Leading with women
Leading with Women makes art accessible to all by extending large-scale installations to the Gallery’s outdoor spaces. Launched in 2021, the three-year series highlights three separate Canadian artists whose work is represented in the national art collection.
As part of this initiative, a newly commissioned work will be installed each year.
The first in the series was Barcelone by Geneviève Cadieux, which was unveiled in June 2021. The Black Canadians (after Cooke) by Deanna Bowen is the second installation of the series.
The artists and their work
Geneviève
Cadieux
Quebec artist Geneviève Cadieux’s Barcelone invites visitors and passersby to reflect on how personal interactions can affect us, especially during a global pandemic.
Cadieux observes and interprets the human dimension through her own lens. This work documents an uneasy interaction between two lovers, evoking a psychological tension that is particularly expressed in the woman’s body language. While the bright setting is devoid of any point of reference, images of the sun in various positions in the sky suggest the passing of the day and time.

Deanna
Bowen
In this monumental new work, Deanna Bowen expands her family history into a broader examination of discrimination in North America over the centuries.
Rooted in a chronology that begins with the artist’s great-great-great grandfather and ends with the birth of her mother in 1943, The Black Canadians (after Cooke) also maps the United Kingdom’s abolition of slavery in 1833 and the trade’s colonial legacy.
