2020 Artists – Vector Festival

ONLINE IS THE NEW IRL | EXHIBITION | JULY 16 – AUGUST 13 | FREE

Hiba Ali is a digital artist, educator, scholar, DJ, experimental music producer and curator based across Chicago, Austin, and Toronto. Their performances and videos concern surveillance, womxn of colour, and labour. She studies Indian Ocean geographies through music, cloth and ritual. They conduct reading groups addressing digital media and workshops with open-source technology. She is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at Queens University, Kingston, Canada. They have presented their work in Chicago, Stockholm, Toronto, New York, Istanbul, São Paulo, Detroit, Dubai, Austin, Vancouver, and Portland. She has written for THE SEEN Magazine, Newcity Chicago, Art Dubai, The State, VAM Magazine, ZORA: Medium, RTV Magazine, and Topical Cream Magazine.
hibaali.info

Jennifer Chan makes art as social commentary on humanity, pulling from stock photography, music videos, baby animals and amateur fan videos to cast empathetic commentary on universal questions of desire, love, equality, taste, violence and suffering. She also makes websites, sculptures, installations, editioned objects. Chan had solo shows at Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Images Festival, Transmediale, Future Gallery, and Galleri CC. Her work is distributed by VTape and VideoTage.

Ronnie Clarke is an emerging artist based in Toronto, Ontario. Clarke’s work blends elements of choreography, dance, movement, collaboration, video, and installation. She is interested in how language is manifested, translated, and mediated in the digital age. She explores the poetics of digital spaces; using movement she investigates how technology plays a role in our interactions with others. She earned her BFA at Western University in London, Ontario.
ronnieclarke.com/index.html

Hilarey Cowan is an artist, researcher, and adaptable freelancer working between video, sculpture, and performance. After several years abroad she is currently reconnecting with her prairie roots on Treaty 4 Territory, while examining her place and voice as a settler within Canada’s colonial history and reality. Her work explores ideas around labour, care, alienation, networks, geography, and touch.
cargocollective.com/hilareycowan

Thirza Jean Cuthand was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1978, and grew up in Saskatoon. Since 1995 she has been making short experimental narrative videos and films about sexuality, madness, Queer identity and love, and Indigeneity, which have screened in festivals internationally. Her work has also exhibited at galleries including the Mendel Art Gallery, The National Gallery of Canada, and The Walker Art Center. She completed her BFA majoring in Film and Video at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2005, and her Masters of Arts in Media Production at Ryerson University in 2015. She has also written three feature screenplays and has performed at Live At The End Of The Century, Queer City Cinema’s Performatorium, and 7a*11d. In 2017 she won the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Award. She is a Whitney Biennial 2019 artist. She is of Plains Cree and Scots descent, a member of Little Pine First Nation, and currently resides in Toronto, Canada.
thirzacuthand.com

Maya Ben David (MBD) is a Toronto-based video performance Jewish-Iranian Anthro Plane. Ben David creates worlds and characters that explore concepts such as anthropomorphism, cosplay, and performative personas. Ben David’s characters’ origin stories are established via video performance and are performed on an ongoing basis through her online presence. Her characters inhabit alternate universes but also interact with each other and already established nostalgic universes such as Pokemon and Spider-Man. In addition to this, Ben David is also a character known as “MBD” who feuds with the many manifestations of herself and the art world.
mayabendavid.net

Steph Davidson is a 2D and 3D illustrator and designer from Toronto, living in New York. She works at Bloomberg in the Special Features department.

stephdavidson.com

Hannah Epstein is an artist working in textile and digital media (AKA Fyberspace). She holds an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University (2017) and a BA in Folklore & Religious Studies from Memorial University (2009). Raised in WASPy Nova Scotia, Epstein is half Latvian and half Ashkenazi Jew. Considered a “mischling” (Hitler’s term to describe children of mixed Jewish and non-Jewish parents), Epstein considers her body as proof of sexual power over concepts of racial prejudice. As a folklorist turned artist, Epstein is devoted to reimagining the iconography of popular culture, highlighting the cultural negotiation between bottom-up (folk-to-commodity) and top-down (institution-to-mashup) storytelling. She is currently represented by Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles.
han.ski

