The Search for the Black Madonna and Green Tara

Artists: Winsom Winsom and Tara Darrall

Art Gallery of Mississauga (2025)

Over several decades, Winsom Winsom has expressed her own spiritual journey through her multimedia work and shared her knowledge as a mentor, teacher, and advocate for the arts. For this artist—who has travelled the world and now calls Mississauga her home—art and life are inextricably connected. Her work explores themes of freedom, survivance, resilience, and renewal within the context of the Black Atlantic experience. As a person of African, Maroon, Arawak, Spanish, and Scottish ancestries, Winsom draws from her mixed heritage to incorporate extensive symbolism and ritual references in her work, interpreting the elements, land, animal, and human presence within the context of Afro-centric value systems.

Featuring both existing and new bodies of work by this senior artist and self-described “child of the universe,” The Search for the Black Madonna and Green Tara traces the trajectory of Winsom’s emotional, physical, and spiritual journeys. The exhibition includes an expansive collaborative project with Winsom’s daughter, artist Tara Darrall. Together, they explore the layers of their mother-daughter relationship through a suite of paintings. Guided by aspects of the seven chakras—the energy centres within our bodies—these works are a personal meditation on the artists’ intertwined development of their identities.

https://www.artgalleryofmississauga.com/events/the-search-for-the-black-madonna-and-green-tara-winsom-winsom-and-tara-darrall/

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