Pixel Heller didn’t always envision herself as an artist. She recalls being peer-pressured into going to medical school, and only changing her mind when her father encouraged her to visit the OCAD booth at a university fair in Winnipeg, her hometown. Although OCAD did not offer medical illustration, the degree she had in mind, they had a fairly similar program called Life Studies. 

It was through higher education that Heller fell head over heels in love with contemporary art. Being immersed in a multicultural city like Toronto helped her feel like she could finally embrace a part of herself that often remained hidden in the sketches of her high school notebooks. 

“In my third and fourth year was when I realized that I didn’t actually want to do medical illustration. I just wanted to be an artist,” Heller tells SheDoesTheCity. “That’s when my journey really began of going to art shows, connecting more with galleries, and other artists.”

It was her craving for connection through culture that led her to Moko Jumbie, her main art practice to date. Moko Jumbie is a traditional masquerade character that originated in West Africa and made its way over to the Caribbean Islands after the slave trade. This art form was later embraced by Caribbean festivals, particularly Trinidad and Tobago’s annual Carnival, where locals wear intricate costumes and dance on stilts. 

To Heller, performing on stilts is a much more spiritual journey than it looks. It’s about highlighting Black identities, cultural preservation, and the boldness that comes from being 10 feet above the ground. “It is so empowering to be, not only just someone on the stilts, but a Black woman on the stilts and being able to take up space. I never realized how much confidence Moko Jumbie could give me,” she says. 

Nowadays, the multidisciplinary artist has merged her passion for photography, textiles, and painting with Moko Jumbie, focusing on creating costumes, making stilts, and coming up with performances that draw people in. She also uses her work as a means to blend her family’s Trinidadian heritage with her Canadian upbringing, proving that both can coexist and interact with each other. Yes, Heller’s work is for the Caribbean community, but even more so for the Caribbean-Canadian community. 

She’s never witnessed someone wearing a winter jacket on stilts until she did it herself on a chilly winter day. That’s when it clicked for her that culture evolves over time, and that a character originating from West Africa can end up in Canada. “I always find it mesmerizing how Black culture can travel within us,” she says. 

On October 1, Heller used her art to raise awareness for Parkinson’s by walking on stilts from the CN Tower to the Parkinson Canada office in North York. Committed to making her 13-kilometer journey impactful, she started a GoFundMe campaign that raised over $1,637 towards Parkinson’s research. Looking back, Heller feels like she was able to honour her grandfather’s struggle with the illness by contributing towards a medical solution. 

“It made me realize that art is not just about exhibiting, showing, and selling.” she says. “It can have a real impact in the community, and I think that I’m doing that actively through the spirituality of Moko Jumbie and following my calling.”

Heller is one of this year’s exhibiting artists at Art Toronto, Canada’s largest international art fair happening from October 23-26 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Her photographs and ceramic drums will be displayed in Booth B73, as part of The New Other gallery exhibit, where she hopes to spark in attendees a deeper desire to learn more about traditional masquerade, especially in the context of a fine art gallery.

In addition, she’ll also be involved in A Black Art Fair, a two-day event taking place at the Nia Centre for the Arts during Art Toronto’s run. Returning for its third year, the fair seeks to position Little Jamaica as a must-see destination for Black creativity and cultural exchange. Heller’s work featured at the event blends surrealism and folklore through pieces from her Beyond the Body series. 

According to the artist, Beyond the Body comes as part of her effort to document the Carnival scene in different parts of the world. The photos she took were from her trip to Tobago in October 2024, with one shot from the Carnival celebration, while the other is a shot of J’ouvert, a pre-dawn street party that kicks off the Carnival festivities. The latter was previously featured in an exhibition on the west wing of Union Station. 

“It’s kind of nice to see that this large-scale photograph that was in a public installation where hundreds of thousands of people had seen it over the course of six months will now be converted into a home context,” she says. 

Heller believes that events like A Black Art Fair come as an ideal opportunity for Black artists to express themselves and get noticed. Having it at the heart of Little Jamaica also feels fitting, with the Nia Centre being a cultural organization that Heller has been particularly fond of collaborating with over the years. 

On top of her exhibitions, Heller runs her own stilt walking group called the Northern Jumbies and occasionally delivers stilt walking workshops. After feeling like an outsider growing up in a predominantly white school in Winnipeg, Heller has finally found her footing in Toronto’s vibrant Canadian-Caribbean community.

“I just feel like they’ve embraced me so much that I’m truly grateful,” she says. “And whenever I can give back to them, I always will.”