Paradise

Friday, May 15

6:00pm – 8:00pm

Hosted by Cerena Parkinson

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Cerena Parkinson is a multidisciplinary artist and writer who was awarded the Emery Prize for her MFA research at The Ruskin School of Art in 2025. She is the recipient of The Drawing Year 2026 Scholarship at the Royal Drawing School and is based in London. She has exhibited in New York City, Surrey and London. She has exhibited in the Pastel Society Exhibition 2025 & 2026 at The Mall Galleries. The intersectional politics of Cerena’s identity as a Jamaican American woman shapes her artistic practice and academic research. Cerena’s Emery Prize exhibition entitled “Paradise” is an installation of multidisciplinary artwork that represents generational experiences of migration through an autobiographical lens. The foundation of this work is “The Parenthetical Theory”, which Cerena has coined, researched and authored. In Grammar, parenthetical information is considered marginal to the meaning of a clause. Parkinson relates the marginalized status of parenthetical information to the position of subaltern ontologies and epistemologies within the western canon. These narratives include immigrants, individuals who living in the socioeconomic conditions that define “the Global South” and the Black Atlantic diaspora. These identities exist within generational systems of colonial presence shaping various aspects of their lives, even the ability to simply live in the present moment. Parkinson’s work represents the powerful legacies of joy and thrival in the midst of these systemic realities. Her lived experience structures the ethos of her work and the research methodologies she has designed to respectfully document the communities she holds dear. Her practice of drawing from observation and imagination reflect the intimacy of the world in which she lives. From colourful and homegoing journeys, humorous adventures to uncanny dreamscapes, this exhibition employs the art of story telling to explore the beauty of life and coming into womanhood through her eyes.

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16 Going · 2 Maybe

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