Bittersweet: A Visual Thesis

Bittersweet examines a food that is so engrained in our daily lives that we almost don’t even think about it anymore, sugar. It brings the dark aspects of an ingredient that is usually associated with sweetness and happiness to the forefront and secondly, acknowledges the origins of vast North American consumerism, and how easily it is forgotten. Suhmer's skin colour and heritage are a living testament of the brutality of colonization, imperialism, and slavery.

Sugar gave rise to the slave trade; now sugar has enslaved us.
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Jeff O'Connell

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Reimagine

When Suhmer sees album and book covers, she often imagines what they would look like if she were commissioned to create them. She only ever reimagines what the cover looks like once she has listened to the album or read the book. This enables her to take seemingly minuscule details from the respective projects and highlight them in a way that may have been missed by some.