Jord Farrell is a prolific artist who has made over 500 artworks, 200 games, and more than one hundred of short stories. After dropping out of university, he spent the next 5 years making art and games until his skills had risen to a level that matched his taste. Disciplined, driven, and hungry for pushing as many limits as he can, Jord is an artist worth keeping an eye on.
mrtedders.wixsite.com/mrtedders

Dimitris Gkikas is a Berlin-based new media artist and designer from Athens, Greece. Gkikas manipulates and reconceptualizes found materials from the internet, such as GIFs, stock images, and videos. In doing so, he redefines their primary context and displays new sides of them. His work has been exhibited in festivals such as Electronic Language International Festival (FILE), Zukunftsvisionen, Transmediale Vorspiel, and The Wrong New Digital Art Biennale.

Fay Heady is an animator, director, musician, and artist born in Dublin, Ireland to an Australian mother and Irish father. She studied animation at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht and Tama Art University Tokyo. Since 2013 she has curated the annual Fay’s Film Festival, a programme of international animated shorts which has screened in Amsterdam, Kobe, and Osaka. Fay is also the host of arts & culture TV show Future Vision Amsterdam, which broadcasts on SALTO 1 TV in Holland and youtube.com/TheChibbychannel online. Fay currently lives in Tokyo where she creates new animated works.
fayheady.com

Amay Kataria is currently an artist in residence at Mana Contemporary in Chicago. He graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an MFA in Art & Technology Studies. He was invited as a visiting artist at the Ethereal Summit, ThoughtWorks, and Bellas Artes Outpost. He has participated in group shows at the Electromuseum, Ars Electronica, TIFA India, Art Center Nabi, ThoughtWorks, and Experimental Sound Studio. Kataria is an upcoming artist in residence at Sandnes Kommune in Stavanger, Norway and was awarded the media arts residency at Art Center Nabi in Seoul, South Korea.
amaykataria.com/#

Artist-filmmaker Samuel Kiehoon Lee, born and raised in Toronto, spent 12 years living in Seoul where he shot the feature film GYOPO, which recently premiered at the Toronto ReelAsian International Film Festival (garnering a 4 star review from NOW Magazine). He is currently completing York University’s MFA in Film, where he is developing his thesis project Hallway. Lee is also a graduate of the Canadian Film Centre’s Director’s Lab. A collection of Lee’s experimental works were showcased on the CBC’s The Exhibitionists, where Lee was a featured Artist in Residence. Lee’s recent 360° video Zoetrope is his first foray into the world of VR art-making.

Gina Luke is a multidisciplinary artist, who recently completed a BFA with honours at the University of Victoria’s Visual Arts program. Her artistic practice explores the integration of drawing with sculptural video installations. Luke uses drawing as a basis to explore abstract possibilities that can be expressed in a new media art practice. Her artwork largely explores the theme of the manipulation of the natural environment through digital animation. Her exhibition practice is based on Vancouver Island where she has also recently worked as a curator with the Victoria Film Festival.
ginaluke.ca

Cale Weir & Ben McCarthy are electronic musicians and digital artists from Toronto. While McCarthy is a victim of the rise-and grind mindset, Weir huddles safely in a carapace of irony-fostered dissociation. Compulsively online, they have amassed thousands of combined likes and follows, and with the help of credit cards and payment plans have managed not to be evicted during the COVID lockdown. They both make art about the ramifications of digital media on the labour ecology and the embodied subject.

