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Reception: 22 November 2025, 6–8:00 pm
A Smile Split by the Stars: An Experiment by Katherine McKittrick is a collaborative narration of nourbeSe philip’s poem, “Meditations on the Declension of Beauty by the Girl with the Flying Cheek-bones.” Working within, across and beyond colonial lexicons, the installation reads philip’s poem through, and as, different audio-visual-textual moments of revolutionary intent, wherein Black girlhood and Black femininity are, a priori, re-coding the aesthetic promises of modernity.
Anchored to nourbeSe philip’s gorgeous poem, we each offered different interpretations and readings of this work, in essay form, in conversation, through archival work, bookmaking, across photographic and textual narratives, in sounds, circuits and shared stories. We are: nourbeSe philip, Katherine McKittrick, Nasrin Himada, Juliane Okot Bitek, Trish Salah, Cora Gilroy-Ware, Chloé Savoie-Bernard, Yaniya Lee, Sameen Mahboubi, Aaliyah Strachan, Muna Dahir, Cristian Ordóñez, Roya DelSol.
Exhibition and programs co-produced with Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, the Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University and the The Revolutionary Demand for Happiness Working Group. Co-presented with the Ban Righ Centre, Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
See below for exhibition related events.
Reading Session: Talk About a Little Culture
Date & Time: 27 November, 12:00–4:00 pm
Location: Ban Righ Centre, 32 Bader Lane.
We are delighted to host an informal conversation facilitated by Katherine McKittrick, Professor of Gender Studies and Canada Research Chair in Black Studies, and Nasrin Himada, Associate Curator of Academic Outreach and Community Engagement that focuses on anti-colonial theory, reading and writing, and working closely with Sylvia Wynter’s 1967 essay, “We Must Learn to Sit Down Together and Talk About a Little Culture.” The session is structured to balance collaborative reading, with quiet time allocated to read the essay, followed by an organic and multi-vocal conversation about key themes, theories, literatures and formats that shape the exhibition, A Smile Split by the Stars.
Participants receive the essay in advance—it is highly recommended participants read the text beforehand. The reading group has availability for 25 people, with 10 spaces reserved for graduate students of Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, studies of Palestine, or cognate areas. Refreshments will be provided. Presented in partnership with the Ban Righ Centre.
A Curatorial Talk by Katherine McKittrick: Smile, or nourbeSe philip’s revolutionary intention
Date and Time: 4 December 2025, 6:00 pm
Location: Rehearsal Hall, Tett Centre for Creativity and Learning, 370 King St W.
Join us for a curatorial talk with Katherine McKittrick on this exhibition, which centres nourbeSe philip’s moving poem “Meditations on the Declension of Beauty by the Girl with the Flying Cheek-bones“, exploring themes of Black girlhood, Black femininity, and revolutionary aesthetics that challenge colonial narratives and re-code the promises of modernity. The talk will be followed by a conversation moderated by Muna Dahir, with a Q&A to follow.
Katherine McKittrick is Professor of Gender Studies and Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University. She authored Dear Science and Other Stories (DUP, 2021), and Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (UMP, 2006). She also edited and contributed to Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis (DUP, 2015). Recent projects include the limited-edition boxset, Trick Not Telos (2023) and the limited-edition hand-made book, Twenty Dreams (2024).
Muna Dahir is a Ph.D. candidate in Gender Studies at Queen’s University, where she also completed her M.A., and holds a B.A. in Socio-cultural Anthropology from the University of Toronto Scarborough. Grounded in Black studies, feminist studies, and anti-colonial thought, her research traces Black feminist modes of archivism, documentation, narration, reading, and inquiry across Black Atlantic cultures. Through relational methodologies and direct community archival collaboration, she examines how Black women cultural producers have strategically intervened in and extended the historical record, revealing the innovative ways Black feminist thought continues to challenge dominant narratives while creating new circuits of knowledge.
Writing Workshop: A Smile Split by the Stars
Date & Time: 11 December, 12:00–2:00 pm
Location: Rideau Building, 207 Stuart St, Rm 224
As part of continued efforts to contextualize and invigorate A Smile Split by the Stars, an exhibition deeply invested in poetry and its implications for how we understand the world, we present a writing workshop facilitated by poet and Queen’s faculty member Juliane Okot Bitek from Black Studies. Having been part of the exhibition’s collaborative process and a contributing artist, Bitek brings firsthand knowledge of the themes and artistic vision that shaped this groundbreaking show.
Students from all disciplines are welcome. Please bring a pen or pencil and a notebook or paper. Space is limited to 12 participants, and registration is required. Refreshments are provided.
Juliane Okot Bitek writes poetry and fiction. Her first collection, 100 Days, won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her second collection, A is for Acholi, won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection of poetry, Song & Dread, is published by Talonbooks. Bitek was born in Kenya to Ugandan parents and has lived in Canada for more than three decades. Her short story Going Home received a special mention in the 2004 Commonwealth Short Fiction Prize. We, the Kindling is her first novel.
