Afterword （Unframed：CIAA 2025）
This collection is titled Unframed. The name holds a quiet hope—for this first gathering of immigrant artists to exist in that rare and beautiful state: not a blank canvas, but the moment just after the first mark is made. That in-between space where creation has begun but not yet declared its form. It is tender, full of possibility—where freedom meets becoming. Much like who we are, right now.
The seed for this collection was planted long before I founded Roots & Bridge. If I trace it back to its earliest shape—just a vague, flickering desire to create a book that might capture the spirit of contemporary artists—then my journey toward this project began more than a decade ago. Back then, I was still in China, my understanding of the wider world still forming. Canada was, to me, a distant dream—unfamiliar, intangible.
But something about it called to me. I was drawn to the idea of a place open to difference, where people from everywhere walk the same streets, share stories, exchange art. I imagined chance encounters with artists, conversations sparked in cafés or parks. It seemed almost too romantic to be real. And yet, when our family eventually arrived and made a home in downtown Toronto, I discovered that dream was, in fact, the daily rhythm of life.
With time, I shared this vision with artists I met. Within six months, more than a dozen friends responded—not only with enthusiasm, but with trust. Still, a book is not built in a moment. Creating art is one thing; writing it down, giving it shape on the page, requires something deeper: endurance, vulnerability, and care. And now, after many conversations, revisions, and quiet hours, this collection has come into being.
The artists within these pages come from, or are rooted in, places like Mexico, Serbia, India, China, and the Caribbean island of Trinidad. This diversity wasn’t planned, but it turns out to be what I hoped for. It reflects the heart of the project: to gather voices from many homes, many histories, and to ask—what cultural memory lives in their blood? How do they see the world? How does their art speak, and how does Canada appear through their eyes?
In the next volume, I hope more friends from across the globe will join us—sharing their truths, their stories, and the many ways they shape beauty from experience.
This is only the beginning.
It is also a quiet footnote to the year 2025.
Thank you for your support. We look forward to meeting you again in 2026.
Brian Li
