Richard Saltoun Gallery New York will open its doors on the Upper East side at 19 E. 66th Street to coincide with NYC Frieze Week. The inaugural exhibition will be a solo presentation by African-Canadian artist Jan WADE (b. 1952), on view between 2 May - 22 June 2024.

The gallery will also present a parallel display of Jan Wade’s works at the inaugural edition of Esther art fair, taking place at the Estonian House in NYC, 1-4 May 2024.

COLORED ENTRANCE will be Wade’s first solo exhibition in the United States, on the occasion of the acquisition of her work, Epiphany, by the National Gallery of Canada, and her upcoming retrospective Soul Power opening at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario in June 2024. Previously touring from Vancouver Art Gallery (2022), this marked the first solo show by a Black woman artist in the museum’s ninety-year history.

“We couldn’t be more excited to present Jan’s works to a US audience, given the incredible wealth of connections and references to her Southern-American roots and the historic slave trade, and their resounding contemporary political relevance. This will be the first major showing of her work in America and coincides with her touring retrospective opening in June, in Hamilton, Ontario; we have selected both historic and new works to showcase the full breadth of her practice here.”

- Niamh Coghlan, Director

Wade’s practice explores Black identity in a post-colonial landscape from a deeply personal perspective, drawing from her heritage, African diasporic spiritual practices, and the history of Southern Slave Cultures. She was born in 1952 in Hamilton, Ontario, to a Black Canadian father with familial origins in the American South and a Canadian mother of European descent. Raised in a relatively segregated but close-knit community, Wade's formative years were heavily influenced by her local African Methodist Episcopal Church, Southern African-American culture and aesthetics from the perspectives of her paternal grandmother and great-grandmother. Although it stems from personal experience, Wade's work seeks to articulate a new understanding of her ancestors’ traumas and the discrimination they themselves suffered.