Ploughing Liberty, 2021 Installation at MOCA Toronto’s GTA Triennial Antique farm implements, found hockey sticks and brass dowels
Ploughing Liberty brings together a full playing field, where labour receives as much value as sport. For a moment, the two disciplines reconcile, but stories of inequality—and unequal playing fields—remain systemic and contemporary.
The work reflects Oluseye’s research of the Black Loyalists, a mix of enslaved people and free individuals who departed New York to become farmers in Nova Scotia in 1783. Fusing discarded hockey sticks—an object linked to white Canadian identity—with antique farm equipment, the work raises broader questions around liberty, labour, and the symbols that make up our national psyche: “What cultural icons do we recognize on a national level? How do we decide, and who gets to decide? Is it possible to have an all-encompassing idea of national identity, or is Canada’s diversity itself the national identity?”
