Chawntay Barrett (she/her) is an emerging artist and facilitator based in the Greater Toronto Area. Community is an important aspect in Chawntay’s creative practice, as she is a recent alumni of the ArtworksTO Next Stream program and the Remix Project. Chawntay works primarily with oil and acrylic paint on canvas as well as with digital media for illustrations and design. As a woman of afro-Caribbean descent, Caribbean culture is a vital underlying theme in many of her artworks; the majority of her work explores the black experience in the modern era.
Treasures of Ours
Timaj Garad
Mot
Presented by: Timaj Garad
Ethnicity: Ethiopian
These are wall ornaments called ‘mot’ from traditional Harari-Ethiopian basket weaving. Each mot also tells a story and has a function. Growing up, I used to help my mom arrange several mot on the walls of our dining room. Hararis use dining rooms as a place to both entertain guests and as a prayer space with usually only a rug and some pillows (no dining table) decorating the space, aside from the mot. Mot arrangement was a way to make a new space feel like home and make an old space new. For the women in my family, it was and still is a form of bonding through artistic curation.
Image taken by me.
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