Sandra Brewster an overseas- based artist of Guyanese parentage, is a multi-media artist creating work (drawings, paintings, video and mixed media) that engages issues of race, identity, representation and memory. One of her interests is African Canadians born in North America and those who arrived in North America from the Caribbean during the 60s and 70s.
At times, she references old photographs and recreates elements using painting, drawing, and gel transfers, juxtaposing imagery to provide a dialogue through contrasts or likenesses. In this work, she visually represents a time or a memory and provides a platform to tell stories of “back home”. In other pieces, Sandra presents portraits of individuals that challenge stereotypes and perceptions.
Her series, ‘Smiths’, question prevalent assertions to the existence of a monolithic black community. This series of multimedia works, begun in 2004 and still evolving, is a playful attempt to “offer a questioning around concerns of identity and representation.”
Brewster’s parents migrated from Guyana in the late 1960s. Her parents were part of the wave of northbound post-Independence migration that has left an indelible Caribbean imprint on contemporary Canada. When Brewster was nine her family moved from Toronto, where she was born. After high school, Brewster joined the fine arts programme at nearby York University, with one of Canada’s most diverse student bodies.
During a trip to Guyana in 2008, the artist was inspired to create her ‘Guyana Art’ collection, which includes “transferred images of places and people and align[ing] them with drawings/paintings of Toronto-based scenes and people, to expose some contrasts and similarities between the two spaces, and to allow feelings of nostalgia.”
In 2012, Brewster was asked to be among 41 artists to participate in a project called ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’, a piano art work installation that has been touring internationally since 2008. That year ‘Play Me’ partnered with the Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games, and requested artists representing each of the 41 countries, to create art work on each piano. The pianos were then placed in public parks, streets and squares in the U.S. for any member of the public to play.
The painter worked on 2 pianos: Guyana and Suriname. The Guyana piano was placed in Mel Lastman Square, New York, and the Suriname piano in Sick Kids Hospital. For the Guyana piano, the images gel- transferred to the surface of the piano refer to the streets, people, food and landscape of Guyana. The map of the country is repeated on the area behind the pedals and a painting of the flower ‘Bird of Paradise’ is located on the left side.
