MakeRoom x Sankofa Square 2025: On The Uses Of Fire

Iman Abbaro

Artist bio

Sudan Revolts: December 2018 Protests on 35mm Film

Iman Abbaro—also known as Sudaneeya—is a Sudanese multidisciplinary creative currently based in Toronto. Her focus has been on curating a wide range of creative events that bring together and celebrate different aspects of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. Iman believes that creative expression is crucial to fostering communities, especially those in the margins. This image of a protestor and also my dear friend Ola was captured on film during the Sudan solidarity protests of 2018. This was the first of many solidarity protests to follow as my home country Sudan had just entered its third revolution. This photograph is a special one because it is a part of a collection that spotlights Sudanese women who have been at the forefront of peaceful movements. Whether it's overthrowing colonial regimes or resisting military dictatorships, Sudanese women have always ignited a fire in the country's revolutions for decades.

Instagram: @sudaneeyaa

Joy Adeola

Artist bio 

'boxed in' and 'the shift’

Joy Adeola is a Nigerian-Canadian visual artist. Through storytelling, she explores interpersonal bonds, following the changing rhythms of our relationships with ourselves and others. Her work combines vivid contrast and an intimate warmth to uncover the beauty and nuanced complexities often hidden in our everyday lives. Exploring the intricate tapestry of human connections and our interaction with the world around us, her work celebrates the beauty and complexities often hidden in our everyday lives. By magnifying the overlooked facets of life, she unveils a hidden richness, inviting viewers to pause and appreciate the myriad of stories unfolding around them.Both pieces depict Black women struggling against the constraints that confine them. Boxed In portrays a woman consumed by rage, reshaping the world around her through her fury. At the same time, The Shift captures a Black woman painfully resisting societal, emotional and psychological pressure by becoming her own light. The colour red is a constant in both pieces, symbolizing the pain and labour required to navigate the struggles of marginalized communities. It also reflects the deep anger of being forced into these positions—a frustration that fuels the fight for liberation.

Website: joyadeola.format.com | Instagram: @_joyadeola

Miki Frances Sankhara

Artist Bio

Selected WorksI’m a Toronto-based photographer and filmmaker exploring how storytelling, interpretation, and the Anthropocene shape identity and connection. My work engages in examining affect, agency, and movement. Raised across cultures—Canadian-born, Italian-raised, of Trinidadian and Indian heritage—I’ve always been drawn to cultural hybridity. Studying Cultural History and Hermeneutics at York University deepened my interest in historical narrative and agency. Whether exploring a personal narrative, a cultural phenomenon, or a myth, my work operates within a realm of magical realism—seeking to reveal the entangled relationships between people, objects, and their environments they inhabit.The work embodies a state of deep, pensive reflection—an introspective response to the ways stratification and exclusion unfold. Anger is essential; it affirms self-worth and signals the intolerability of inequity. Yet, the role of those who witness and experience these structures is not only to recognize them but also to refine their own vision—to ensure that anger does not harden into distortion, narrowing perception or fraying the connection between creative energy and personal agency. The work does not reject anger but considers its transformation—the process by which its message is refined into something generative. A meditational space is where the emotional force of the work resides.

Website: mikifrances.com | Instagram: @mikifrances

Ila Lovelace

Artist Bio

e‘Devil Series’ acrylic on canvas, 24x36 inches

Ila Lovelace is a multidisciplinary, Trinidadian artist currently studying Fine arts at OCAD University. As a white passing, mixed race, young woman, much of Lovelace’s work focuses on personal and Caribbean identity through studies of post-colonialism, colorism, Carnival and self. One of Lovelace’s goals is to explore spaces for people who look and feel like she does. Lovelace’s work has been shown at PAMA in the Caribbean art exhibit “When Night Stirred At Sea”, and at the AFTT art exhibition. She has also had publications of her work in the Toronto Caribbean Newspaper.These works look at Trinidadian Carnival as it relates to identity. ‘Devil Series’ is an exploration into the rebellion and resistance of Caribbean people as seen through the traditional devil character. It also embodies what it means to be Trinidadian/Caribbean; its courage, wit, energy, resilience. I played on the colors of the Trinidadian flag, substituting the red, white and black with the three primary colors and their tints. Each pose connects to the other; the black devil’s finger leads to the tip of the blue devil’s pitchfork, whose tail leads to the end of the red devil’s pitchfork; a further unifying trait.

Instagram: @ilaa_anna

Richard Ashman

Artist Bio

Smile

Richard Ashman lives and works on the traditional territory of many First Nations, Tkaronto. His work reimagines subtleties of common experience though lens-based mediums. "Smile" is an unearthing and re-routing of harboured destructive energy within the Black body, particularly in marginalized spaces. This project uses portraiture to visualize a moment of overcoming, as well as the fight to get there, and a moment of being down and out. The social infrastructure--schools, parks, community centres--for BIPOC and lowincome communities are not traditionally designed with wellness and growth in mind. This project is inspired by the shared experience of the Black diaspora on the lack of positive spaces for growth during their formative years and beyond.

Instagram: @r_h_c_a | Headshot Credit: Bethlehem Behailu