Artist Spotlight: Anyu Sun

Ottawalls met up with Anyu Sun at her studio at Studio Space Ottawa to talk murals, moving cities, and what it means to finally say yes to the thing you always knew you were.

Buenos Aires to Ottawa, via reindeer

"It's all my mom's fault."

That's how Ángeles, known artistically as Anyu Sun, explains how she ended up in Ottawa. Born into a family of architects and creatives in Buenos Aires, she holds dual citizenship through her Canadian mother, though Canada wasn't exactly the plan.

In 2013, she befriended a Canadian while working at a company that built large-scale Christmas decorations for cities. The kind of work where everything is enormous. "She said, if you ever come to Montreal, I will get you a job with the competition." A few months later, Anyu had a plane ticket. She ended up sculpting reindeers and Santas in the middle of the Canadian summer. "It was wild."

From there it was a few years of Montreal contract work, then government contracts in Ottawa tied to election cycles, each one a little better paid than the last. When the pandemic hit she was back in Buenos Aires, eating through her savings. "When I was about to use my last peso, I got a call." She flew to Ottawa at the end of 2020, into her first full winter, in the middle of a pandemic. The government held her down, and Ottawa became home. For now.

Anyu has a residency coming up in Mexico City in September and plans to travel rather than sit through another winter. "Maybe make my way back to Buenos Aires."

Family of creatives

Both of Anyu’s parents are architects, her father also paints large-scale illustration, her mother used to draw comic books where the kids were the characters. An aunt ran an art gallery. Cousins are actors and musicians. Art was never a separate category of life.

"I don't remember not being interested in art. I don't remember not drawing as a common thing in my life." The question of how she got into it strikes her as almost unanswerable. "I always wanted to be an artist. I think it took me until 40 to be like, "I'm gonna try."

Ottawa feels like a warm hug

Moving between Buenos Aires and Ottawa was a cultural adjustment that went beyond weather, though the weather is part of it. In Buenos Aires, the street art scene is alive in a specific way, shaped by density, warmth, and a country that has learned to make art out of crisis. "Art becomes more present in times of need. I have no proof but no doubts either," said Anyu.

Ottawa is different. "Ottawa feels more like a warm hug. It's very nice and polite and everything, but I did feel like I had to be very intentional to find art and artists and be part of communities. In Buenos Aires it just happens."

The workshops she used to run in Argentina attracted people who wanted to paint and draw. When she tried to recreate them here, the dynamic shifted. "I found a social hunger so much stronger than the want of art. People would tell me, "I come to your workshop as my monthly dose of socializing."

"I do feel like there's an influx of younger people from different places in Canada making the city more interesting. The city itself doesn't put much into uplifting young artists."

The Contortionist 2.0 Mural

Anyu first created this character for House of Paint, but the original was buffed within months. The version you can find now at the Arlington Five in Ottawa is her second take on it.

The piece features a woman bent into an impossible shape, painted in bright pink and green colors.

It started with a straightforward idea: the box. The societal expectations that tell people how to live, how to look, how to take up space. The contortionist is pushing out of that box through her body, through expression, through the sheer fact of occupying the wall in the way she does.

The colours are intentional too. Anyu noticed early on that much of Ottawa's public space runs in greys and beiges, and painting something this bright on a city wall is a form of resistance.

Naranjo Protector

Also at the Arlington Five, this mural starts with a real cat. Naranjo is Anyu's orange cat, currently living in Argentina with her parents, left behind when she flew to Ottawa at the end of 2020. Anyu described the piece as "kinda a protection spell made mural."

There is a reference to the evil eye, a symbol carried across many cultures as a reflective shield against malicious energy. The piece is painted in the colours of the Palestinian flag. The intent is direct: to send protection to Palestinians in Ottawa and abroad. A cat painted for love and protection.

What Ottawa gave her

Studio Space Ottawa has been one of the more unexpected gifts. The conversations there, she says, have been genuinely lovely. She's done Art Battle, which threw her into a different sort of artist practice where time was a factor. Twenty minutes to make something. Two of the pieces hanging in her studio right now came out of practicing for those sessions.

And the winters, which she has never adapted to, have pushed her inward in a way she's learned to use. "I go into hibernation cocoon mode and I do a lot of art."

Who to watch next

Anyu pointed us toward a few artists worth following in Ottawa's mural scene.

Mique Michelle, whose work she first caught on the other side of Arlington. "I love her stuff."

Emily Mae Rose, who she met at House of Paint. "She does the little racoons. I thought she was so cool."