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.

ARTISTS TO KNOW: DESTINY BRANAY

Photography by Jordan Carter

The star motif has become Destiny’s iconic artistic signature which she describes as “symbolic of the light that exists in Black people that refuses to be dimmed.” Through her thoughtful and colorful large-scale oil paintings, Destiny highlights Black folk in community with one another, centered around the idea of hope as an act of resistance against oppressive systems in America. Destiny’s work not only honors the resiliency of her ancestors who came before her, but serves as a beacon of hope in the midst of the work that is still left to be done.

ARTISTS TO KNOW: ROSSANA ROMERO

Photography by Nabila Wirakusumah

Rossana Romero is a prime example of what it means to be an artist. Not afraid to use her art to speak on topics such as colonialism and historical trauma, while creating a path to healing through her work that carves new, imaginative ways of being that ignite hope, resilience, self actualization, and self empowerment. Her preferred artistic mediums inspired by magic realism, are beautifully vibrant oil paintings of fantasy landscapes referencing the lush terrains of the Amazon featuring her iconic animal motifs which she also molds into textured paper mâché sculptures and frames.