Onsite Gallery, OCAD University

Friday, February 28, 2025 | 12 pm – 2 pm
Virtual via YouTube | Register here

Join Onsite Gallery for a thought-provoking virtual panel featuring artists Sandra Brewster, Shabnam K. Ghazi, Siham Salah, and Esery Mondesir as they explore the dynamic role of time in shaping cultural, socio-geographic, and familial histories in their artistic research. Through an engaging discussion, the panelists will share insights into their creative practices, revealing how layered narratives carry the power to connect, transform, and reveal deeper truths about both shared and individual experiences.

Stay involved with a live Q&A session, moderated by Onsite Gallery’s Programs & Community Coordinator, Susan Jama. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with artists at the intersection of memory, history, and creative expression.

Connecting Shared Experience Through Time & Memory coincides with Onsite Gallery’s current exhibition Fortitude/Fragile guest curated by Magda González-Mora.

Also on view at Onsite Gallery are The Delaney Family Emerging Curator’s Prize: Presence in a past or undetermined future. and Coco A. Lynge | Up Front: Inuit Public Art @ Onsite Gallery.

About the Panelists

Images (left to right): Fortitude/Fragile Exhibiting Artists, Shabnam K. Ghazi (Photo: Max Power) & Sandra Brewster

Shabnam K. Ghazi, an artist born and raised in Tehran, Iran, was shaped by a rich cultural tapestry that infuses her work with depth and nuance. Currently based in Toronto, Canada, her artistic journey spans continents and decades, reflecting a unique blend of Eastern and Western influences. During the 1990s, she completed several apprenticeships in painting, sculpture, and ceramics with Iranian masters in Tehran. She has exhibited extensively in Iranian galleries and museums and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from York University in Toronto in 2009.

Ghazi’s work transcends borders, having been exhibited in esteemed galleries across Iran, the United States, Canada, and Cuba and are collected in private and public collections.

Shabnam K.Ghazi | Visit website

Sandra Brewster is a Canadian artist based in Toronto. Her work employs a range of media to engage concepts of movement that express an internal relationship with identity. Her practice is grounded in people of the Caribbean diaspora who maintain a relationship with back home. Born to Guyanese parents, she is interested in a multilayered sense of being made up of a collision between geographies and temporalities. She expresses these complexities via the unfixed nature of her work’s materiality and presentation.

Brewster’s work has been featured locally, nationally and internationally. Her public sculpture A Place to Put Your Things is currently on view at the Harbourfront Centre, Toronto. Brewster is the 2024 recipient of the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award.

Sandra Brewster | Visit website

Images (left to right): Siham Salah and Esery Mondesir. Photos: Courtesy of the artists.

Siham Salah is a self-taught landscape artist based in Edmonton, specializing in water-mixable oil colors and gouache. Her work explores the passage of time through shifting seasons, capturing the warmth of landscapes from dawn to dusk. Deeply influenced by her Somali-Yemeni heritage, Alberta upbringing, and background in computer science, Siham brings a unique perspective to her art. Her growing portfolio includes city skylines, forest fields, and mountain cliffs, all characterized by a serene use of selective tones. When she’s not painting, Siham enjoys web development, sipping tea, and watching period dramas.

Siham Salah | Visit website

Esery Mondesir is a Haitian-born video artist and filmmaker. He was a high school teacher and a labour organizer before receiving an MFA in film and video production from York University (Toronto) in 2017. Mondesir draws from personal and collective memory, official archives, vernacular records, and the Everyday to generate a reading of our society from its margins. Made in collaboration with fellow members of the Haitian diaspora in Havana, Cuba and Tijuana, Mexico, his latest films have been exhibited in art galleries and film festivals worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal, the Open City Festival in London, UK, the Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Mondesir is Assistant Professor at OCAD University in Toronto.

Esery Mondesir | Visit website

About the Moderator

Susan Jama is an art worker with over 5 years of experience leading community engagement and public arts programming with strong grassroots experience. She is the Programs and Community Coordinator at Onsite Gallery. Susan has worked with various institutions that approach heritage in a community-minded manner including Toronto Ward Museum (TWM) and Black Artists’ Networks in Dialogue Gallery & Cultural Centre (BAND). She graduated with a Masters of Museum Studies from University of Toronto and completed her Bachelor in Psychology & History at York University. She currently serves on the Museum Education Roundtable board as co-treasurer.

Onsite Gallery is generously supported by The Delaney Family.

About Onsite Gallery
www.ocadu.ca/onsite
Onsite Gallery, OCAD University’s flagship professional gallery, presents contemporary, Indigenous, and public art and design to advance knowledge creation and stimulate local and international conversations on the urgent issues of our time.

Onsite Gallery
199 Richmond Street West
Toronto, ON M5V 0H4

Gallery Hours
Wednesday: 12 – 7 pm
Thursday to Saturday: 12 – 5 pm

Gallery admission and all events are free.

Onsite Gallery is an accessible venue with all-gender, single-user washrooms.
» Detailed accessibility information found here

About OCAD University (OCAD U)
OCAD University (www.ocadu.ca) is Canada’s university of the imagination. Founded in 1876, the university is dedicated to art, design and digital media education, practice and research and to knowledge and invention across a wide range of disciplines.

Contact Information:
Susan Jama
Programs & Community Coordinator, Onsite Gallery
susanjama@ocadu.ca

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