Photography by Avery Savage

For our third feature in The Shed’s Open Call: Portals series, we step inside the world of Haitian-Canadian artist Laurena Finéus. As she prepared for the opening preview, we caught rare behind the scenes moments while she put the finishing touches on Together, We Could Have Made Mountains, her first textile installation that weaves Haitian migrant stories into a landscape of dreams, sacrifices, and shared histories. Alongside the installation, her paintings incorporate soil, mica, and natural pigments, transforming each piece into both a vessel for memory and a living archive of migration.\

In our conversation, Laurena reflects on migration as resistance in the face of racial violence, the coumbite tradition of coming together in mutual support, and how working with textile and ceramic beads became a ritual of care, preservation, and possibility. She speaks to the balance between rupture and refuge, grief and futurity, and the grounding practices that keep her rooted while navigating institutional spaces.

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