“Relationality requires that you know a lot more about me before you can begin to understand my work.” —Shawn Wilson

The majority of this thesis paper is written in an epistolary voice directly to my late paternal Grandma, Ms. Margaret Nagaur. The thesis picks up other valences as well, reflecting a focus on research, process, technique, and final manifestation of artwork. The quotation from Shawn Wilson above continues: “It is [his] intention to build a relationship between the readers of this story, [himself] as the storyteller and the ideas [he] presents.” My intention is to build a similar relationship with my readers.

My relationship with my grandmother is one that exists within and outside of this thesis support paper, and is deeply based in our survivance under colonial rule: her in Trinidad, a young dark skinned, mixed-raced woman in the 1930s, and me, a Queer Black Woman of mixed race living in the heart of empire in so called canada in the 2020s. As such, this thesis addresses the following questions: How can I use my art praxis to build a relationship with my Grandma, Ms. Margaret, as my Ancestor? Can critical Black and Women of Colour Feminist theory bring me closer to the Women in my lineage?

To answer, I discuss the ways my art and letter-writing practices, combined with a research methodology premised on relationality and love, literary research, and conversations with my Aunts and Uncles, builds a relationship with my Grandma as my ancestor. In addition, I discuss the artworks I made to express said relationship, the creation of and interaction with a family photo archive, and the objects created to use for ancestral veneration and the creation of a living altar.

Finally, via a solid theoretical underpinning of Black and Women of Color theorists such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Saidiyah Hartman, I will show the importance of history, lineage and ancestry for those living in the heart of empire. This support paper is not a memoir, nor is it the detailed story of my Grandma’s life. Instead, it aims to establish corollaries and examine contradictions between our lives, to describe my research process, and reveal these as derivations of the artwork manifested throughout this process.