Announcing the recipients of the 2026 Sankofa Square Black History Month Digital Exhibition Career Launchers!

OCAD University’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers is excited to announce Sydnie Baynes, Chimemelie Okafor and Shamika Pierre as the recipients of the 2026 Sankofa Square Black History Month Digital Exhibition Career Launchers! Their works will be displayed across the five digital screens at Sankofa Square for the duration of Black History Month in February 2026.

• Sydnie Baynes is a Toronto-based animator and visual artist whose work merges traditional and digital mediums to explore Black history, ancestry, and identity. Her films take on surreal and experimental forms, using animation as a tool to reflect on the complexities of Black femininity, self-love, and heritage. By weaving together personal and collective narratives, Sydnie creates work that invites audiences to reimagine their own relationships with identity, culture, and history.  
   
  Beyond her artistic practice, Sydnie is deeply committed to community engagement and representation within the animation industry. She is the Co-Lead of Women in Animation Montreal, an initiative devoted to amplifying women and gender-diverse creators in the animation community.

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• Chimemelie Okafor (b. 2003) is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Toronto. She is currently studying Drawing and Painting at OCAD University. Working primarily with oil paint, she also explores drawing and collage. Her practice is rooted in storytelling, using colour, patterns, and surreal imagery to explore the complexity of the human experience through her own lens. Her body and face appear as recurring elements throughout her work, accompanied by gestural play which captures the shifting states of being. She believes that everyone holds multiple identities at once, shaped not only by where they’ve been and how they feel in a given moment, but also by those who came before them. 

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• Shamika Pierre: I’m Shamika Pierre, an illustrator and emerging artist from Scarborough, Toronto. I recently graduated from OCAD University’s Illustration program, alongside receiving the medal for GRADEX. I focus on the experiences of my community, exploring the tensions between aspiration and reality. India ink and watercolour are how I like to bring these stories to life, shaping complex ideas through my own perspective. My work serves as a way to engage with my culture, reflect on community, and advocate for it.

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Click here to learn more about our Career Launchers!