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Ajabu na nyuki (Wonder and her bees)

In Ajabu na nyuki (Wonder and her bees), mixed-media visual artist Shanna Strauss pays homage to Leti, a revered community leader and beekeeper who inspired the Nyaturu people of north-central Tanzania in their fight against German colonizers in the early 1900s. The portrait is part of a series that explores ancestral wisdom, spirituality and the artist’s family roots.

Ms. Strauss is a Tanzanian-American-Canadian artist and printmaker. She completed a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the California College of Arts and a master’s degree in social work at McGill University. She has exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts as well as in Tanzania, Senegal and the United States.

Ajabu na nyuki was first installed in the Senate of Canada Building in 2023 as part of the Honouring Canada’s Black Artists program.

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