Bestie Mart

Project Space: Cleopatria Peterson, prototypes for Bestie Mart, 2023.

Project Space: Cleopatria Peterson, prototypes for Bestie Mart, 2023.

Project Space: Cleopatria Peterson, prototypes for Bestie Mart, 2023.


Feature Wall
Bestie Mart
Cleopatria Peterson
March 3, 2023 – April 15, 2023

Cleopatria Peterson’s printmaking practice explores how print can be used to create tactile art objects that feel as though they exist in our everyday lives. Their artwork Bestie Mart explores the labour of print through creating a product and commodity using humour. In our current landscape, living is unaffordable, particularly groceries. Using the motif of a supermarket, Peterson imagines a world where needs like gender-affirming hormones, reparations, and safety are accessible through consumable objects. What if we could simply go to the store and obtain the things we need without experiencing systemic barriers, financial and otherwise? Can you put a price tag on those -isms, on existing in the world as a marginalized person? The artist asks you to consider this through their use of familiar printed objects including receipts, juice boxes, saltines, and more.



Cleopatria Peterson is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and printmaker who illustrates, writes, and loves self-publishing. Their work focuses on themes of nature, humour, identity, and above all things, love. They graduated from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Fashion Communication program (BDes) and are the 2020 medal winner for Cross-Disciplinary Arts: Publications at OCAD (BFA). They are a huge advocate for encouraging people from all backgrounds to make art.

Produced with the support of an Anonymous Donor through the Open Studio Black, Indigenous, People(s) of Colour (BIPOC) Artist Residency.

Click here to watch a virtual Print Speak session about this exhibition.