Laurena Finéus
@lvurena

Laurena Finéus is a Haitian visual artist, educator and arts administrator. She grew up in Gatineau, Quebec, but is currently based in New-York. Finéus is a graduate of the University of Ottawa with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a minor in Communication and is a masters' degree candidate at the University of Columbia in Fine arts. Her work has been exhibited at the Ottawa Art Gallery (2021), Karsh-Masson Gallery (2021), Ottawa School of Art (2021), Art mûr (2019) and Gallery 115 (2019-2020), among others. Recently, the City of Ottawa Art Collection acquired a selection of her work and she is included in a range of private collections internationally.

She has been the recipient of several awards/scholarships such as the Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Assistance Grant (2021), exhibited as a finalist for the Salt Spring National Art Award (2021) chosen from 2756 entries and received the Edmund and Isobel Ryan Award in Visual Arts (2020). Passionate about Black Canadian history and community education, Finéus has previously facilitated a range of bilingual workshops for the Ottawa Art Gallery, Arts Network Ottawa, the Specialist High Skills Major in the Arts and the Association franco-canadienne de l'Ontario.

Photo : François Mittins

Artistic approach
"My work explores representations of Haiti, its archives, and is inspired by my black female identity. My lived experiences are centered in each of my works to create safe spaces that engage and represent my key audience - the Haitian dyaspora. As Joanne Hyppolite describes in her essay "Dyaspora" (2011), we have always been disconnected from the physical landscape of our homeland as diasporas and this means that we do not grow up with Mapou trees in our backyards, unlike our elders. This culture shock and uprooting makes diasporic identity fragile and intangible. As a Haitian painter born and raised in Canada, I have always felt a significant gap between first and second generation immigrants in my family. This is why I recognize this discomfort in my creative process. It was through my constant personal defiance that I began to discern those "politics of comfort" that shape the diasporic experience. I felt more "comfortable" with total assimilation into Canadian culture, rather than being confronted with Haiti's tumultuous past and present. Canadian identity is itself based on the violent erasure of the Aboriginal presence and thus of any other group outside of its canon.

I aim to develop a visual dialogue of resistance against the dominant Western representational structures of the Black Caribbean body. Historically, Haitians have too often been presented as fractured or wandering spirits. Therefore, I use moments of joy, tenderness and community in my work to reclaim these modes of representation. Consequently, collecting images and archives from a wide range of sources is essential to my artistic research. Following in the footsteps of the Haitian art canon, my paintings are not constrained by the violent reality of the past, but by the dreams of tomorrow. The spiritual guides my brush and allows my process to constantly evolve into new imaginings to create multiple tangible worlds, like my ancestors who first dreamed of a black republic and built it from the ashes."

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Selection of artworks 

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Collections

City of Ottawa Art Collection, Ottawa
Private collections (International)

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Awards and Distinctions

The Salt Spring National Art Prize, Finalist, 2021
Critic’s Choice Winner, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2021
Critic’s Choice Winner , Ottawa Art Gallery, 2020
Edmund and Isobel Ryan Scholarship for the Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa, 2020
Visual Arts member’s association Scholarship, University of Ottawa, 2020
Dean’s Honour list Scholarship, University of Ottawa, 2020
Recipient of the Ineke Harmina Standish Memorial Scholarship, 2019