Malian Canadian Gallerist Hannah Traore Is Artfully Advocating for Representation in the Art World
Photography: Stanley Collins / Styling: Jode-Leigh Nembhard / Makeup: Briana Figeroux
Gallerist Hannah Traore, with an eternal love for art, set out to create her own space, Hannah Traore Gallery—the visible heartbeat of her work since moving to New York.
In New York’s Lower East Side, Traore’s gallery curates an immersive sea of artwork from people of colour, immigrants, Indigenous, and female and queer artists. Her gallery opened its doors on January 20, 2022. As a curator with endless ideas and a feverish need to collect, infuse and represent, Traore is not limited to one art type or preference.
Traore is too layered with a defy-the-odds artistic drive to be limited to one congruent artwork, as her identities give her a range. Starting with the city where bodies of art are not limited to the four walls of a room, Toronto.
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Born and raised in Toronto, Traore turned her exposure to art into appreciation at a young age. She watched as her mother, an art collector and fibre artist, passed on her love for art as an alive inheritance. “My mom raised me and my siblings in the arts. Making art, going to art classes, art camp, looking at art museums, reading about art. So it was just a huge part of my life since I was little,” says Traore.
Appreciation for art can easily become how you understand love and, interchangeably, one’s love language. After living in Toronto for quite some time, 18-year-old Traore left to attend school in upstate New York at Skidmore College and studied art history. But she soon returned, four years later, to Toronto after she completed her program because she missed her family and the city.
Now, in a Zoom interview with Toned, Traore adds to the list of things she misses from Toronto. “I miss certain restaurants. I miss my family. I miss how much green space Toronto has for sure. I also miss the calmness of the city compared to New York; Toronto is super calm. And I also miss how multicultural it is,” says Traore.
As a Malian Canadian, Traore was born into a vibrant culture, and the connection to her art is undeniable. Traore absorbed her father’s culture, a Malian immigrant, and this showed her the discrepancy where often culture is unwelcomed in art when certain ethnicities enter a space. This underrepresentation triggered a change in what Traore wanted to bring to the art world.
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Traore’s curated exhibitions for her senior thesis in college made her realize how much she loved curation, so she went back to New York and interned at the MoMA for a year through the affiliate group Black Arts Council and worked alongside Yasmil Raymond.
Traore remembers scrambling to write the application essay while in Japan and soon enough on a flight to New York for the interview. It was an open door to the art career she originally fell in love with.
“I had all these ideas of things I wanted to do,” says Traore, reflecting on her movement between two cities and the exposure, connections and passions that came with two homes.
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Traore also worked as an installation coordinator at the Fotografiska Museum and proved that her range in artistic mediums knew no end.
New York has a very special place in her heart, and Traore would visit New York many times a year since she was little. With an existing community of friends in New York, Traore knew she belonged there too. “There is nothing like the energy and excitement and depth to the art world in New York,” says Traore.
“I realized that this really was the place for me to do it because it's a huge city with so many resources, collectors, artists and people just really interested in the gallery world. One of the biggest industries here is art,” notes Traore.
Traore makes it clear that her love for Toronto and its artists will always exist but New York’s art scene has been “booming for years.” She adds, “Even though there might be a renaissance and a shift, I don't think that the greater community of Ontario cares enough about art and artists to support the kind of art world and scene that exists in New York.”
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Earrings Jaealyseco, Top Matthew Bruch
Earrings Jaealyseco, Top Matthew Bruch
Her space gave her versatility, a home to live and breathe in. “I realized the only way to really do what I actually want would be to open my own space,” says Traore. Like many others in the art world, one may realize that they cannot fit their dream into an existing box, but sitting outside may introduce them to a pocket of liberty too delicious to pass on.
Traore started by interviewing many people in different industries, people in business, and art people who owned art galleries. “Just totally all over the map to gain a little insight on where I should start,” says Traore. “You can plan all you want, but you need to be flexible and go with the flow,” she says, speaking on her biggest lessons since her gallery opening. “If you're like really hung up on the plan, a specific plan, then the best work won't be put out.”
“I did a seven-and-a-half month renovation, tons of research on the artists I wanted to work with, curating my first exhibition, branding, PR. I wore so many hats, including interior design, architecture,” Traore says on the process of opening her gallery’s doors.
During those seven and a half months, Traore was dealing with the messiness of a pandemic but says it gave her time to work given how fast-paced New York is. Although the renovation slowed down due to limited resources, Traore says she was privileged to not worry about things like rent and instead focused her energy on projects despite being anxious and terrified at the state of the world.
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With the knowledge she received and the confidence she birthed in her craft, Traore created a colourful space to capture a personal renaissance in the recent years of her artful journey. On her website, it’s said with precision:
HTG values connections – with artists, collectors, brands and institutional spaces – and maintains a focus on building true and lasting relationships. Understanding that art is in constant dialogue with design, fashion, media, and the ever-changing world around us, HTG is dedicated to broadening the notion of what is deemed appropriate for the gallery setting. In doing so, HTG aims to engage both novice and experienced audiences in new ways.
Words like “lasting,” “constant dialogue,” “broadening,” and “engage” are synonyms for Traore’s work. Bringing fibre artists, photographers, sculptors and painters into her two-room space shows the dedication to making art not only a piece of work we look at but a piece of work with a lasting impression. It's relentless and relevant whether it pops into our mind at early dawn or wiggles its way into our daily conversation with a loved one.
“I know that a lot of Black people don't feel comfortable in a gallery setting or in a gallery space. And so if you go to one of my openings, it's honestly extremely Black, and I love that,” Traore says. Traore notes that she shows art from underrepresented groups, including Black artists.
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“Being a Black gallerist means the world to me because, in the same way, the first time I ever had a Black boss meant the world to me because it was the first time that I fully felt seen,” says Traore. As a Black business owner and a West African woman to the artists and collectors she works with, it’s a full-circle moment that taps at the representation that is incredibly important. Traore says it’s less competitive than it seems, and the art ecosystem she’s around is beautifully “supportive of each other.”
Traore hints at New York facing its own renaissance as women of colour are taking up positions of power in the art world, building their empires and carving out their own lanes. “I think it would be a beautiful legacy to be kind of written into that history and considered someone who helped that renaissance move forward,” says Traore. It’s already off to a start telling Toned that a young lady came to her gallery and told Traore her dream is to open up a gallery and telling Traore that she inspired her. “To me, that is what I want my legacy to be,” says Traore.
The gallery’s recent exhibition featured Colombian Mexican artist and New York-based photographer Camila Falquez. Falquez’s first solo exhibition, Gods That Walk Among Us, includes 28 photographs shot in the last four years between Cuba, New York, Puerto Rico and Spain. “The works are a combination of personal and commissioned work, depicting a range of activists, friends, muses and performers with whom Falquez has developed long standing relationships,” says Falquez in a statement on the gallery’s website. Traore’s next exhibition features Toronto artist Moya-Garrison Msingwana and starts on September 15.
“I know that I want to move back home one day to Toronto and raise my family. And I think it's important to live in other places before doing that because I don't want to be bored of Toronto,” says Traore. Traore describes her three siblings, one of whom Toned interviewed for its second issue, as her “best friends,” and she loves and adores her parents.
In the city that simultaneously swallows but saves you, Toronto is Traore’s first home and may be her last. Despite gaps in Toronto’s creative industry that have proven to bear no fruits for artists, Toronto is a safe haven that has nurtured artists like Traore to escape into a wonderland of fearlessness and grit.