“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.

“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.

“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. 

“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.

“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. 

“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.

“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. 

“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. 

As a multidisciplinary Angela Walcott uses found objects as a bridge between past and present identities. Her visual narrative emerges from Caribbean, African and Latin American traditions. Various techniques are used to highlight sustainability and waste reduction in her practice through the use of living and lived natural inks and botanicals. By incorporating traditional and non-traditional methods Angela stretches the conversation with mixed media and elements of drawing, painting, ceramics, photography and typography as guides that inform her practice.

Instagram: @artistwritermaker

Jassira De Almeida is an Angolan-Canadian visual artist who creates work digitally and traditionally. She is an undergrad animation student at OCAD U. When traditionally working, graphite, acrylic, watercolour, and oil are the mediums she uses for drawings, illustrations, and paintings. She combines analog and digital techniques when making stop-motion and 2D animation. She also experiments with photography and digital portraiture. She has recently been creating representations of herself and what inspires her (people in her life, nature, music, animation). She is focused on making fun and thoughtful stories with time-based and traditional media.