ABOUT
I am an artist-scholar whose textile-based pieces explore the intersections between fashion, gender, and race in Jamaica and the Caribbean diaspora. My scholarship and art pieces are deeply influenced by my Jamaican-Chinese heritage. My scholarly and artistic works have been featured in Contemporary Media Arts Journal (2021); the Small Axe Salon special issue on textiles (2021); MaComère Journal (2024); archipelagos (2026); The Shakespeare and Dance Project (2026); and Diasporic Womanist Sociology: Introducing Hope and Solidarity through Non-Western and Global South Communities and Diasporas (Routledge 2026). I have publications forthcoming in sx salon, The Shakespeare and Dance Project, MaComère, and the Caribbean Vibes and Vibrations: Culture, Identity and Power. I am currently based in Toronto.
In 2025, I received my PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. My project explored how women use elements of Jamaican dancehall (specifically dancehall fashion) to protest intersectional inequalities of racism, classism, sexism, etc.
My dissertation project has developed into a broader research focus on Caribbean and diasporic expressive culture. My monograph in progress, Beyond Ms. Chin: Jamaican-Chinese Narratives in Diaspora, examines literary and cultural production by Jamaican-Chinese writers, artists, and musicians in Jamaica and Toronto from the 1970s to the present. By examining how cultural producers negotiate race, nation, migration, and belonging, the project asks how Jamaican-Chinese cultural production can expand conventional understandings of Caribbean identity and diaspora.
In addition to creating and researching, I am the editorial assistant of sx salon: a small axe literary platform. I was the curatorial assistant for Rendering Revolution/Revolisyon toupatou, a bilingual digital humanities project and exhibit that explores the impact of the Haitian Revolution on contemporary art and fashion as well as the inaugural Rendering Revolution Maker-Scholar Fellow for 2025-2026. I am also Associate of The Shakespeare and Dance Project.
For inquiries related to my scholarship and artistic practice, contact me at grayson.chong@utoronto.ca or on Instagram (@sew.grayson).