Biography
Stella Obedi is an emerging Tanzanian Canadian mixed media artist. Who recently graduated from OCAD University's drawing and painting with a BFA Hon in 2024.
Stella's love and passion for the arts began at the young age of 12, where she first discovered how much she enjoyed coloring pages. Through the support and love from both family members and friends she slowly continued to refine and practice her artistic skills and improve. She later decided to attend an arts specialized high school, and then applied to OCAD University to earn her bachelor's degree in drawing and painting.
She is currently taking a short break from school to relax and create new works for shows and exhibitions. Stella hopes to later attend teacher's college, and earn a teaching diploma. As she has a passion for teaching children and adult art classes. As well as to continue exhibiting her works through out shows.
In her work Stella uses collaged images and traditional drawing and painting mediums such as acrylic and colored pencils. To create vibrant and very detailed compositions which often tell narratives about diaspora, identity, and our relationships with our own cultures.
Stella has also recently begun experimenting with incorporating African textiles and different fabrics into her works. Using them to add more depth, color, and dimension within her compositions.
Stella takes inspiration from the everyday, her Tanzanian-Canadian background, and various social issues. A few of her artistic inspirations include Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Kris Munsya, Kehinde Wiley, and Yinka Shonibare BCE RA.
She has exhibited throughout numerous local and international galleries, including the Ada Slaight Gallery, Artscape Youngplace, the OCAD U student galleries, OCAD U GradEx, Art Mur Gallery, and in Germany. Additionally, Stella has been featured in a catalog by the Magenta foundation with the Flashforward program in 2020. In their exhibition titled "It's A Plastic World. Stella is currently exhibiting her most recent work in the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair until March 2025.
Statement
Stella's surreal works implore narratives that transcend borders and cultural identities. As they combine and mix traditional mediums with digital collages and vibrant textiles.
Stella uses collage images as backgrounds for her figures to be suspended within. The images she chooses are often in conversation with the figures in the foreground.
Her work delves into themes of diaspora, identity, memory, language, displacement, family, and the everyday moments that shape our lives. As a settler in Canada, she grapples with the complexities of belonging and the sense of dislocation from both her homeland and her adopted home country.
Through her work, Stella aims to evoke feelings of empathy and foster connections with her viewers. Each piece serves as a testament to her experiences and perspectives on diaspora and cultural identity. Stella invites viewers to explore their own sense of place and belonging in a rapidly changing world. She asks them what diaspora means to them and how do they fit within it?