Northbound: Songs of Sovereignty unites five contemporary Black and Indigenous artists whose works embody resilience, cultural memory, and self-determination. Presented for Emancipation Month, the exhibition honours the ongoing pursuit of freedom across generations.
Spanning portraiture, abstraction, textile, and digital media, the artworks explore sovereignty through spiritual inheritance, political refusal, ancestral memory, and daily embodiment. Apanaki Temitayo’s textile muses channel resilience and healing; Claudia Luz Doare honours Miskito culture by rendering memory into form; Ghislan Sutherland-Timm’s collages trace water’s ties to diaspora; Segun Caezar’s portraits are rooted in historical reclamation and ancestral witnessing; and Yinkore’s mixed media reveres the depth of Black womanhood.
Together, their works form a visual chorus, each a distinct voice in a shared song of memory, identity, and liberation.
Through this collection, Songs of Sovereignty invites viewers to witness the ways artists hold space for memory, identity, and liberation. It is not only a celebration of cultural pride, but also an acknowledgment of the ongoing struggles for justice, freedom, and recognition. Each work is a note in a larger composition; a visual chorus that insists on the right to exist fully, to tell one’s story, and to be heard.
Apanaki Temitayo’s “Persistence” is a testament to the unwavering power of BIPOC women who continue to fight for bodily autonomy and reproductive justice in the face of erasure and oppression.
Cloaked in vibrant Ankara fabrics, this muse is rooted in cultural tradition while pushing forward against the tide of colonial systems. Her gaze is fierce, her presence immovable—she represents the ancestral will to survive despite systemic barriers. This piece channels the legacy of women who have resisted control over their bodies for generations and continue to rise, stitched into the landscape of resistance.
Its companion piece, “Wisdom” stands as the ancestral keeper, embodying the spiritual intelligence, cultural knowledge, and lived experience passed down through generations of BIPOC women. Her cloak tells stories through pattern and symbol, and her face reflects generations of BIPOC women who have carried the burden of injustice and still passed down love, insight, and resistance.
She reminds us that liberation doesn’t start in courts—it begins in stories, in rituals, in blood memory. Wisdom is the voice that echoes long after the rally cries fade, insisting we remember who we are and what we deserve.
Within the context of Songs of Sovereignty, these textile muses stand in powerful dialogue; one embodying the unyielding will to survive, the other safeguarding the wisdom that ensures survival has meaning. Together, they assert that sovereignty is never simply bestowed; it is forged in resistance, nurtured through care, and carried forward by those who refuse to surrender memory, dignity, or self-determination.
Claudia Luz Doare’s “Mi Tierra” is an intimate self-portrait and a vivid meditation on Miskito heritage. Through rich patterns and layered vegetation, Doare envisions La Moskitia as it existed before colonization, abundant, diverse, and alive with harmony between people and land.
“Mi Tierra” operates as an act of reclamation, drawing ancestral land into the present through memory and imagination. It asserts the beauty and resilience of Miskito identity, showing that self and place are inseparable, and that culture is not only remembered but actively lived and sustained today.
Her second work, “Plun pi aya” (“Dinner’s served” in Miskito) offers a quiet yet profound glimpse into a traditional communal hunting ceremony. The work captures a moment of connection between people and the land that sustains them. The hunt is not merely an act of survival; it is a ceremonial practice, embedded in a network of relationships between human, animal, and environment.
As part of Songs of Sovereignty, these pieces center the act of cultural preservation as a living form of resistance. They reveal that sovereignty is enacted daily – in shared meals, in traditions upheld, in the continued honoring of relationships to land – and that survival is strengthened when culture remains intact despite colonial attempts at erasure.
Ghislan Sutherland-Timm’s “vol. iii. this body loves too” s part of an ongoing autobiographical-fictional collection of work entitled Why is water so heavy? (c. 2022–present). Shaping a visual diary, this series interlocks the fluidity and borderless nature of water with themes of diaspora and landmarking.
