Shaunasea Brown
Using visual and performance art, music and photography, Art Routes: Locating Second-Generation Black Caribbean Canadian Women’s Perspectives centers a specifically second-generation discourse using the artwork and lived experiences of second-generation Black women artists—Kamilah Apong, Sandra Brewster, Shaunasea Brown, Anique Jordan, Brianna Roye, Camille Turner and Shi Wisdom. By attending to the contours of Black life in the complex geographies of Toronto and beyond, Art Routes acknowledges and articulates how Black women artists provide blueprints for how Black people can create their own kinds of freedom. Through the nuanced position of second-generation be(long)ing, Art Routes captures the struggle of second-generation Black women artists to engage in new forms of world-making that reevaluate ideas about gender, sexuality, and citizenship, posit new radical strategies of care, and re/define how Black people live within and despite contexts of death and dying. With the understanding that the ability to create is a matter of life and death for Black people, Art Routes offers creative ways to think about Black being in Canada while identifying how Black Canadian women artists imagine and construct more inhabitable environments for themselves and their communities.
Give thanks to the most high for life and my ancestors for surviving on my behalf. To Mom, Dad, BJ and Moshe who have all taught me about the power of love and family, nuff love! To the participating artists who make this entire work possible— Kami(lah) Apong, Sandra Brewster, Anique Jordan, Brianna Roye, Dr. Camille Turner and Shi Wisdom—I am in awe of your contributions to our world. Thank you for your engagements with my research and trust in me to share those insights. I have had the privilege of conducting this research with an awesome committee entirely comprised of Black women scholars by my side: Drs. Andrea Davis, Kamala Kempadoo and Christina Sharpe. This rare composition has truly been a blessing and I cannot thank you enough for helping me throughout my entire graduate journey. You have all embodied qualities of what supportive Professors should be like and I aspire to carry on your investments in my life by doing the same for the future students who will come my way.
Give thanks to the graduate students, friends/family who have listened to me rant about my ideas, believed in me, shared resources, reminded me to take breaks, cried in solidarity, read and edited drafts, forwarded to the zoom room of doom, and ultimately helped me survive this thing called Black Grad Life: Patrice Allen, Paul Bailey, Krystal Batelaan, Dr. Bianca Beauchemin, Yvonne Brown, Debbie Ebanks Schlums, H Evans, Chevy Eugene, Anneisha Facey, Marcelle-Anne Fletcher, Huda Hassan, Dr. Nataleah Hunter-Young, Emilie Jabouin, Ayan Kassim, NJ Katshunga, the late Masud Khalif, Mila Mendez, Aliyah Nadaei, Danica Nelson, Shamara Nicholson, Jade Nixon, Angela Obeng, Juanita Stephens, Melissa Sobers, Davisha Sutherland, Natalie Wood, and Michelle Yeboah, etc. There are likely many other people I have forgotten to mention but please know that it is all love same way.