Bushra Junaid facts for kids
Bushra Junaid is a Canadian artist, curator, and arts administrator who lives in Toronto. She is well-known for her art, which explores history, memories, and cultural identity. She uses different materials like collage, drawing, and painting.
Bushra Junaid was born in Montreal. Her parents were from Jamaica and Nigeria. She grew up in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Her artwork often focuses on Black history, the journey of people from Africa (the African diaspora), and the history of Atlantic Canada.
Her art has been shown in galleries and art centers all over Canada. She also illustrated a children's book called Nana's Cold Days. Her work has been displayed at places like Painted City Gallery, Galerie Céline Allard, Spence Gallery, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto Reference Library, the NFB, and Sandra Brewster's Open House.
In 2020, Junaid organized an art show at The Rooms called "What Carries Us: Newfoundland and Labrador in the Black Atlantic."
Noted Artworks
Two Pretty Girls (2016)
Bushra Junaid wanted to show the connection between Newfoundland and the Caribbean. So, she started a project called New-Found-Lands at St. John's Eastern Edge Gallery in 2016. She co-organized this project with Pamela Edmonds.
The New-Found-Lands exhibition featured Junaid's artwork Two Pretty Girls. This piece shows Bushra and her sister re-creating an old photo from the 1800s. The original photo was of two unnamed women who worked on a plantation.
Junaid explained that she sees the women in Two Pretty Girls as her ancestors. By making the image larger, it feels like a family portrait. This brings these women from the past right into the present. Two Pretty Girls was also shown in other exhibitions. These included Future Possible: The Art of Newfoundland and Labrador to 1949 at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in 2018. It was also part of the Like Sugar exhibition at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College in 2019.
Sweet Childhood (2017)
In 2018, Bushra Junaid's artwork Sweet Childhood was part of an exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum. This show was called Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art. It featured the work of nine Canadian artists. They explored ideas about race, belonging, and Black identity in Canada.
For Sweet Childhood, Junaid used an old 1903 stereoview image. This image showed children in a Caribbean sugarcane field. She turned it into a kind of family portrait. The artwork includes old photographs and text printed on a special backlit fabric panel. After being at the Royal Ontario Museum, the exhibition traveled to the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. It then opened at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in the summer of 2019.
Nana's Cold Days
Bushra Junaid illustrated a children's book by Adwoa Badoe. The book is called Nana's Cold Days. She used colorful collages for the illustrations. Some of these collages include pieces cut from photos of the sky, fruit, or faces.
