Reclaiming the Narrative: Camille Turner’s 
Hometown Queen at the AGH 

Camille Turner (b. 1960) has spent nearly three decades challenging who gets seen, remembered, and celebrated in Canadian history. Working across performance, photography, video, installation, and sculpture, Turner draws on personal experience, historical research, and sharp conceptual strategies to examine the enduring legacies of racism, exclusion, and historical erasure in Canada and beyond. 

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Turner came of age in a predominantly white industrial city, where she often experienced a profound sense of otherness. Those experiences became foundational to her practice, which asks difficult questions about belonging, citizenship, and the stories nations tell about themselves. As Turner has written, « Blackness has been systematically ‘disappeared’ from the Canadian nation, » and much of her work explores the historical omissions, social exclusions, and acts of erasure that have shaped this narrative. 

Her landmark retrospective, Camille Turner: Hometown Queen, is now on view at the Art Gallery of Hamilton through January 3, 2027, and subsequently touring. The exhibition traces Turner’s artistic trajectory from early works such as Hometown Queen and Miss Canadiana to recent large-scale video installations exploring Newfoundland’s ties to the transatlantic slave trade. Bringing together photography, sculpture, archival materials, audio walking tours, and the interactive Afronautic Research Lab, the exhibition reveals the concerns that have defined her practice: anti-racism, historical recovery, and the reimagining of Canadian identity. 

The McMichael is proud to have recently acquired Pride and Possibilities for the permanent collection from Turner’s Hometown Queen series. One of six photographs, the work depicts the artist as her celebrated performance alter ego, Miss Canadiana, posed before sepia-toned images of Hamilton’s steel mills, where her father worked as a boilermaker. Since introducing the character in 2002, Turner has used Miss Canadiana—with her sash, tiara, and pageant regalia—to challenge assumptions about who can embody Canadian identity. « No matter how long I live in Canada, no matter that I’ve lived here most of my life, when will I ever be Canadian? » she reflects. « The feeling of otherness is so common. » 

The Hometown Queen series marks Miss Canadiana’s symbolic return to Canada after a worldwide tour. Standing confidently before the industrial landscape that shaped her family’s history, Turner reclaims both place and identity, disrupting narrow ideas of what « Canadian » looks like and calling instead for a richer, more inclusive understanding. The work is at once deeply personal and broadly political, celebrating the multiplicity of stories that have always been part of Canada’s past and present. 

We are honoured to welcome Pride and Possibilities into the McMichael’s permanent collection and to celebrate the work of an artist who continues to reshape conversations around identity, memory, and belonging.