Raneece Buddan is a Jamaican Artist residing in Edmonton, Alberta. She completed her BFA in Art and Design at the University of Alberta in 2020. Focusing on painting and sculpture, her work is centered on her cultural identity as a Jamaican woman of African and East Indian descent. She depicts the merging of both cultures with the use of fabric from each. The fabric is used as an additional identifier for who she is, rather than her skin tone as colorism is an issue she noticed within both communities. The importance of hair is also a commonality and a symbol you can find in her work as well.
Her process is based on her research on traditional and contemporary art from each culture. She explores different processes and artists from each as a foundation while doing her own experimentations with materials and mediums. She is interested in combining synthetic and natural materials in a colorful and unconventional way. She finds the figures within the grains of the wood and the mounds of clay where it is stuck between a phase of abstraction and realism; a state of uncertainty. The goal of each piece she creates is to learn more about herself throughout the process.
Born in Jamaica, Raneece Buddan moved to Canada in 2015 where she received her BFA in Art and Design from the University of Alberta in 2020. Her work focuses on her cultural identity as a Jamaican woman of West African and East Indian ancestry. This work examines a combination of different materials. The blending of these materials is used to describe the difference between forming one’s identity from experienced oral tradition versus learned written tradition. The ceramic wood-fired component is added to a more contemporary interpretation of clay pots. Both elements are connected with a rope wound of fabrics from both Jamaican and Canadian cultures that flows out of the head of the vessel.
