Sandra Brewster: Blur at Third Horizon

Sandra Brewster is a Canadian visual artist based in Toronto. Her work engages notions of identity, representation and memory, centering Black presence. The daughter of Guyanese-born parents, she is especially attuned to the experiences of people of Caribbean heritage and their ongoing relationships with back home.

In her series “Blur”, a series of gestural portraits made with photo-based gel transfers recently on exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, she is particularly interested in how change, especially change of location, impacts identity. Inspired by the preciousness of old photographs and their relationship to time and memory, the series mimics and somewhat exaggerates the physicality of those photographs by revealing the imperfections left by creases, tears, and folds. With Third Horizon’s move to Little Haiti this year, we’ve been thinking a lot about transition, migration, gentrification and the very meaning of home. With this all in mind, it’s hard not to feel kinship between the subjects of Brewster’s “Blur”, our neighbors, and Caribbean people throughout the region and its diaspora, forever on the move whether by choice or by force.

Join us for the opening reception of “Sandra Brewster: Blur at Third Horizon”, curated by Christopher Cozier, on Wednesday, February 5 at IPC ArtSpace in Little Haiti. Brewster and Cozier will be in conversation with Dr. Pat Saunders of the University of Miami, and guests will be treated to complimentary rum courtesy of Rhum Clément (Martinique), Chairman’s Reserve (Saint Lucia), Foursquare (Barbados), Worthy Park (Jamaica).

. . .
Installation view, It’s all a blur…, May 5 – June 10, 2017 at Georgia Scherman Projects. Work shown: Untitled (Blur), 2017 © Sandra Brewster and Georgia Scherman Projects, Photo: GSP