Sandra Brewster, Untitled (Straw Mat), 2018

Token | Contemporary Ongoing

Sandra Brewster

A Space Main Gallery

January 25 – March 9, 2019

Essay by: Nehal El-Hadi

Closing Reception. Artist in Attendance! Saturday March 9 from 3-5 pm


In Token | Contemporary Ongoing, Sandra Brewster re-presents objects selected and transported from various Caribbean geographies and temporalities, projecting them beyond the private and intimate spaces of their belonging. These objects are belongings, possessions. The deliberate and deliberated presence of these object-images bears witness to our movements through time and space. The objects themselves function as reminders of where we come from, their value increasing in significance through their transportability, material durability, and sheer and sometimes irrational or inexplicable nostalgia.



The object provides a material reference for memory-time, a point of origin & destination & presence & departure & conclusion & arrival. The object projects and exists in past, present, future, and reflects back to us our emotions, including desire, regret, love. Memory-time is non-linear, cyclical, the object providing a necessary (re)calibration point in the spiral of our lives’ progressions.

 

Sandra Brewster would like to acknowlege the support of the Ontario Arts Council  through the Exhibition Assistance grant.

Biographies

Sandra Brewster is a multimedia artist who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from York University. She is a recipient of numerous grants and awards, and has exhibited in a number of exhibitions in Toronto, Winnipeg and South Africa.

Nehal El-Hadi is a journalist, researcher, and producer whose work explores the relationships between the body, place, and technology. Her writing has appeared in academic journals, general scholarship publications, literary magazines, and is forthcoming in several anthologies and edited collections.