Amelia Merhar is a Toronto/Whitehorse based artist with certifications in everything from train conducting to personal training. Over the past few years she has been exploring themes of the body, health, travel, research, and knowledge translation. Humour is part of her approach, whether in video, performance, music, or sound art. Recently her video works have screened at Available Light Film Festival, Dawson City International Short Film Festival, Brave New Works and End of Days Film Festival. She is presently a PhD Candidate in Human Geography at University of Waterloo, researching in the embodiment of transience among touring musicians in Canada. is a Toronto/Whitehorse based artist with certifications in everything from train conducting to personal training. Over the past few years she has been exploring themes of the body, health, travel, research, and knowledge translation. Humour is part of her approach, whether in video, performance, music, or sound art. Recently her video works have screened at Available Light Film Festival, Dawson City International Short Film Festival, Brave New Works and End of Days Film Festival. She is presently a PhD Candidate in Human Geography at University of Waterloo, researching in the embodiment of transience among touring musicians in Canada.
ameliamerhar.ca

Since completing his studies in film production at Concordia University, Roberto Santaguida‘s films and videos have been shown at more than 300 international festivals around the world. He has also taken part in artist residencies in numerous countries, including Iran, Romania, Germany, Norway, and Australia. Roberto is the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award, the Chalmers Arts Fellowship, and a fellowship from Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany.

Having grown up in an immigrant family with positive encouragement to try everything, and with the economic necessity to use whatever is at hand (including a home photography darkroom), Juli Saragosa was determined to become an artist from an early age. Moving images became the passion of this eternally curious DIY experimenter. Saragosa’s short films been shown at festivals in Milan, London, Los Angeles, Chicago, Berlin, Vancouver, Toronto, New York, Tunis, and Irkutsk. In 2005, Saragosa’s Amoré won the Best Canadian Film award at Toronto’s International One-Minute Film Festival and in 2011, it won the Jury Prize for Experimental Film at the Toronto Underground Film Festival. From 2013-2015, Saragosa was involved as an artist in the international Performigrations project where they became interested in the interactive potential of video and audio.

Jordan Sparks is a multimedia artist, designer, and educator that uses games and media to entertain and inspire social change. Sparks has a Masters in Media Production and BFA in New Media. Amongst his diverse range of projects, Sparks is widely known for his game An/Other and research on games for social change. As an educator, Sparks has engaged thousands of people across Ontario through the Hand Eye Society and several other organizations/institutions such as the Royal Ontario Museum, Sheridan College, and Ryerson University. Sparks aims to expand the public perception of games by delivering engaging, thought-provoking experiences.
grindspark.com

Lee Tusman is an artist, programmer and educator interested in applying the radical ethos of collectives and DIY culture to the creation of digital art, its aesthetics, and methods of open-source distribution. His artistic output includes interactive media, video art, net art, experimental videogames, sound art, websites, twitter bots, and pirate radio stations. He enjoys working collaboratively and prototyping projects around self-identity, mistranslation and new methods of communication in contemporary internet culture. He is an organizer at Babycastles videogame art space and an educator at Purchase College where he currently teaches New Directions in Virtual Space.
leetusman.com

Qirou Yang is a Toronto-based multimedia artist, who originally came from the south of China. Her practice, which is mainly research-based and process-oriented, is mostly driven by tracing her personal memory and self-perception, aligning the metaphoric narratives and place, and exploring the contradiction between living environment and societal context. In her MFA thesis project How to be Satiated in the Dark, she expands her practices by utilizing photogrammetry, SFX, and 3D animation. Through tracing her dream, memory of living experience at her childhood home, and family history, she creates a docu-fictional project that not only navigates the social context of the “ghost zone” in her hometown, but also reveals her psychological belonging that is attached to her provenance.
qirouyang.com

Syrus Marcus Ware is a Vanier scholar, visual artist, activist, curator and educator. Syrus uses painting, installation and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture, and he’s shown widely in galleries and festivals across Canada. He is a core-team member of Black Lives Matter – Toronto, a part of the Performance Disability Art Collective, and a PhD candidate at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. His on-going curatorial work includes That’s So Gay (Gladstone Hotel) and BlacknessYes!/Blockorama.
syrusmarcusware.com

