gabmina@yorku.ca
Gabriela Sealy is a researcher, curator, and maker who works at the seams of memory, material, and care. Rooted in the textile traditions of the African diaspora, her work stitches together oral history, archival fragments, and creative practice to trace what survives and who carries it. She recently completed her MA in Art History and Visual Culture at York University, where her Major Research Project, The Black Pollera: Stitches of Survival, Threads of Legacy, explored the pollera de Congo as both a garment and a living archive of Afro-Panamanian matriarchal knowledge.
Gabriela’s practice moves between storytelling and scholarship, threading the personal with the political. Guided by the hands of those who came before, she uses cloth not just as a medium, but as a method—to touch the past, to imagine otherwise, and to hold space for what has been passed down. A SSHRC-funded scholar, she brings her training in curatorial work, conservation, and cultural heritage to projects that honour community, creativity, and intergenerational legacy.
Keywords: Black feminist material culture, Afro-Caribbean textile traditions, Research-creation, Decolonial methodologies, Cultural memory, Embodied knowledge, Oral history, Diasporic storytelling, Textile as archive, Intergenerational care, Visual culture, Ancestral knowledge, Craft-based resistance, Community-engaged art, Afro-Panamanian identity