This public art initiative is part of the Trails and Pathways Program, a series of site-specific, temporary art installations within the City of Brampton's public parks and trails. Trails and Pathways responds to a Council directive for city-wide neighbourhood beautification and speaks to a need for meaningful, neighbourhood-level placemaking and community arts engagement.
These two images are from "The Real Love Series". I would describe this series as fundamental to my artistic motivation: to capture beauty and engage in creative self-expression. Using fashion photography as a visual language, I aim to invite viewers to look deeper and engage with layered narratives of their perception. The series depicts Justine, my muse, pictured in various environments exploring how her own perceptions as a Black woman shift depending on the environment.
"These two images are from "The Real Love Series". I would describe this series as fundamental to my artistic motivation: to capture beauty and engage in creative self-expression. Using fashion photography as a visual language, I aim to invite viewers to look deeper and engage with layered narratives of their perception. The series depicts Justine, my muse, pictured in various environments exploring how her own perceptions as a Black woman shift depending on the environment."
Janice Reid
Black Female Angel, 2018
Dimensions: Original artworks 24" x 36"
Materials: Photography, 35 mm
Angelitos Negros (1944-44), a poem by Venezuelan poet Andrés Eloy Blanco, was adapted into a song by Mexican actor and singer Pedro Infante (1948) to protest racial discrimination. This photograph is inspired by American actress/singer Eartha Kitt's English rendition (1970) entitled Paint Me Black Angels (Angelitos Negros). The song conveys a plea to the painter, lamenting the absence of Black figures in religious imagery:
Painter, if you paint with love
Why do you despise its color?
If you know that in heaven
God loves you too
Painter of bedroom saints
If you have a soul in your body
Why when painting in your pictures
Did you forget about the blacks?
Whenever you paint churches
You paint beautiful angels
But you never remembered
To paint a black angel
Growing up in a Christian household, I frequently encountered the absence of Blackness in sacred iconography. As an artist, I have now become the painter, creating the images that I—and Kitt-longed to see: Black representation within spiritual and cultural imagery, affirming presence, beauty, and belonging.
Rest, 2018
Dimensions: Original artworks 24" x 36"
Materials: Photography, 35 mm
Rooted in the legacies of colonization and slavery, Blackness has historically been constructed primarily as labouring bodies - a logic that persists within contemporary capitalist frameworks, wherein marginalized communities excessively bear the demands of continuous labour that is often seen as invisible. In this context, the act of rest -particularly for Black women and non-binary individuals - assumes critical significance. Rest operates as a necessary form of bodily recuperation and as a modality of resistance, enabling the body to recuperate and contest the structural violence perpetuated by capitalist exploitation.
Location
Map of Bramalea Limited Community park with a marker showing the location of The Real Love Series art installation by Janice Reid. This art installation can be seen at Bramalea Limited Community Park, located along the walking path beyond two baseball fields northwest of the parking lot off Williams Parkway.