VIEW RECENT CHANGES | EXHIBITION | JULY 16 – AUGUST 13 | FREE

Oscar Alfonso works with text, photography, digital media, and installations. He may also write, but he remains unsure if he qualifies. Born en La Ciudad de México and raised in Vancouver, his artistic and research practice focuses on identifying with and reconstructing a relationship to home through a process of Contingent Belonging. This focus takes him to Mexico City, and manifests itself through food, the market, storytelling, the representations of urban childhood in film, and city-building video games as sites of the urban imaginary and architectural preservation. He holds a BFA in Visual Arts, and a BA in History and Print & Digital Media Publishing from Simon Fraser University on the unceeded Coast Salish Territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaɬ Nations. He is currently a Masters of Visual Studies Student at the University of Toronto on the traditional territories of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit.

Simon Fuh is an artist from Regina living and working in Toronto. He is currently enrolled in the Master of Visual Studies program at the University of Toronto, where he recently received the Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Recent exhibitions include Eternal Wish Radio, Down the Rabbit Hole, 330g, Saskatoon; unscheduled arrivals, Bunker 2, Toronto; Ibid., Ibid., Regina; and The Greatest of All Time, Flux Gallery, Winnipeg.

Matt Nish-Lapidus is an artist and musician interested in our changing relationship to computation, media, and information. Through sound, video, software, performance, and sculpture, Matt aims to explore the aesthetic and politics of contemporary network technology through an examination of its history and the edges of utility. Matt has performed and exhibited at ACUD Macht Neu, Berlin; Electric Eclectics Festival, Meaford; InterAccess, Toronto; Mayhem, Copenhagen; and many DIY spaces in North America and Europe. His ongoing musical projects include New Tendencies, må, Soft Thoughts, and many impromptu collaborations.
emenel.ca

Sophia Oppel is an artist and researcher born and based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Oppel’s work addresses the insidious positions of embedded power in networked infrastructures, and its manifestations in embodied experience. Oppel received her BFA from OCAD University and is currently a co-director of Bunker 2 Contemporary Art Container, and a Masters of Visual Studies candidate at the University of Toronto. Oppel has exhibited locally and internationally, including shows at InterAccess, Queen Specific, Gallery TPW, Forest City Gallery, Xpace Cultural Centre and Crutch CAC.
sophia-oppel-art.com

Benjamin de Boer‘s shoe got stuck in the mud while learning to write the melancholy poetics of ecological sensitivity.
benjamindeboer.com

Rowan Lynch is an arts worker and artist from Hamilton, based in Toronto. They are a graduate of OCADU’s Criticism and Curatorial Studies program and the 2018 recipient of OCADU’s medal in Criticism and Curatorial Studies. They have staged independant projects with the Hamilton Audio Visual Node (HAVN), various OCADU Galleries, and Xpace Cultural Centre, and have worked with Art Metropole, Critical Distance Centre for Curators, the Peripheral Review, and 8eleven gallery.
rowanlynch.com

Sameen Mahboubi is an emerging art programer from Hamilton based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Mahboubi is working towards a BA in Visual Critical Studies from OCADU and previously holds a diploma in Social Service Work from Mohawk College. Mahboubi is interested in ecology, geography, urbanism, and the relationships we all share with public space.
Instagram: @sameenmahboubi

Philip Leonard Ocampo is a queer Filipino artist and curator based in Tkaronto, Canada. Ocampo’ s practice primarily involves painting, sculpture, writing and public programming, seeking to reclaim colonialist/imperialist understandings of insignia and regalia to forge new (or speculate upon existing) phenomena, canons of knowledge, myths and folklore. He is interested in exploring personal and collective experiences, often through a diasporic focus. He holds a BFA in Integrated Media from OCAD University and is currently a Programming Coordinator at Xpace Cultural Centre and one of the four founding co-directors of Hearth, a new artist run space in Toronto.
philipocampo.com

