RANEECE BUDDAN Jamaican visual artist making waves in Canada

RANEECE BUDDAN 
Jamaican visual artist making waves in Canada

Raneece Buddan is the winner of the 2025 Eldon and Anne Foote Edmonton Visual Arts Prize. This award is given by the Edmonton Art Council, supported by the City of Edmonton and is one of four artistic disciplines in music, visual art, film and literature.  The annual awards, according to Renée Williams, Executive Director of the Edmonton Arts Council, ‘showcase some of the city’s best artistic talent, increasing hometown recognition and acclaim for these nationally renowned artists who are putting Edmonton’s art scene on the map.’

Raneece Buddan says her life-size, award-winning sculpture titled Adorned in Our Threads “serves as an archive of ancestral knowledge and all which runs through my veins that I am now accessing. Using Dutch elm wood with DED, this piece highlights Dutch wax textiles, which through colonization have become a staple in West African attire contributing to the loss of traditional textile practices. Embedded through carving and application are a mix of traditional Nigerian, Ghanaian and Indian textiles.”

Raneece Buddan migrated to Canada in 2015 and made a home in the Treaty 6 territory, Amiswaciwâskahikan (Edmonton). She completed her BFA in Art and Design with Distinction at the University of Alberta in 2020.  In her short career Buddan has exhibited in New York, Vermont and France. Her artworks can also be found on the Artsy global platform.

Reneece Buddan describes her artistic practice as an ongoing journey to self-discovery. It is an attempt to learn more about her cultural identity as a Jamaican woman reconnecting with her Afro and Indo-Caribbean ancestry. This is done through material exploration and textile research. She shows the beauty of merging these cultures while also addressing the generational loss of culture and ancestry as a result of historical and ongoing assimilation, slavery and indentured servitude in the Caribbean.  As an interdisciplinary artist, Raneece finds joy in a well-rounded practice of oil painting, woodworking, clay sculpting, resin casting, printmaking and weaving.

May 2025