Students Explore Identity and Healing Through Art at Ronning Centre Workshop

Edmonton multidisciplinary artist Aisha Ali led students through creative process of self-discovery and reclamation.

In November, the Chester Ronning Centre hosted "Mirrors in the Sky: Identity, Expression, and the Systems That Shape Us," a healing-centered creative workshop that invited students to examine a deceptively simple yet profound question: Who am I beyond the survival roles I was forced to play?

Facilitated by Edmonton artist Aisha Ali, the workshop drew from her portrait series of the same name to create space for participants to explore how identity is both formed as well as often distorted by the intersecting influences of faith, culture, and colonization.

Ali, whose multidisciplinary practice spans poetry, acrylics, and ink, guided students through a process of free-writing, free-drawing, and self-portraiture. Her visual narratives reflected lived realities growing up in defining and containing systems which she used as entry points for participants to examine their own experiences of belonging, erasure, and self-definition.

The workshop's effect on participants was palpable. "At the end of the experience I was left with a feeling of a weight being lifted off my shoulders," reflected participant Jaetta Chambers. "I figured out some things about myself that I didn't realize were issues or things I was holding on to."

For other students, the interactive nature of the session came as a welcome surprise. The workshop featured a thoughtfully designed icebreaker that participants noted tied perfectly into themes of identity and perception. "Many times, our ability to identify a quality in someone else often means that we possess that same quality in us already," Ali told the group—a statement that shaped participants' perspectives throughout the afternoon.

Ifunanya Chinwuba described the session's most powerful moment as "hearing everyone speak so honestly. It made me realize how much we all carry and how deeply our identities are shaped by the spaces we move through."

Ali's artwork was displayed throughout the space and accompanied by carefully selected music. It prompted participants to consider identity as something fluid and evolving. Princess Iloegbunam noted that she left with "an image of duality, especially the separation and integration of a unit, and the continuous process of this."

The workshop challenged students to move beyond deficit-focused thinking. Chambers shared that she learned to think "in a less negative connotation of what I don't want but instead of what I do want." The identity she imagined was already present within her.

Elizabeth Nyenke-Wofuru found that observing Ali's art revealed how personal identity influences perception itself. "When we pasted our words, some of our interpretations were similar, others very different, but they might also have been very different from what the artist had in mind," she observed. "I later reasoned that this might be due to our own identity influencing how we perceive other things and people."

Ali, whose 2019 debut poetry collection Spilt Milk explores similar themes of visibility and concealment, brought her experience as both artist and community organizer to the workshop. In 2023, she served as president and creative director of Sisters Dialogue's "Muslim Women Tell It As It Is," an Islamophobia awareness campaign that was later featured nationally.

Throughout the session, students noted the power of shared vulnerability. "I was moved by the shared vulnerability in the room," said Chinwuba. "I left feeling more grounded in who I am and what God says about me, and with a quiet reminder to choose myself, give grace, and hold on to that small speckle of hope."

The workshop created what Chambers described as a "very inspiring and opening" experience. It provided a space where students could reclaim stories that were hidden, lost, or denied, and imagine identities rooted in truth, agency, and connection.