“The Culture”: more than music

Steppng off the elevator onto the fifth floor of the Art Gallery of Ontario, I am greeted by their most recent exhibition, “The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century,” featuring six sections: Language, Ascension, Pose, Adornment, Tribute, and Brand. Together, they showcase the influential power that hip-hop has had on a wide range of visual culture, representation, activism, and identity since its birth in 1973. This exhibition visits Toronto as it travels across North America, initially started and curated by the Baltimore Museum of Art and St. Louis Art Museum. Changing with each city it encounters, “The Culture” uniquely includes Canadian artists and designers such as Caitlin Cronenberg, who photographed Drake’s Views album cover, and Patrick Nicols’ work, “A Great Day in Toronto Hip-Hop”, picturing major DJs, MCs, producers, radio and television personalities, as well as those in breakdancing, graffiti writing, and fashion from Toronto.  Walking through the exhibit, I was not only immersed by the display of creation rooted in Black, Latinx, and Afro-Caribbean experience but also surrounded by the sounds of hip-hop. Travelling from one section to the next, the music connected yet separated the works. What has started as a verbal and instrumental...