INTERN PURGATORY: A COVID-19 VRCHAT STORY | PERFORMANCE | JULY 16, 7-9PM | FREE

Tough Guy Mountain is a Toronto-based art collective making interactive performance art about unpaid internships. Working together since 2012, they have created video games, musical theatre, and gallery exhibits in which audiences explore a fantasy world of corporate serfdom. The collective has exhibited their work and performed across Canada and the United States. Tough Guy Mountain (Cat Bluemke, Jonathan Carroll, Iain Soder)
toughguymountain.com

A TO Z EXPERIMENTAL CHATROOM | WORKSHOP | JULY 17, 2-4PM | PWYC

Xin Xin is a Taiwanese / American artist and community organizer working at the intersection of technology, labor, and identity. Xin co-founded voidLab, a LA-based intersectional feminist collective dedicated to women, trans, and queer folks. They were the Director and Lead Organizer for Processing Community Day 2019, a worldwide initiative celebrating art, code, and diversity, and they currently serve on the advisory board for the Processing Foundation. Their work has been exhibited and screened at Ars Electronica, DIS, Gene Siskel Film Center, Tiger Strikes Asteroid and Machine Project. Xin received their M.F.A from UCLA Design Media Arts and teaches at Parsons School of Design as an Assistant Professor of Interaction and Media Design.
xin-xin.info

#WATCHINGTOGETHER IN SPITE OF A DYING PLANET | SCREENING | JULY 17, 7-9PM | FREE

Amanda Amour-Lynx is a queer, two-spirited l’nu (Mi’kmaw+Settler) interdisciplinary artist and social worker living in Tkaronto, Ontario, on Dish with One Spoon treaty territory. She was born and grew up in Tiotia:ke (Montreal). She received a BFA from OCAD University in Drawing and Painting, minoring in Indigenous Visual Culture. Interested in the intersections between art and activism, Lynx focuses on Indigenous storywork and socially engaged approaches to explore healing trauma and unearthing collective truths. She is interested in a future where intergenerational healing using traditional ways are honoured and informed through the lens of Indigiqueer futurism, and truth-telling. Her work focuses on how cosmology and ethnobotany can be incorporated into a wellness paradigm. Resurgent practices are important to her, including cultural acts of making, ceremony, language revitalization, plant knowledge, bushcraft, two-eyed seeing, shapeshifting, and how western ideologies offer us tools to recover and enliven the old ways.
amour-lynx.art

Patricia Domínguez holds an MFA at Hunter College, New York, a BFA from PUC, Santiago, and a Certificate in Botanical and Natural Science illustration from the New York Botanical Garden. She is the founder of Studio Vegetalista, an experimental platform for ethnobotanical research in Chile. Recent exhibitions include: CentroCentro, Madrid; Yeh Art Gallery, New York, Gasworks, London; Meet Factory, Prague; TEA, Tenerife; SeMA Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; ARCO Madrid; Twin Gallery, Madrid; Museo MAC, Santiago; Sala CCU, Santiago; CA2M, Madrid; among others. Her writing has been included in ́Technologies of Enchantment ́, edited by Gasworks, London, ́Documents of Contemporary Art ́ Issue HEALTH, MIT and Whitechapel Press, and ́GaiaGuardianxs ́, edited by TBA 21, Madrid. Her next projects will be exhibited at TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Gwangju Biennale, Corea, and La Casa Encendida, Madrid, and The Wellcome Collection, London.
patriciadominguez.cl

Trudy Erin Elmore is a digital artist from Toronto investigating the intersection of humans and technology. Based in animation, installation, and print, her work explores issues of mortality, technological evolution and our new way of seeing, mediated almost entirely by electronic screens.
trudyelmore.com

