A massive new exhibition examines hip-hop's impact on the modern world

"There's no one way to get to hip-hop," says Andréa Purnell, Community Collaboration Manager of the St. Louis Art Museum and co-curator of the travelling exhibition The Culture: Hip-Hop and Art in the 21st Century. Hip-hop, she says, is "limitless," and has influenced the world in which we live, and contemporary art in particular, in more ways than we can count.

That's what she wants audiences to take away from The Culture. The exhibition — which was put together in conjunction with the Baltimore Museum of Art to celebrate hip-hop's 50th anniversary in 2023 — is making its only Canadian stop in Toronto at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Consisting of 96 works from over 65 artists, The Culture consists of everything from sculpture to painting to video work, as well as examples of how hip-hop has influenced things like fashion.

Julie Crooks is the AGO's Curator for the Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, and was in charge of bringing the exhibition to Canada. 

"Toronto has a rich history of hip-hop, dating all the way back to the late '70s," she says. "I thought that we have communities here who would really appreciate seeing a show like this, that surfaced the intersection of contemporary art and hip-hop.

Part of Crooks' job was to take the global show and Toronto-ify it for local audiences, adding pieces that represent this city's scene. One of those pieces was a massive photo by photographer Patrick Nichols. Nichols has been documenting Toronto's hip-hop scene since the 1980s, and has extensive connections within it. His piece "A Great Day in Toronto" is inspired by the legendary 1958 photo "A Great Day in Harlem," which gathered 57 legendary jazz musicians for a class photo of sorts. Nichols' version featured 103 members of Toronto's hip-hop scene, from early 1980s pioneers through to current artists, and was shot on the Exhibition grounds. It includes not only MCs, DJs and producers, but also promoters, dancers, record store owners, and video directors. 

"It originally started out as just people that I knew," he says. "I personally called most of the people in there… it's just the whole scene of everyone that was trying to uplift hip-hop [in Toronto] from the very beginning."

He adds that it was a "great honour" to gather all the people he's gotten to know and work with over the years and feature them in this exhibition.

"I'm really thankful that I was given an opportunity to get a little bit of shine… I've been around a long time," he says.

Arguably the centrepiece of the exhibition is "Live Culture Force 1's, 2022" — a giant pair of Nike Air Force 1 sneakers, made out of car parts — by St. Louis-born sculptor Aaron Fowler. Fowler says the sneakers were originally made for Flofest, a St. Louis-area hip-hop culture festival run by his friend and collaborator DJ Domo Fresh, and were part of a larger series of works he made for the festival

"I made a big spray can made out of car parts, that was representing graffiti," he says. "I had a large microphone, that was the MC portion of the festival and then I made the Air Force 1s to represent the dance battle portion of the festival."

He adds that he started using car parts as a medium as a tribute to his cousin who died in a car crash.

"Through the years, I've been collecting car parts from car crash sites," he says. "During the pandemic, I had an opportunity to just put that together, like, sort of use this tragedy or this pain to make beautiful things. Almost like an alchemy experience."

He chose the Air Force 1 because the classic basketball shoe is a staple of hip-hop fashion in St. Louis. The shoes became part of the exhibition after Purnell saw them at Flofest.

"She came to the Flofest with her child, to just see the festival," he says. "And then she saw the shoes and she was like, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are these?'"

Crooks says that ultimately, what she wants audiences to take away from the exhibition is a greater understanding of all the ways hip-hop has influenced the modern world, including in ways we don't immediately recognize.

"[Hip-hop] is so pervasive," says Crooks. "It's all-encompassing. I was in a staff meeting and someone said they wanted to shout someone out. That's the language of hip-hop. So it shows up in very subtle ways you don't even realize."

The Culture: Hip-Hop and Art in the 21st Century is on at the Art Gallery of Ontario (317 Dundas St. W.) in Toronto until April 6.