Charifa Labarang
Captured by Pano Media
Learning to Start Again
In this talk, Charifa Labarang uses the rhythm of athletics to frame her story, returning to the idea of starting, stopping, and starting again. She begins as a young track athlete whose early success comes easily, until injury forces her to confront the sudden loss of identity that can happen when performance disappears.
While injured, she finds grounding in a book that introduces a core principle she carries throughout her life: growth requires leaving your comfort zone, even when the path forward is unclear. That mindset helps her return stronger, qualify for national teams, and compete internationally. But when another injury hits in university, she faces the same erasure again, and this time turns toward creativity as a way to keep moving.
She describes how making clothes and sharing them online opens a new door, showing her that her hands can carry her forward when her body cannot. Her journey takes a sharp turn during an international competition, where a passport issue leads to detention abroad. In that moment, she internalizes a defining idea: outcome equals event plus response. It becomes a tool she returns to whenever things fall apart.
Later, she walks away from competitive sport entirely and enters a deeply unhealthy relationship that disconnects her from her creativity, community, and sense of self. Leaving becomes its own act of resilience. She talks openly about reclaiming safety, autonomy, and creativity by giving herself permission to be again, to create again, and to be seen again.
That permission leads her back to art through an Ottawa Art Gallery exhibition, collective fashion projects, and eventually her own design practice, Labyrinth Designs. She closes by reframing identity as something fluid rather than fixed. Not a single job or title, but a series of choices, responses, and recommitments. The work continues, but she is moving forward on her own terms.
@labarangdesigns