Brianna Lowe is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Toronto. Her practice explores the different interpretations of how the environment is experienced through various digital media.
briannalowe.com

Annette Mangaard is a Danish-born Canadian artist, photographer and filmmaker whose work has been shown internationally at art galleries, cinematheques, and film festivals. Installations include: Armoury Gallery, Olympic Site Sydney, Australia; Pearson International Airport, Toronto; South-on Sea, Liverpool and Manchester, UK; Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, Argentina; and Whitefish Lake, First Nations. Mangaard, has had retrospectives in Berlin, Buenos Aires, and Vancouver. International screenings include The Experimental Film Coalition, Chicago; The Collective for Living Cinema, New York; the SESC de Pompeia, Sao Paolo; Ozfun Australian Tour; Ann Arbour Film Festival; Toronto International Film Festival; Vancouver Film Festival; National Gallery of Canada; Asolo Art Film Festival, Italy; DOCSDF Mexico City; Hot Docs; and Millenium, New York. A recipient of numerous arts awards from the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council, Mangaard has participated as a juror for the Governor Generals Awards in Visual Art and sat on many boards of directors.
annettemangaard.com

FALSE POSITIVE | PERFORMANCE | JULY 17, 9-9:30PM | FREE

Canadian saxophonist and composer Justin Massey is a Toronto-based interpreter of contemporary music. Obsessed with creating new sonorities and textures through the saxophone, Justin searches for obscure and unexplored sounds offered by the instrument and its unparalleled potential to create visceral and emotional music. Justin collaborates closely with composers in search of these new sounds, often through electronic manipulation of the saxophone. Recently, Justin has commissioned and premiered new works for saxophone and live electronics by Carolyn Borcherding, Camila Agosto, Brian Lee Topp, Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie, and Jason Charney. He is currently working in collaboration with Camila Agosto to create and perform the five movement Paracusia series for saxophone and live electronics.
justin-massey.com

CURATING ONLINE: IN CONVERSATION WITH SARAH COOK AND LORNA MILLS | PANEL | JULY 18, 12-1PM | FREE

Sarah Cook is a curator, writer and researcher based in Scotland. She is Professor of Museum Studies in Information Studies at the University of Glasgow and one of the curators behind Scotland’s only digital arts festival NEoN Digital Arts. Sarah has curated and co-curated international exhibitions including: Sleep Mode (2020) and 24/7: A Wake-up Call For Our Non-stop World (2019) both at Somerset House; The Gig Is Up (2016) at V2_Institute for Unstable Media in Rotterdam; New Media Scotland Alt-w (2014) at the Royal Scottish Academy, SSA Annual Exhibition in Edinburgh; Not even the sky: Thomson & Craighead (2013) at MEWO Kunsthalle in Memmingen; Biomediations (2013) at Transitio_MX_05, the festival of electronic arts and video in Mexico City. She is editor INFORMATION (Documents of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel and MIT Press, 2016) and co-author (with Beryl Graham) of Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (MIT Press, 2010; Chinese edition 2016).

Canadian artist, Lorna Mills has actively exhibited her work in both solo and group exhibitions since the early 1990’s, both in Canada and Internationally. Her practice has included obsessive Ilfochrome printing, obsessive painting, obsessive super 8 film & video, and obsessive on-line animated GIFs incorporated into restrained off-line installation work. Recent exhibitions include “Abrupt Diplomat” at the Marshal McLuhan Salon at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin, for Transmediale, “DKRM” at DAM Gallery, Berlin, “Dreamlands” at the Whitney Museum, NY, “Wetland” at the Museum of the Moving Image, NY and “The Great Code” at Transfer Gallery, NY. For the month of March, 2016, her work “Mountain Time/Light was displayed on 45 Jumbo monitors in Times Square, NYC, every night as part of the Midnight Moment program curated by Times Square Arts. Lorna Mills is represented by Transfer Gallery in L.A. & New York, Ellephant, Montreal and DAM Gallery in Berlin.

