Ceramic artist brings double-edged works to exhibition

Winnipeg-born ceramic artist PJ Anderson, whose heritage blends Afro-Jamaican and Red River Métis, showcases her sculptural works exploring adornment as protection, resistance, and self-definition at the After the Island: Caribbean Canadian Ceramics exhibition at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Born in northern Manitoba, Anderson's family is of Caribbean descent, and she grew up in a Jamaican household with four older sisters.

For her, creating art is a way to interpret and convey what Caribbean-ness and Jamaican-ness mean to her, delving into the relationship with her heritage after her father's passing.

Anderson's works are adorned with symbols and specific elements that remind her of her grandparents' house and her dad making breakfast on Sunday mornings, keeping her connected to her Caribbean roots. However, her dual heritage often places her in a position where her Canadian experience as a mixed ethnicity person is questioned and considered invalid.

In her exhibition, Anderson presents large and small vessels with smooth, burnished surfaces in various shades of brown, black, grey, yellow, and red, achieved through smoke firing and metallic oxides. Among these, water ewers feature beads and jewels shaped like miniature grenades, firearms, and armor. Her Claw Forms, which appear to be made of metal but are actually molded from clay, symbolize both vulnerability and strength, representing artifacts from a post-apocalyptic world.

The exhibition also includes the Blade Headed Pitcher, one of Anderson's earliest weaponized pots made in 2009, which highlights the denial of access to water in Indigenous communities. This piece is paired with Choose, a piece from a decade later that addresses the "faces people wear in digital spaces"—how one must exist and prove their right to exist without having to justify their presence.