Sarah Stefana Smith is a photographer, mixed media artist and scholar. A self-described observer-sojourner her work is heavily influenced by questions of visuality, embodied knowledge and constructed place. Her practice speaks to the liminal spaces where an image and text shape-shifts, taking on new meaning and interpretation. Informed by historical events, literature, personal memory, fantasy and mythology, her work explores how culture, place and the politics of identity intersect to imagine a new account or re-envisioning of events. She uses a wide range of media to interrogate constructed historical narratives and to raise questions that challenge long held assumptions about cultural experience, truth and memory.
Receiving the John Pavlis Fellowship Fund for 2010, she was an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center for June 2010. She twice received an Art and Change grant from the Leeway Foundation. Sarah completed her MFA from Goddard College. Currently she is doctoral student in Humanities, Social Science and Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto. Stay connected with her: www.sarahstefanasmith.com
Celestin Edward is a collision of gender, race and female politics in relation to representation. The work places a lot on stereotypes and ideology. Utilising them to create an outfit that seeks to destabilise their meaning and importance.
The work is preoccupied with representation particularly the black female body as well as the photographics possibilities for masquerade, performance and otherness.
Celestin has come to an understanding of the work as a Creole, as Jean- Michel Basquait talked about his work, a mixture of cultures Caribbean, English and French. It is important to add that the images are not merely critiques or challenges to any specific culture but relies on the friction caused by cohesion.
Here then she is more interested in an inward reflection. Although drawing on a pride of experience from the cultural perview of being black, the work Celestin makes also points out how unstable that “being” can be.
Celestin is a graduate from Chelsea College of Art and Design and in her graduating year was shortlisted for the ACME studio prize.
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