Tanis Browning-Shelp
Born in Cameroon, Charifa Labarang blew the doors off the March 15th event The Echoes of the Motherland: Black out Loud Volume II with her exhibition Hues of Contamination, an art installation pointing to the culture of fast fashion and consumerism.
Charifa moved to Ottawa in 2006 at age 10. Her father was a diplomat at the High Commission. “I had a really good experience here from the start,” she says. “Two of my grade six teachers at Gabriel-Roy Elementary School—Natasha Denis and Judette Dumel—inspired me to do painting, theatre, and poetry. They were big on expressing yourself! Poetry was my first interest, then I shifted to dance.”
Artist Charifa Labarang with her red pop bottle cap dress. Photo by Lorne Abugov
After graduating from Gabriel-Roy, Mme Dumel regularly invited Charifa to return to the school to do dance performances and choreography with her students, something Charifa continued doing until first year university. Charifa created a dance club at Omer Deslauriers High School where she taught hip hop, contemporary, and African dance.
She also started pursuing track & field in grade nine and ended up making it to Nationals that year. She joined a track & field club and won two gold medals at the Ontario Track & Field championships in grade 12 in the 100- and 200-metre sprints. “They still have the banner hanging in the gym at Omer Deslauriers.”
When Charifa attended the University of Ottawa for Business Marketing, she became an Ottawa Gee-Gee, racing for both the university and for Cameroon. During her sprinting career she raced in Canada, the U.S., Azerbaijan, Morocco, the Ivory Coast, France (for the World Youth Track & Field Championships, and Australia (for the Commonwealth Games).
In first year, Charifa sustained a hamstring injury and had to sit out the race season for a semester. “That’s when I started my business designing and sewing dresses. I posted one of my designs on Instagram and people really liked it. So, I thought this could be my new creative pursuit and within two weeks I had built a website.” That was five years ago and the business is still going strong.
Charifa believes she became crafty because she was an only child for eight years. “I was never bored and consistently found something to do and make.” She has always worked with recycled materials. “My mom would throw things out and I’d rescue them! Mom would suggest we buy something, but I’d make it myself instead. I remember making a shoe rack out of cereal boxes.” Although Charifa ordinarily has no attachment to objects, she feels differently about items she has created in this way. “I have a genuine connection to them.”
In 2019, Charifa graduated university and left racing behind. She organized a workshop for girls and women in sport called Shape. “My message was that every person is an athlete because they need to perform in one way or another.” By using the word “shape” Charifa was referring to the mind rather than the body. “One of my workshop exercises involved getting participants to write down words for things they found really difficult (like conflict) and then guiding them in turning them into positive ones (like caring).”
Another sustaninable dress made from packing wrapper. Photo by Lorne Abugov
Charifa did some fashion shows early in her dressmaking/designing career, but she still had a “burning feeling” to create. “I remember waking up at two a.m. once with an idea for a painting and I couldn’t get back to sleep until I painted it. It was unsettling.” She concedes that making custom dresses is creative, but the creations are not entirely her own because they involve the client’s vision too. “I wanted to get back to who I was when I was younger. So, when the Ottawa Art Gallery put out a call for artists to be part of an exhibition in 2023 I created a multimedia piece and applied. That was my first exhibition.”
In March of 2023, Charifa was invited by the organizers of The Echoes of the Motherland Volume I to do a fashion show for the event. “But I like interacting with people, so I made two dresses using plain muslin fabric and got attendees to paint on them, in that way making two collective pieces. I also did a live draping of one of my dresses.” Charifa feels that she didn’t have a voice yet. “I needed everyone’s help.”
At this year’s event (Volume 2), the organizers gave Charifa her own room for an exhibition. The glassed-in space represented a boutique. Charifa created several dresses using recycled materials such as pop bottle caps, chip bags, and packing wrappers. Instead of price tags, she made tags with QR codes that revealed how dresses and other products are made. “They showed kids working in mines and enduring other poor working conditions. The concept was that these dresses are a sort of armour or shield. Fashion is how we present ourselves, but at what cost? The installation was a meditation on how we can reduce the gap between raw materials and the finished product, and how this could affect society.”
Charifa wanted the designs to be appealing enough to bring people closer and then, through the QR codes, show that somebody might have gotten injured making them. “The exhibition was in one small room but it posed some big questions. Did somebody bleed for this? I want people to be aware and intentional in all aspects of life—be both critical and free.”
Charifa intends to continue working with children and wants to do this installation on a larger scale. “I had hoped to have an entire kids’ section in this exhibition, but I ran out of time. I did, however, work with a young friend, ten-year-old Shayla, who is super creative. She really believes in herself and I knew that she could execute what I was trying to do in a very short time frame.”
Artist Charifa Labarang poses with her potato chip vest along with her friend Shayla, who designed the potato chip fanny pack. Photo by Lorne Abugov
Charifa wanted to show things through a child’s eyes. “Kids see value in everything! Shayla helped me by creating a fanny pack for the potato chip vest. She used a chip bag for the pack and a braided garbage bag and recycled Velcro for the strap. I provided a canvass with paints near the exit of the exhibition. I wanted people to come in, read the messages, see Shayla’s work, and before leaving, play with paints and be creative like a kid. There are no limits. We are the ones who create our limitations.”
To see more of Charifa’s work go to: @empresscharifa on Instagram .
Author Tanis Browning-Shelp (http://www.browning-shelp.com) pens her Maryn O’Brien Young Adult Fiction series, published by Dog-Eared Books, from her home in Old Ottawa East. Contact tanis@browning-shelp.com if you have information about artists or art events that you believe would enrich our community members’ lives.