Moderated by Martin Zeilinger

RESISTANCE STRATEGIES IN THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE | WORKSHOP | JULY 18, 2-4PM | PWYC

Joselyn McDonald (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist, critical maker, and creative researcher whose work centers on issues relating to power, gender, and the Anthropocene. Often her work includes emergent technologies, recycled electrical components, and found materials. McDonald’s work has been exhibited widely including at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Leaders in Software and Art, ACM Siggraph, Sketching in Hardware, Designing Interactive Systems, and Revisius Textor.

María Angélica Madero is a Colombian Mexican-born artist and curator currently working as Associate Professor at the London Interdisciplinary School, United Kingdom. Maria holds a BA in Art from Los Andes University in Bogota. She also holds two MAs in Art (Sculpture) and Philosophy and Contemporary Critical Theory, from the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL and Kingston University, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, England. She is currently doing a PhD in Philosophy, Art, and Social Thought from the European Graduate School in Switzerland working with media theory and complexity. From 2015, Maria was Head of Visual Arts at El Bosque University, Bogota where she created projects like Multiespecies, that tried to hack the ecological unconscious of students, and Prologue, where curators visited the student’s studios. She has taught at Los Andes University, Escuela de Artes y Letras and Unitec in Bogota, Colombia. She has also worked as an independent photographer and translator and she is also a musician and a writer. Maria has exhibited in cities including London, Edinburgh, Seoul, Sandes, Mexico City, Santiago de Cali, Bogota, Barranquilla, Madrid, Los Angeles, Oslo, Pereira, and Berlin. Her work explores the materiality of language and gestures and includes digital mediums (like virtual reality, 3d modeling, HD video) with a sculptural thought, crossing disciplinary boundaries. She is part of several international collectives like (Play)ground-less, UHIM (Heterogeneous Unity of Moving Images), Carnaval Digital and No te oigo (contemporary music).

FERMENTING A REVOLUTION | WORKSHOP | JULY 18, 4-6PM | PWYC

Ashley Jane Lewis is a new media artist with a focus on speculative design and tech education. Her artistic practice explores the black diaspora of the past, present and future through computational and analog mediums including science fiction, networked devices, machine learning, data weaving, food design, bio art and performance. Her award winning work has exhibited in both Canada and the US, most notably on the White House website during the Obama presidency. As an educator, Ashley has taught more than 3500 young people how to code, landing her on the 2016 Top 100 Black Women to Watch in Canada as well as earning her press coverage as a tech activist from outlets like Reader’s Digest, Huffington Post, and Metro News. She is proud of the work she has done with Dan Shiffman and ml5.org, a platform offering “friendly machine learning for the web” in order to lower barriers to entry into creative computing. Ashley holds a BFA in New Media from Ryerson University in Toronto and just completed a Master’s degree in Interactive Telecommunications at ITP in New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
ashleyjanelewis.com

ISHKWE-AYI’II | PERFORMANCE | JULY 18, 7-7:30PM | FREE

Olivia Shortt (they/she, Anishinaabe, Nipissing First Nation) is a Tkarón:to-based multi-disciplinary performing artist. They are a saxophonist, vocalist, noisemaker, improviser, composer, sound designer, curator, activist, and producer. Highlights from Shortt’s practice include their film debut acting and playing saxophone in acclaimed filmmaker Atom Egoyan’s 2019 film Guest of Honour; their Lincoln Center debut with the International Contemporary Ensemble; and recording an album two kilometres underground with their duo Stereoscope in the SnoLAB (a Neutrino Lab in Northern Ontario, Canada). Shortt is a current member of the JACK Studio working with NYC-based JACK Quartet and created a musical land acknowledgement for the students of Face The Music program (NYC) and the JACK Quartet called Mana-Hatta; they are also collaborating on a new work ‘the body remembers’ for the JACK Quartet. Shortt has been named a 2020 cohort member of Why Not Theatre’s ThisGEN Fellowship in Sound Design and are currently being mentored by sound designer and composer Elisheba Ittoop.
olivia-shortt.com

