Kim McNeilly
A Portait of the Artist and her Work

Kim McNeilly is currently living in Toronto, where she attends the School of the Toronto Dance Theatre. She is a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art.

This past summer she was involved in three exhibitions: FREEDOM FEST: "Affirmation - Black Ontarian Artists" (an Ontario Black History Society Production); CARIBANA: "Caribbean and Latin American Artists" (a Caribana Committee Production) at the Metro Convention Centre; and "WEAPONS OF CULTURE: West Indian Canadian Artists" at A Space.

Currently she is involved in: "BLACK WOMAN: When and Where We Enter," A Diasporic African Women Artists (DAWA) production, (a travelling show due to open in Toronto in February 1989 at A Space); Studio Residency Program, a Women's Art Resource Center (WARC) production (a community project around the issue of the marginalization of women), due to run February to June 1989; and "SOWETO, So Where To? ," a SIYAKHA Cultural Productions presentation (a cultural work in the genre of South African Township Theatre), also due to open in February 1989.

We present here four of her recent works, along with text she has selected or written to accompany them.


LA LUCHA ES DULCE; NICARAGUA
(Literacy Crusade,1980)

She goes off at daybreak
to sow the seeds of
learning and teaching.
In Pipante or down the Cayuco River
with the future in her eyes
she goes singing.

And when she arrived at the
home of companero Juan Manuel
who's as good as blind,
because he doesn't know how
to read, the lamp of learning
bathed his entire cabin in light
and a tear rolled down
his cocoa-coloured skin.

From a song "Josefana Goes" by Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy.


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