Sandra Brewster’s practice considers the migration of people from one place to another, and how changes in location and environment affect one’s sense of self. Specifically, Brewster references the migration of her parents and their peers who left Guyana for Toronto in the late 1960s.

Included in the exhbition, Blur is a series of gestural portraits made with photo-based gel transfers that reveal the scratches, creases, and tears on each surface. “These surface imperfections can be read as analogous to migratory experiences replicating notions of loss, displacement, erasure, and transferal.”[1] In Brewster’s desire to capture forms of movement that prevent subjects from being fixed to a particular moment or perspective, the resulting blurring effect has rendered their facial features almost illegible. In doing so, she elicits feelings of erasure, or the sensation of being ignored.

Take a Little Trip is a series that features portraits of well-known deceased public figures in both photo-based gel transfer images and a compilation of found video interviews. Those depicted are incredibly influential figures in the fields of art, music, literature, post-colonial theory, and community activism, including Salome Bey, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Toni Morrison, Claudia Jones, Frantz Fanon, Minnie Riperton, Josephine Baker, and Nina Simone. Titled after a song by Minnie Riperton, Take a Little Trip exposes the unfixable nature of each subject’s being and their tendency towards movement – geographically and imaginatively – while expressing themselves in ways that question perceived notions of monolithic Black communities.

Closely-cropped, the portraits show the subjects listening intently, highlighting the ways in which each of them was highly attuned to their surrounding environments. In the video, they vocally express their thoughts on an array of topics related to their work, ranging from the role of an artist in society, individual approaches to creating, personal influences, and the deliberate misrepresentation of their work.

Throughout the exhibition, Brewster highlights the inherent difficulties in locating or “fixing” a Black subject through the manipulation of photographic images, which is central to her artistic process. “[Blurring],” Brewster notes, “is like a resistance, isn’t it? Black people have a way of holding back, keeping something to ourselves. There is power in that, in being able to conceal parts of who we are.”[2] Walk on by, presented in the hallway vitrine, is a silent video shot on Super-8 film. Similarly blurred and edited to varied frame speeds, the video depicts everyday Black subjects moving through the city and blending into the transitory landscape.

[1] Edmonds, Pamela, Shifting the Gaze, https://www.aci-iac.ca/the-essay/shifting-the-gaze/

[2] Sandra Brewster, interview with Neil Price, “The Legacy of Presence: Sandra Brewster Talks about Her Process and the Influence of Memory,” Canadian Art (August 21, 2019). 

Sandra Brewster is a Toronto-based artist who foregrounds Black diasporic experience in her multidisciplinary practice. Brewster focuses on identity and representation, as well as the depiction of movement and gesture, resulting in a re-presentation of the portrait. She uses specific landscapes as metaphors, and manipulates old photographs to centre the people within them. Born to Guyanese parents, her work refers to the migration of Caribbean people from the region, suggesting a formation of identity that encompasses multiple geographies and temporalities; a sense of identity that exists within the diaspora.