
so for artists of colour
THROUGHOUT HER CAREER as an
artist in the Forest City, Amsa Yaro
(www.amsayarostudio.com) has spent
a lot of it feeling somewhat isolated.
Despite having settled in London a
decade ago from Nigeria and having
created art consistently for much of the
last ﬁve years, Yaro is aware that she
and other black artists are still working
in a white art industry - an experience
that can be isolating and creatively stiﬂing, not to mention making it hard to
earn a living from her work.
Her latest show, co-curated with
Malvin Wright and themed The Future
Amsa Yaro with some of her works on display
at Somerville 630

is Now, brings together more than
a dozen black artists in town and is
hanging in Somerville 630 in Old East
Village. It was conceived as a celebration of black artists in the city, and to
make their work more visible to audiences who might not otherwise see it.
16 | londonincmagazine.ca | MAY / JUNE 2021

" There are more of us all around, " she
told the CBC, when the show launched.
" More of us are coming along with our
talents, with our different personalities
and with dif-ferent ideas. "
Despite a growing social awareness
of black artists and a desire to see

their work supported, artists like Yaro
still face an uphill battle in accessing
the kinds of resources and ﬁnancial
supports that many white artists often
take for granted. Achieving sustainability in the arts is hard enough, but
black artists often face even tougher
condi-tions to make their business
model work.
" It's been very hard trying to break
into the arts here, " Yaro says. " It's a very
close-knit community and it's based on
relationships. If you don't know who's
who here, it's not so easy to get your foot
in the door. "
Things have started to improve,
Yaro says. Social media, for one thing,
has proven to be a powerful marketing and promotion tool for artists of
colour, largely because it affords artists the ability to market and sell their
art on their own terms, in their own
voice and to their own communities -
http://www.amsayarostudio.com http://www.londonincmagazine.ca
London Inc. May/June 2021

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