My practice has always found its spark at the intersection of where the traditional meets the digital. As tools for digital creativity continue to evolve at a rapid pace they present exciting opportunities to innovate and create uniquely stimulating types of original work for contemporary audiences. The Black Shoulders Legacy Award will enable me to deepen my expertise in a variety of digital fields (such as projection mapping, AR, interactive design and AI) to create more engaging and encompassing works of modern magnitude.
Misé Johns
Bio: Misé Johns is an award winning Kenyan-Canadian multidisciplinary artist and performer dedicated to innovating across digital and traditional disciplines to create work that challenges expectations and explores the limits of experiential entertainment. He culminates a lifetime of experience in the performing arts and nearly a decade in mentorship and mental health to produce immersive/interactive installations that both engage audiences in new and meaningful ways, and bring people together around the ideas and values that can optimize the quality of our experiences as human beings in the modern era. Under production moniker Ĕthos Cultura his work has been featured at the National Arts Center, on CBC and impendingly; as part of a residency with the Montreal Arts Interculturels 24’ program in addition to the 2024 National Black Canadians Summit. Harnessing the power of art to uplift all people, his creative output orbits around a simple question: can we live better?
What piece of art, by a Black artist, inspires you?
I love this question because it got me thinking about all the Black art that has inspired me over the years. Some of it is the reason that I wanted to make beautiful/meaningful pieces of art in the first place and others gave me the confidence to try. It’s hard to pick just one so I’ll go with a work that has inspired me lately (but if you see me ask about the others:).
Building Black Amorphia.
Just when you thought lego was a toy for children, Ekow Nimako brilliantly elevates block building to the level of high concept sculpture. Using all black pieces he creates complex afrofuturistic effigies of Black history and experience.
As a Black Canadian artist of African descent thriving in a non-conventional medium it is the artist himself that inspires me most. However, his Building Black Amorphia collection spoke to me particularly as it features a collection of futuristically styled West African style masks that double as spacecrafts inspired by science fiction. Such masks always evoke visceral memories of my childhood and ancestry and as a product of African heritage living in modern times this futuristic hybridization resonated with me on a deeper and personal level. Also, there is something interesting about using a children's plaything that symbolizes the innocence and playfulness of creativity as it is juxtaposed with the earnestness of Nimako’s intricate and singular talent. It also offers a window of understanding into his level of mastery as I can still remember playing with lego and being not a fraction as good, even with instructions.
What does it mean for you to receive this award?
This award couldn’t come at a more opportune time. Even in the midst of an ongoing wave of momentum my practice is still new, evolving and atypical. A composite of mediums and disciplines, it can be hard to categorize and legitimize such a hybridized form of creativity without the legacy of its own established field to stand on. But confidence is a currency that can carry one through many a doubt and to new plateaus of innovation and achievement. This vote of confidence from the BSLA has already breathed new life into my creative process as it translates into a palpable conviction that will carry me through to the next frontier of my career.