Name/Title
Token (Monkey Jar)Entry/Object ID
2019.14.01Description
Sandra Brewster (born 1973) is a Canadian visual artist born and based in Toronto. Her multidisciplinary community-based practice deals with representations of Black identity and memory in Canada. Brewster grew up in Pickering, Ontario. As the daughter of Guyanese immigrants, she became very aware of the experiences of immigrants and those of Caribbean heritage in her community.
Brewster has engaged with a wide range of topics from how migration has affected her family to gun violence. Her works investigate ideas about Blackness and reject both its erasure and its conventions within Western culture while exploring the intricacies of diasporic identities via her photography, video, drawing, and painting. Brewster demonstrates how identities are formed by memories, narratives, and histories that transcend both great distances and times. Her series, Token, uses personal objects and belongings that serve as material representations of human movement. The depictions of the objects serve as a nostalgic reminder of culture and community and reference specific persons, locations, and stories. Their meaning is non-linear and atemporal as they exist in the past, present, and future.
Brewster completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at York University in 1997 and her Master of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto in 2017. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the US, the Caribbean and South Africa. Brewster was an artist-in-residence in Brazil, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago and South Africa, and her work has been published in numerous magazines, including Caribbean Beat and The Walrus.
https://sandrabrewster.com/Artwork Details
Medium
photo based gel transfer on paperDimensions
Height
124.5 cmWidth
118.5 cm