Black Arts Series

Research-based residency

Tarcisio Cataldi & Quinlan Green

November 3 - December 15, 2023

Finissage: December 14, 2023, 5 pm - 8 pm

Documentation of FOFA's Main Space at the end of the research-based residency. On the left, Quinlan's work station displays a classroom chalk board with notes on choreography, movement, and space. On the right, in Tarcisio's workspace, hangs a flag made by the designer prior to the residency, next to it there's a projection of new ideas for his vexillology project.

Documentation Black Arts Series finissage, research on display by Tarcisio Cataldi and Quinlan Green, 2023.

Research descriptions

Tarcisio Cataldi

Beginning as forms of rudimentary signalling, flags have evolved through use in ancient military banners, to maritime semaphores, to symbols that represent entire nations and peoples. Considering its symbolic potential and thinking of flags as a visual platform for speculation, this project is an expansion of what a flag can be, whom it can represent and how symbolic meanings can be constructed. In this residency, I want to blend art, design and community-making centred around the concept of vexillology, the study of flags. I will cover important themes such as semiotics, nationality, personhood of place, climate justice, ancestry, sovereignty and speculative design while fostering a sense of community through participatory-creation.

Quinlan Green

Situating myself in this glass and cement-cubic space, I intend to build a routine of exploring and notating the warm-ups, sensed practices, techniques and scores, which altogether have made the basis of my independent movement work. This would give me time to workshop the perspectives and motions which respond to the environments of my written material, taking the month to compile and build on tactics from this past work, while also building fresh performance pieces and methods. I will use this time to order my genealogy of moving processes and dramatic/post-dramatic notation to see how the latter is embedded in me both in terms of knowledge, politics and affinities as a black person. I will also seek to understand how the evolution of heterogeneous social politics embedded in contemporary performance art.

About the artists

Tarcisio Cataldi is a Black Brazilian designer and artist born in São Paulo and now based on Tio'tia:ke/Montreal. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Design from São Paulo State University (UNESP) and is a second-year MDes student at Concordia University. Committed to Black-driven narratives within the lens of Afrofuturism, Tarcisio specializes in Black-centered storytelling, data visualization, visual symbols, and diverse cultural manifestations in both design and art. His research practice is concerned with the design and construction of flags – in particular, their symbolic meanings and values, their materiality, and their relation to humans and culture. He has worked extensively with graphic materialization of concepts of urban daily lives: slang, dialects, sayings, time, data, and ethnicity. He currently works as a designer for Obx Laboratory for Experimental New Media and Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace at the Indigenous Futures Research Centre.

Quinlan Green is graduate of Concordia University’s theatre department, having completed a BFA in Performance Creation in 2022. He works in theatre through multi-disciplinary writing for contemporary performances, as well as facilitations for technique in acting, movement and space activation. Born in Vancouver, BC, to Jamaican- and Irish- Canadian families, he was raised with his twin brother near the rapids of Baawating, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and has lived on the island of Montréal for six years.

About NouLa

The NouLa Centre for Black Students is dedicated to fostering Black students' full engagement, access, and sense of belonging at Concordia. We offer resources, services, and programming for Concordia students from Black communities, and we bridge access with internal units and external organizations that can support Black student success and wellness.

This program is a partnership between The NouLa Centre For Black Students and the FOFA Gallery.

Press

Concordia University News, "Concordia artists delve into Black ‘aliveness’ and consciousness in new FOFA Gallery film screening", by Vanessa Hauguel.