The latest exhibition at MacEwan University's Mitchell Art Gallery features work from four artists, including a MacEwan graduate, each of whom is Jamaican or of Jamaican heritage, and how their work is shaped by the time they spent living in Edmonton.
Image credits (clockwise from top left): Raneece Buddan, The Birth of Brer Anansi, 2023. Muslin cotton, acrylic paint, oil-based colour pencil, embroidery thread. Courtesy of the artist.
Garfield Morgan, Yorubantu, 2025. Oil acrylic and paper collage on canvas. Courtesy of the artist.
Elsa Robinson, Glory, 2022. Mixed media collage on birch panel. Courtesy of the artist.
AJA Louden, Enoch's Thistle, 2025. Hand-tufted and carved tapestry. Courtesy of the artist.
New Routes: threads through space and time reflects the investigations of how the artists' paths as diasporic people connect their distinct artistic practices. The artists - MacEwan graduate AJA Louden (Design Studies '12, Design Foundations '10), Raneece Buddan, Garfield Morgan and Elsa Robinson - share certain relationships to place: they all have Jamaican heritage and lived in Edmonton at the same time. Yet each of them has distinct personal and ancestral immigration stories that eventually led them to Treaty 6 territory.
The featured works share common threads and reflect the ideas they shared together over nine months of conversation: diaspora; Jamaican culture and African heritage; reclaiming power and history and being cultural conduits between their ancestors and descendants. Highly engaged with material and craft practices, the artworks in this exhibition span painting, ceramics, sculpture, fibre and textiles, including an artwork collaboratively created as part of their ongoing conversations.
Accompanying the exhibition is an essay by Yaniya Lee, who contributed to many of the artists' conversations during the development of this project. Copies of the essay will be available in the gallery.
The exhibition runs at the Mitchell Art Gallery from September 19 to December 6.
Opening Reception
- Thursday, September 18, 2025
- 6 to 8 p.m.
- Mitchell Art Gallery
- Allard Hall, MacEwan University
New Methods for Black Canadian Art History: Yaniya Lee
- Friday, September 19, 2025
- 12 to 1 p.m.
- Roundhouse Event Space
- Allard Hall, MacEwan University
Artist Panel - New Routes: threads across space and time
- Thursday, October 2, 2025
- 12 to 1 p.m.
- Online through Zoom - register here
Drop-in Art-making with AJA Louden, Garfield Morgan and Elsa Robinson
- Wednesday, October 29, 2025
- 4 to 7 p.m.
- Mitchell Art Gallery
- Allard Hall, MacEwan University
