Beyond the Frame: Culture, Identity, and the Caribbean Sea Diaspora in Canada

Abstract

The Caribbean Sea is a complex landscape that holds a storied past and a palimpsest of identities. Indigenous, colonial, and modern traditions shift like tides, and their relationships shape the collective identity of the Caribbean Sea’s inhabitants. Migration from European settlers, the colonial slave trade, and modern refugee crises have created a creolization of cultures and customs. Flows of migration by members of these community have thus created a global archipelago for the Caribbean Sea diaspora who are in constant dialogue and in search for community and representation in their respective exclaves.

These migratory flows have allowed Canada and the Toronto area to become a region which welcomed this diaspora, establishing culture and community. Globalization and the internet have connected us, but in many ways also divided this diaspora from traditional cultural and artistic community activities that must be experienced physically. “Beyond The Frame: Community, Identity, and the Caribbean Sea Diaspora in Canada” attempts to restore the flows of these connections by means of artistic expression and by establishing a central place of community for the Caribbean Sea diaspora in Canada.

Approaching culture and identity from a relational sense, the design for an arts-based centre for immigrants of the Caribbean Sea in Toronto that is rooted in the typologies surrounding the Caribbean Sea takes shape. Cultural institutions are typologies where new relationships are constantly forged between artifacts, people, and space, creating new meaning based on past experiences. This thesis argues that architecture is a tool that helps establish and democratize connections, exploring firsthand accounts from immigrants and their views on identity and culture, leaders from organizations within the Greater Toronto Area, and responsive design concepts in order to produce a representative architectural snapshot of the Caribbean Sea diaspora today.