‘One Wall’ supports a cohort of seven emerging Waitaha Canterbury artists to showcase their work on Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki’s annex wall. Anna Bruce is an Ōtautahi Christchurch-based artist working with a variety of mediums on paper and canvas. She is part of Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki’s ‘One Wall’ cohort of emerging local artists, supported by the Christchurch City Council’s Creative Communities Scheme.

“For much of history, we were shaped by fathers, mothers, aunties, uncles, sisters, and brothers. We were shaped by the land we walked on and ate from. We were shaped during the day and laid our heads to rest at night. The internet allows us to have our minds shaped by strangers who do not love us, from contexts very different from our own, all day, every day. There is a goodness to this. We gain access to a diversity of worldviews. We may find a community unavailable to us in our everyday lives. We can show solidarity with people we would otherwise never have met. And yet, divorcing our personal formation from family, place, and time can leave us hazy and disconnected from the embodied realities that would have shaped most human beings throughout history. A Moment of Rest from Those Things That Shaped Me is my endeavour to depict this phenomenon.” —Anna Bruce.