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Out of Many Cultures, One People: An Afro Caribbean Collective is an art exhibit currently in the main gallery of Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Culture Centre. Put on by the Canadian Caribbean Association of Halton it brings together community, creativity, and sound, honouring shared identity across cultural roots.
The inspiration behind this exhibit comes from a desire to honour the complexity of belonging to many worlds at once. Rather than presenting cultural identity as something neat or easily celebrated, the exhibition creates space for difficult but necessary conversations, particularly those experienced by people of mixed heritage, first generation Canadians, and immigrants. It acknowledges that belonging often involves tension, loss and unresolved pain, and that these realities are embedded in the work itself. At its core the exhibit asks three fundamental questions: What do we keep? What do we let go? How do we belong?
“A persistent feeling of being pulled between homelands, between past and present, between the culture you carry and the culture you’re building. Migration, the diaspora aren’t just themes; rather they are the framework, the foundation of how this exhibition came together for me, you know, how it was curated,” said Francesca Durham, the curator of the exhibit.
The opening reception held on February 1st, reflected the one people theme in several ways. Pearl Schachter, an accomplished harpist, played a curated playlist to highlight Black musical excellence. The music included Black classical composers such as Florence Price, Caribbean music was represented by the song Yellow Bird by Bob Marley, spirituals elevated by Harry T. Burleigh and finally Moonlight in Vermont by Dorothy Ashby. There were several speakers including MP Sima Acan and Rob Burton, the mayor of Oakville. An interactive response wall was set up to allow visitors to become active within the dialogue with prompts regarding home, ancestry, heritage and music. The serving of traditional Caribbean sugar cakes and black cake became both a thank-you and a celebration of freedom, ground the experience in the flavour of heritage.
“We wanted to create a space where artists could explore the tension and richness of navigating between worlds. Whether that’s the pressure to assimilate, fiercely protecting our heritage, or the creative work of finding new ways to blend traditions. This is a real challenge of many,”said Durham.
Histories of migration, diaspora, and cultural hybridity show up throughout the exhibition both in the artwork itself and in the way the show is structured. Many of the artists draw on ancestral symbols such as Ankara fabrics, Mende helmet masks, Jonkunnu figures, rope, and even koi fish to connect personal stories to broader collective memory. These materials and images speak to inherited histories of displacement, resistance, and survival, while also reflecting the mixing of cultures that defines diasporic life. Rope in particular becomes a way of thinking about what binds us, whether that is fear, trauma, or historical forces, while bold colour and pattern suggest resilience, change, and the possibility of freedom.
The layout of the exhibition mirrors many migration experiences. Visitors enter a predominantly white institutional space and are immediately immersed in Black sound and visual culture, which echoes the feeling of moving through systems that were not designed for you. As you move through the gallery, the work asks questions about ancestry and who came before, then shifts into themes of isolation and cultural preservation, before finally arriving at works that imagine shared spaces where multiple identities can exist at once. In this way, ancestral stories, traditions, and collective memory shaped not just the artwork, but the journey visitors take through the exhibition as a whole.
“We hope people talk openly about the cost of assimilation, the courage it takes to turn away from dominant narratives and do your own thing, and ultimately how we find sustainable ways to exist authentically in spaces that weren’t built for us. We also want younger generations to connect with their heritage in new ways and for cross cultural dialogue to happen where people from different backgrounds recognize shared experiences of negotiating identity,” Durham remarked.
This focus on identity becomes especially clear in the repeated use of faces throughout the exhibition.
“Faces expressing joy, pain, curiosity, love, defiance, contemplation. I sat with this for a long time in the gallery, wondering why so many faces and not scenes of home. And then I understood. When you live between worlds, when home is complicated, one’s face becomes the site of debate. It’s where your identity is read, misread, questioned, claimed,” said Durham.
In this way, the artists assert presence and humanity through expression itself, as if saying, look at us, see us, we are here. Ancestral stories, traditions, and collective memory shape not only the artwork, but the journey visitors take through the exhibition as a whole.
Out of Many Cultures, One People runs until February 28th at the Main Gallery at Queen Elizabeth Community and Cultural Centre at 2302 Bridge Road.
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