Inner Space with Sammo Mossa

Inner Space, a monthly web series co-curated by the Inner Space Youth Advisory and AGO Staff, invites artists from across Canada to give personal tours of their studios. Giving a platform to youth curators and artists from their communities, Inner Space aims to make visible and legitimize a new generation of diverse, Canadian artists, while creating authentic youth-led digital content.
The current iteration of the Youth Advisory is project-based and is made up of youth ages 16-25 from across Canada with the goal of co-curating a series of studio tours by and for youth. Meeting bi-weekly online from October 2022-June 2023, this paid opportunity tasked the Inner Space Youth Advisory members with curating artists from their communities who they believe deserved a platform and visibility from an institutional context. The result, launched in March 2023, is a 6 episode monthly web series featuring a new generation of artists and their creative spaces from across Canada.
This month we meet artist Sammo Mossa, born in Rwanda, the land of a thousand hills and now based on Prince Edward Island. Having never taken his art seriously, the pandemic pushed him to take his craft to the next level by moving from paper to canvas.
"I wanted to use my position with the AGO’s Youth Advisory to elevate the work of BIPOC artists from Prince Edward Island as I don’t believe there is enough recognition or support for these communities in the art world. I’m drawn to Sammo’s work particularly because I am interested in how artists are blending their traditional and cultural experiences with modern influences and technology, bringing to life new perspectives on art, life, etc.Mossa taps into personal themes such as religion, culture, and identity, and blends them with modern influences and the work of artists such as Al Diaz and Jean-Michelle Basquiat to create his own unique visual language. I am grateful for how he humbly shares his world with us." - Emily Katherine Jean Shaw: Youth Advisory Member
Follow the Series at @AGOYOUTH
Created and Facilitated by AGO Youth Programs: Sarah Febbraro & Madelyne Beckles
Edited by AGO Video Team: Fraser Wrighte
Curated in Collaboration with the Inner Space Youth Advisory.
Generously supported by The Lloyd Carr-Harris Foundation.
Music Via Soundstripe
© The Art Gallery of Ontario 2023