Kareem-Anthony Ferreira

This work has been kindly donated by the artist

Drawing upon familial photographs from early childhood, the present lot is a remarkable example of Kareem-Anthony Ferreira’s rich and tender portraits. Oscillating between sentimental and universally identifiable, Ferreira captures the quiet, quintessential moments of family life. As a first generation Canadian with Trinidadian roots, Kareem-Anthony Ferreira traces patterns of personal, familial, and social identity within the genre of black portraiture. 

The experiences and narratives that manifest in Ferreira’s works are typically taken from the accumulation of childhood photographs. From these, he builds his richly textured compositions from an assemblage of textiles and paper applied to unstretched canvases. Motivated by his family’s compulsive repurposing of ordinary materials, Ferreira similarly repurposes materials by incorporating them onto his canvases. The repetitive patterns of flora and fauna are taken from commercial textile representations of the Caribbean, demonstrating the oversimplified and cliché perceptions his disparate cultural backgrounds have of one another. Ferreira masterfully captures instances of intimacy and his reverence for his hybrid community is evident across his works. 

Kareem-Anthony Ferreira graduated with a BFA at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, CA and an MFA at the University of Arizona, US. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Towards Gallery, Nino Mier Gallery, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Johannes Vogt Gallery, Alice Yard Gallery, the Tucson Museum of Art, and the Workers Art & Heritage Museum. He currently lives and works in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.