About the Author

leaf jerlefia is a Jamaican-Canadian curator, poet and cultural critic, whose work explores notions of diaspora, home and belonging. She is the author of Hope & Hunger Handbound Books—a series of hand-bound artist books featuring poetry and prose inspired by feminism, diaspora and community. Her titles, black is the colour of my hair and recipes for self-love have been sold at Xpace Cultural Centre, Aspace Gallery, Canzine Toronto and the Chester Newsstand. Her multiples, entitled Doctor’s Notes Against Intolerance (2016), were featured in This ArtWorks!, a web-series for CBC Arts in collaboration with Madeleine Co.

In 2017, jerlefia participated in a 6-month long nomadic residency with British filmmaker, Isaac Julien, CBE, as part of OCADU’s Global Experience Project. She curated the resulting show, entitled Wandering Ground (2018), which opened for Toronto Art Crawl (2018)— and wrote a book of poems, entitled away & back which explored the diasporic experience in the colonial Motherland. She has curated 7 exhibitions, including It’s (Still) Privileged Art (2016) and Soul: Thrifted (2017).