In this entry, “vol. iii. this body loves too” examines the complex relationships enslaved Africans formed with both land and water through the Atlantic slave trade. These ties to non-native lands were forged in the forced exploitation of people and ecosystems across plantations of coffee, sugar, tobacco, cotton, and indigo.
Yet within this violence, cultural resilience endured. Power was renegotiated through care, survival, and the blending of African and Indigenous traditions. Today, this legacy lives on in Tkaronto/Toronto’s diasporic cuisines—plantain, jerk chicken, ackee and saltfish.
In the context of Songs of Sovereignty, the work honors endurance as a form of self-determination, showing how cultural memory transforms displacement into belonging. It recognizes that survival is not passive – it is an active, creative force that reclaims what was taken, reshapes what was imposed, and roots identity in new soil without severing ancestral ties.
Segun Caezar’s “SALVATORE NIGRUM” reimagines Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi through an African diasporic lens. Here, the sacred figure is adorned with dreadlocks, royal blue agbada, and a serene gaze. One hand blesses, while the other cradles a golden koi.
The fish, here, replaces the orb—representing both global burden and spiritual inheritance. The painting critiques the colonial roots of Christianity while reclaiming its iconography through an African diasporic lens. It asserts that liberation must include spiritual sovereignty, and that salvation, for the colonized, may look radically different from what was once preached.
In “ALL MY FRIENDS ARE KOI,” a young Black girl gazes directly at the viewer, her eyes framed in gold, her cheek pressed gently against a koi fish. The stark grey background sets the tone for a quiet confrontation between innocence and history.
The koi, long associated with perseverance and transformation, carries layered meaning. It functions here as a silent companion, an ancestral witness, and a bearer of stories too long ignored. Its presence is central to the work’s exploration of isolation, beauty, and inherited memory. Through the subject’s stillness, Caezar asks what freedom looks like when shaped by survival.
Positioned within Songs of Sovereignty, these portraits move between the sacred and the intimate – one reclaiming divine imagery, the other rooting freedom in lived experience. The koi becomes the thread between them, a vessel of endurance, renewal, and the steadfast spirit that endures across histories of displacement. Together, they affirm that sovereignty is sustained through both spiritual reclamation and the tender, enduring bonds that anchor identity across distance, memory, and time.
Yinkore’s “Redefining Boundaries” dismantles reductive archetypes that have long confined and flattened Black women into singular narratives. Through a rich layering of photographs, floral motifs and digital collage, Yinkore explores the emotional complexity of a father-daughter relationship marked by absence, longing, and the possibility of no repair.
This piece refuses erasure by creating space for vulnerability, grief, and resilience. Through digital collage, Yinkore pieces together fragments into a sovereign self, insisting on full personhood.
Her parallel work, “We come in peace” celebrates the joy of queer love – soft, intimate, and defiantly visible. Yinkore’s layered digital collage, blending photography and painting, creates a visual space where tenderness is both celebrated and protected.
The composition challenges the societal narratives that have historically flattened Black women into one-dimensional portrayals, stripping away complexity and depth. Here, intimacy is not hidden or diminished; it is centred.
Framed by Songs of Sovereignty, these pieces stand as powerful visual acts of resistance, affirming that Black womanhood holds multitudes; embracing grief, strength, tenderness, and defiance simultaneously. Together, they insist that sovereignty is not only the right to self-govern politically but also the right to self-define emotionally. It is the freedom to choose connection without apology or restraint, to craft identity from one’s own truths, and to inhabit joy as a radical, unyielding form of self-determination.
Across the practices of these five artists, a shared language emerges – one that speaks across time, place, and medium to show that sovereignty is not granted, but built, protected, and carried forward. It lives in ancestral memory, in the persistence of tradition, and in creative visions that refuse erasure.
Northbound: Songs of Sovereignty is presented by North York Arts and curated by Funmi Ajala and Shadio Hussein of Muse and Museums, a Toronto-based curatorial team dedicated to spotlighting local BIPOC artists. Northbound is made possible through the partnership and support of GWL Realty Advisors.