Pamela Edmonds’ Essay on Sandra Brewster Published by the Art Canada Institute
January 24, 2022
On January 21, 2022, the Art Canada Institute (ACI) launched a new online exhibition “Sandra Brewster: Traces of Home: Migration, Memory, and Being.” The exhibition explores how Toronto artist Sandra Brewster draws inspiration from the meaning of home, migration, and memory for the Caribbean Canadian community.
Born and raised in Toronto, Brewster has spent over two decades examining the effects of migration on her family and other individuals of Caribbean and African descent in her community. Incorporating their personal photographs, recollections, and cherished possessions from back home into her multilayered works, Brewster foregrounds the complexities of Black diasporic experience and identity.
McMaster Museum of Art’s Senior Curator Pamela Edmonds has written an essay to accompany the exhibition, titled “Shifting the Gaze”. According to Sara Angel, ACI Founder and Executive Director, the essay “invites us to reflect on the role of the family in sustaining cultural heritage, identity, and community”.
“Shifting the Gaze” examines Brewster’s formal and conceptual strategies from her early work to today, and explores how the artist uses these strategies to both disrupt representational space and expand notions of contemporary portraiture.
According to Edmonds, “By complicating tropes of visibility and (mis)representation, her powerful imagery gives emphasis to the performative nature of Black identity in the Americas, opening up ways of thinking about how her subjects negotiate and re-narrativize historical and contemporary geographies.”
Read the full essay here.
View the online exhibition, Sandra Brewster: Traces of Home.
M(M)A Education Staff Teresa Gregorio Shortlisted in City of Hamilton’s Arts Champion Awards
June 23, 2026
Please join us in congratulating M(M)A’s Educator for Campus & Community Engagement, Teresa Gregorio, for being shortlisted in the Arts Champion Awards in City of Hamilton’s Arts Award 2026. The Arts Champion Awards may be conferred annually to living individuals who are outstanding supporters of the arts in Hamilton as volunteers, advocates, or board members. […]
New Acquisitions from Open Studio
June 19, 2026
McMaster Museum of Art M(M)A and Open Studio are pleased to announce that M(M)A has acquired three works by Carl Beam, Janet Cardiff, and Rita Letendre from Open Studio’s historic archive collection through its Print Sales program. These works now enter M(M)A’s Permanent Collection. About Open Studio: Open Studio was founded in 1970 and is […]
M(M)A Education Staff Nicole Knibb Receive President’s Awards for Outstanding Service in 2025
June 8, 2026
Please join us in congratulating M(M)A’s Senior Educator (Academic and Professional Engagement) and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, Nicole Knibb, for receiving the President’s Awards for Outstanding Service in 2025. Nicole Knibb has made a profound and lasting contribution to interdisciplinary education, community engagement, and inclusive pedagogy at McMaster University. Through her leadership at the McMaster […]
