Karice Mitchell

Using vintage Black erotica as source material, Karice Mitchell creates photo-based installations that empower herself and Black femmes while challenging the pervasive influence of white supremacy. She employs a mix of techniques—cropping, rescanning, rephotographing, and digitally distorting analog and digital materials—embracing technological glitches as a means to reveal new, alternative modes of existence. Through this exploration, Mitchell blurs the line between visibility as celebration and obscurity as a form of protective resistance. Her work subverts commercial advertising conventions to challenge capitalist narratives, affirming that adornment on Black bodies is a powerful expression of identity and presence rather than mere decoration. Acting as both creator and subject, she elevates Black self-care, culture, and joy to monumental scale, inviting reverence and recognition of Black femme experience. Mitchell critically reinterprets found imagery to challenge prevailing portrayals of Black female sexuality in pornography and popular media, offering fresh visions of Black womanhood liberated from the constraints of the white gaze and patriarchal norms. ...

Franz Kaka was founded in 2016 as an artist-led gallery, presenting exhibitions that privileged experimentation and risk-taking. In 2019, the gallery began formally representing a number of the artists who had previously exhibited, including Lotus L. Kang, HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander, Anne Low, and Elif Saydam. In the years since, the gallery has expanded its international reach through gallery collaborations and art fair participations, including presentations at Art Basel, Frieze London, and the Armory Show. Known for presenting materially curious and conceptually complex exhibitions, the gallery champions nuanced practices that transform and deepen through sustained engagement, fostering dynamic conversations with audiences in Toronto and abroad. ...