“My work is concerned with representations of Haiti, relationality within its diaspora, and its growing archives."

Laurena Finéus is a Haitian visual artist, educator and art administrator specialized in painting with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Ottawa. She was born and raised in Gatineau, Québec, and is currently based between Ottawa and Toronto, Ontario. In her practice, Finéus has been concerned with representations of Haiti, relationality within its dyaspora, and its growing archives across the globe through an array of figurative and painterly imagined landscapes. 

These elements are juxtaposed with personal memories of her life in so-called Canada. Finéus strategies include the collapsing of history in order to question history production and its mechanisms. The teachings of Haitian scholar Michel Rolph-Trouillot in ‘Silencing the past’ informs her understanding of visual narration in her practice.

Hometown: Toronto, Ontario.