
Melissa Boodoo is an award-winning Chinese-Trinidadian Canadian artist, author, and designer based in Toronto, Canada. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design with a Minor in Music & Culture from Toronto Metropolitan University. She has exhibited across Ontario, including at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Etobicoke Civic Centre Art Gallery, and the Museum of Dufferin. Her series The Lotus and the Koi has received Best in Show (2025) and the People’s Choice Award (2024).
Her interdisciplinary practice explores how cultural memory is translated across materials, generations, and lived experience. Working across painting, writing, photography, textiles, and spatial design, she treats these mediums as interconnected forms of inquiry through which inherited histories are continually reshaped.
Drawing from her Indo-Trinidadian and Chinese heritage, her work considers how ancestral narratives are carried forward, altered, and reformed through migration and time. Recurring water-based motifs—koi, lotus forms, and layered abstractions—function as evolving visual structures for resilience, continuity, and transformation.
Her background in interior and furniture design informs a sensitivity to space, composition, and material relationships, positioning her paintings as immersive environments rather than isolated objects. Alongside her visual practice, she is a published author in UNFRAMED: Canadian Immigrant Artists Anthology (Roots & Bridges Publishing) and continues to develop writing as an extension of her studio research.

PAST EXHIBITS
SOLO
2025
"LIFE'S ARCHIVES" / THE PEGASUS ON CHURCH, TORONTO, CA
2023
LIFE'S ARCHIVES / TANGO PALACE, TORONTO, CA
2023
INTO THE REVERIE / THE KING'S ARMS, OAKVILLE, CA
GROUP
2025
MUSEUM OF DUFFERIN: "UNITY IN DIVERSITY"
Recipient of the "Best in Show" Award
2025
"MOMENTUM" / BLACKSMITH CYCLE, TORONTO, CA
2024
"ART À LA CARTE" / LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO, TORONTO, ON.
2024
NEW VISTAS: "ECHOS OF HOME" / ETOBICOKE
CIVIC CENTRE ART GALLERY, ETOBICOKE, ONT
Recipient of the "New Vistas: "Echos of Home" People's Choice Award
2024
UNITY IN DIVERSITY / THE MUSEUM OF DUFFERIN, MULMUR, CA
2024
SUMMER EXHIBITION / SLANTED DOOR, TORONTO, CA
2024
MAGNIFIED / TYPIST STUDIO, TORONTO, CA
2024
WINTER SHOW / SLANTED DOOR, TORONTO, CA
2024
ART INTELLIGENCE / PARTIAL GALLERY / TORONTO, CA
2023
AUTUMN EXHIBITION / SLANTED DOOR, TORONTO, CA
2023
17TH ANNUAL SALON / PROPELLER GALLERY, TORONTO, CA
2023
LATE SUMMER EXHIBITION / SLANTED DOOR, TORONTO, CA
2023
TORONTO VISUAL FRINGE FESTIVAL / MILES NADAL GALLERY, TORONTO, CA
2023
SUMMER EXHIBITION / SLANTED DOOR, TORONTO, CA
JUNE 2025
MUSEUM OF DUFFERIN: "UNITY IN DIVERSITY BEST IN SHOW"
AWARD For "The Lotus and the Koi"
DEC 2024
NEW VISTAS: "ECHOS OF HOME" PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD
For "The Lotus and the Koi"
AWARDS
PUBLICATIONS
2026 "UNFRAMED: CANADIAN IMMIGRANT ARTISTS ANTHOLOGY"
With Roots & Bridges Publishing Inc.
BOOK
2025 "ECHOS OF HOME: REVERBERATIONS"
