jan 13 - jan 19, 2022
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arts & culture
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Nylut directory goes live for Regina and Toronto residents
Finding your local BIPOC and 2SLGBTQ+ friendly businesses has never been easier hammad ali staff writer Personal services, ranging from haircuts and skincare to having one’s photograph taken, can sometimes be more of an undertaking if you are a person of colour. Few of us realize, unless we have been in that position ourselves, how much of the existing infrastructures around us are often geared towards skin tones, body types, and hairstyles that the society around us has long considered to be “the usual.” In addition, there often exists a whole different set of challenges for people in the 2SLGBTQ+ community to find businesses that meet their needs and welcome them. In an effort to address some of these problems, a new directory service called Nylut was recently launched by a couple of friends based in Toronto and Regina. Nylut aims to provide better information on a selection of services for the BIPOC people of Toronto and Regina, with plans to extend that coverage to all of Canada and the USA. Nylut Directory Services provides listings on skin and hair care services that cater to members of the BIPOC and 2SLGBTQ+ communities. It features tattoo artists, makeup artists, and photography and videography solu-
tions. The directory also includes a Positive Place Rating system for the 2SLGBTQ+ community to find and review businesses based on how welcoming and knowledgeable they are about the needs of individuals from these communities. Nylut was born when co-founder Faith Olanipekun felt the struggle of finding an appropriate service for her own skincare needs towards the end of fall in 2020. While looking for laser treatment services for herself, Faith finally found someone she felt would be a good fit, only to be told that they were unable to work on darker skin tones. This was, of course, a frustrating experience. Shortly after, during a conversation with her friend kēr about the difficulty of finding hair services, the two friends decided that the time for a specialized business directory had arrived. As the founders mention on their website, they both feel like they have been shaped by their backgrounds as women of colour in the prairies. The duo had many conversations about their experiences that made them feel excluded, often joking that one day they would offer some solution to these issues. Both founders are excited to now be working on exactly that: adding value to BIPOC and 2SLGBTQ+ lives by connecting
Nylut Directory Team
The Venn diagram for looking as good as the person in this photo and supporting BIPOC and queer friendly businesses is a circle.
them to appropriate services. Faith and kēr opted to begin with services in their respective cities of residence in Toronto and Regina, aiming to first meet the needs of their own communities. So far, uptake has been phenomenal. Faith and kēr mentioned it has been humbling, and they are very pleased with the current content and directory entries. Even though the project is at an early stage,
both founders mentioned they are grateful for the opportunity to be able to start something like this. When asked about the story behind the name Nylut, kēr mentioned that the name is a stylization of the word Nilote, which comes from the river Nile. This name was chosen by the two founders as their way of paying homage to the river Nile, and the people of that geographic area to whom the riv-
er represented fertility, life, and its many blessings. When asked about the shortand long-term goals they have for their venture, kēr mentioned that in the short-term they hope to be able to expand Nylut listings all over Canada, and then to the USA. In addition to their website, Nylut can be found on Twitter with the handle @NylutCo.
Mackenzie’s unknown 13th Floor Digital gallery features multiple exhibits of art made in Minecraft
jorah bright arts writer
As COVID has affected our daily lives, it has also obviously affected the way we view art. Going to art galleries is much more difficult and, consequently, art galleries have been forced to adjust. Online events and exhibits have allowed people to view art from home safely. Regina’s own Mackenzie Art Gallery has an online exhibit called the 13th Floor, which is “located somewhere in between physical and virtual presence” according to the gallery’s website. It is full of possibilities, combining the experience of being at a gallery with the potential of online creation. The 13th Floor has eight exhibits currently available to view on their website. Some are simply images curated uniquely with the online space, while others are reflections or extensions of pieces at
the Mackenzie Art Gallery – what fascinated me the most was the Ender Gallery. The Ender Gallery exists within the game of Minecraft, a game that was released in 2011 and has been steadily growing in popularity since. It’s become the best-selling video game of all time. The Mackenzie Art Gallery allowed anyone from the public to apply for an artist residency within the Ender Gallery, and if accepted, an artist would have their Minecraft project featured for two months. The Mackenzie was specifically looking for exhibits to explore “Indigenous sovereignty, storytelling, simulation, colonialism, alternative economies, materiality, fandom, and digital ontologies.” The Ender Gallery has included the exhibit How to be an artist in Minecraft by Huidi Xiang, documenting the process of creating in real life through Minecraft. It was used to show the labour that goes into being an artist through
the medium of Minecraft. It has included “Odanak – At the Village” by Simon M. Benedict. Benedict’s work in the gallery was about how non-Indigenous depicted Indigenous people in media. The Ender Gallery also includes a project by Cat Haines entitled (g)Ender Gallery, which uses a combination of different mediums to explore gender. All of this was done solely in Minecraft. The latest exhibit of the Ender Gallery, A Minecraft Ride Towards World Border by Travess Smalley, will be closing on January 15. Smalley’s work took the textures pre-existing within Minecraft and replaced them with text. This replacement allows the land of Minecraft to become poetry. The closing event of A Minecraft Ride Towards World Border will be live streamed, so you don’t need to own a copy of Minecraft to enjoy it. Each exhibit has had its own opening event, except How to be an artist in Minecraft, and they are all available on the Ender Gallery
website. While the Ender Gallery is an overall unique experience and it allows artists to explore new mediums and ideas through Minecraft, I found a few issues with it, starting with the Mackenzie Art Gallery’s website. You’re unable to rightclick to open the link in a new tab. I found this incredibly frustrating while I was trying to navigate the 13th Floor. Instead of opening up the exhibit in a new tab so I could easily access another exhibit afterwards, I remained on the same tab. While it will show at the top of the site the path you took to reach the page you are on, those buttons are unclickable. It tricked me several times. I thought I could click the button to go back. I couldn’t. Only some of the 13th Floor exhibits have easy ways to back out. The Multiple Lives of Drawings has a small M with a back arrow in the top left signifying that’s how to move back, but even then, it didn’t work all the time. The Ender Gal-
lery pages had no such button. The Ender Gallery website itself that the Mackenzie Art Gallery links to is difficult to read. All the text is the same font as Minecraft, which is thematic, but the blocky text is close together and I struggled to read it. Moreover, it’s not on a solid background, it’s on a low opacity black backing with clouds behind that, poking through the backing. The white clouds with the white close-together text made reading the information about the exhibits difficult. Overall, the Ender Gallery is a really interesting idea, and using Minecraft, a very popular game especially during COVID, brings a new medium that’s quite appealing to a younger audience. I recommend the 13th Floor, found at mackenzie.art/experience/13th-floor, as a good way to experience quality art with artist insights while staying safe at home.
Minecraft via Flickr
A Flickr screencap of a Minecraft set up that is not nearly as cool and artful as the ones you’ll see in the Ender Gallery.
