Creative director and this year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient Josef Adamu founded Sunday School in 2017, an agency based in Toronto that brings together photographers from across Africa and the wider diaspora. The organisation broaches commercial photography, fine art and visual communication to create advertising campaigns for Converse and album covers for Sony.
Feels like Home celebrates the agency’s sixth anniversary, and sits alongside photography exhibitions such as Jorian Charlton’s (b. 1989) Between Us and Farah Al Qasimi’s (b. 1991) Night Swimming, as part of the 2023 Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival programme. In Feels Like Home, work from three series is highlighted: The Hair Appointment (2018) by Jeremy Rodney-Hall, O’shane Howard and Joshua Kissi’s Jump Ball (2019) and Ten Toes Down (2021) by Kreshonna Keane. The images explore dualities of Black identity, constructing a tangible sense of realism whilst considering conversations around notions of home. A mother braids her daughter’s hair. Young men wear traditional Ghanaian Kente clothing. Black ballerinas step en pointe. In photographs reminiscent of Seydou Keïta (1921-2001), Malick Sidibé (1936-2016) and Kwame Brathwaite (1938-2023), a vignette of community, collaboration and compassion triumphs.
The two-part presentation continues with a month-long outdoor showcase. Six large-scale billboards bring depictions of love, strength and self-expression to the city’s bustling west end. Feels Like Home reveals domestic spaces as crucial and unabashed, powerful in the people and places they connect.
Sunday School: Feels Like Home
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto | Until 31 May 2024
Words: Chloe Elliott
Image Credits:
1. Carlos Idun-Tawiah, OBAASIMA, (2020). Courtesy of Sunday School. © Sunday School.
2. Ten Toes Down – The Black Ballerina. Photography by Kreshonna Keane, Produced by Sunday School, Directed by Josef Adamu, Styled by Alaia Ryan, Lighting by Alex Webster. Courtesy of Sunday School. © Sunday School.
3. Ten Toes Down – The Black Ballerina. Photography by Kreshonna Keane, Produced by Sunday School, Directed by Josef Adamu, Styled by Alaia Ryan, Lighting by Alex Webster. Courtesy of Sunday School. © Sunday School.
4. Jump Ball: Mighty Migration (Cultural Storytelling), Photography: Joshua Kissi, Videography: Samuel Pierre, Creative Direction: Josef Adamu, Production: Andrew Somuah, Malik Sulieman. Courtesy of Sunday School. © Sunday School.
