Hi, bonjour! My name is Raven Spiratos. My mother is Greek and my father is Guyanese. I am based in what is Tiohtiá:ke to the Kanien’kehá:ka people, Mooniyang to the Anishinaabeg people, and Montréal to many others.
I am invested in cross-community solidarity. I hold a Master’s of Art History and Communications Studies from McGill University, supervised by Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson. My graduate research started by retrieving Black ancestor stories and textual portraits from the archives of Canadian runaway fugitive slave advertisements in order to recuperate a fuller, truer understanding of their lives. This project also led me to explore the portrait of human rights activist and businesswoman, Viola Desmond, on the 10$ bill.
Through the lenses of reading against the grain, reparative aesthetics, and decolonial art historical methodologies, I attempted to find out all that I could on ancestors Bett, Bell, Viola Desmond, and many more.
When I’m not sifting through the archives, I love to dance, propagate plants and go on walks in nature.
