NORTHBOUND: Songs of Sovereignty
North York Centre Mall – Main Atrium
5150 Yonge St, North York, ON M2N 6L8
August 21, 2025 – October 31, 2025

Northbound: Songs of Sovereignty is presented by North York Arts and curated by Funmi Ajala and Shadio Hussein of Muse and Museums, a Toronto-based curatorial team dedicated to spotlighting local BIPOC artists.

Northbound: Songs of Sovereignty unites five contemporary Black and Indigenous artists whose works embody resilience, cultural memory, and self-determination. Presented for Emancipation Month, the exhibition honours the ongoing pursuit of freedom across generations.

Spanning portraiture, abstraction, textile, and digital media, the artworks explore sovereignty through spiritual inheritance, political refusal, ancestral memory, and daily embodiment. Apanaki Temitayo’s textile muses channel resilience and healing; Claudia Luz Doare honours Miskito culture by rendering memory into form; Ghislan Sutherland-Timm’s collages trace water’s ties to diaspora; Segun Caezar’s portraits are rooted in historical reclamation and ancestral witnessing; and Yinkore’s mixed media reveres the depth of Black womanhood.

Together, their works form a visual chorus, each a distinct voice in a shared song of memory, identity, and liberation.

Through this collection, Songs of Sovereignty invites viewers to witness the ways artists hold space for memory, identity, and liberation. It is not only a celebration of cultural pride, but also an acknowledgment of the ongoing struggles for justice, freedom, and recognition. Each work is a note in a larger composition; a visual chorus that insists on the right to exist fully, to tell one’s story, and to be heard.

Documentation photographs were taken by Green Yang Photography.