IS THIS REAL LIFE DRAWING + UNSTILL LIFE DRAWING | PERFORMANCE | JULY 19, 11AM-1PM | FREE

Keiko Hart practices pronunciations of self through expressions of language, race, gender and queerness. They employ digitally mediated performances to explore in-between spaces that defy definition.
Instagram: @cakeoh

THE VIRTUAL AND THE VIRAL: DIGITAL ARTS PRACTICES | PANEL | JULY 19, 2-4PM | FREE

Maya Ben David (MBD) is a Toronto-based video performance Jewish-Iranian Anthro Plane. Ben David creates worlds and characters that explore concepts such as anthropomorphism, cosplay, and performative personas. Ben David’s characters’ origin stories are established via video performance and are performed on a ongoing basis through her online presence. Her characters inhabit alternate universes but also interact with each other and already established nostalgic universes such as Pokemon and Spider-Man. In addition to this, Ben David is also a character know as “MBD” who feuds with the many manifestations of herself and the art world.

Milumbe Haimbe, also known as Artistrophe, was born in Lusaka, Zambia. She has a BArch from the Copperbelt University in Kitwe, Zambia and also holds an MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway. Milumbe is a visual artist interested in exploring diversity in popular media and culture. Her work combines several mediums including drawing, illustration, video and 3D modelling. She represents a wide intersection of cultural minorities and believes that this intersectionality places her in a prime position to lend her voice to the communities that she represents. She has exhibited her work in numerous shows, including FOCUS 10 Art Basel, and is an alumnus of the Art Omi International Artist’s Residency in New York, as well as the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. She also exhibited in the 2014 Biennale for Contemporary African Art in Dakar, and is a recipient of the 2015 Bellagio Arts Fellowship Award, the Astraea Global Arts Fund, and the Laureate du prix de la Fondation Blachere. In 2019, Milumbe attended a studio residency with the Ontario Science Centre and MOCA Toronto. That same year, she also participated in Vector Festival 2019.

Jordan Shaw is an internationally exhibited artist and creative technologist raised and currently based in Toronto, Canada. He received his MFA from OCAD University’s Digital Futures program exhibiting his thesis project, Habitual Instinct, in 2017 during Vector Festival at InterAccess. Before that, he completed his undergraduate degree at Carleton University and Algonquin College, where his final installation exhibited at ACM SIGGRAPH.

Moderated by Katie Micak

MAKING MEME ART ON YOUR PHONE | WORKSHOP | JULY 19, 4-6PM | PWYC

Fallon Simard’s memes and videos capture the conflicts created by colonialism, land, politics, and capitalism. The Anishinaabe-Metis artist creates moving and still images as an embodied and visceral response to Indigenous identity that dispels current tropes of Indigeneity. Simard’s work instead investigates intensity and burden as products of injustice(s), human rights violations, and colonial violence. In his videos and memes, Simard illustrates bad feelings and harms from different Indigenous contexts to reveal new modes and effects of colonial-capital-racial policy. Simard’s work mobilizes grief, intensity, and trauma as mitigation tools to colonial-capital policy. Fallon Simard additionally creates policy recommendations into legislation, services, programs, and organizations to advocate for the human rights and substantive equality of Two Spirit, Queer and Trans Indigenous people.
fallonsimard.com

LUNA | PERFORMANCE | JULY 19, 6:30-8PM | FREE

Ping Interactive is a new Toronto-based creative technology studio started by Meghan Cheng that specializes in blending digital and physical installations that immerse audiences in interactive sound, light and movement. Cheng has worked with artists like Sasha Berliner, unQuartet, Laura Swankey, and provided holistic services and installations for Women From Space Festival, Gallery 345, and 918 Bathurst Cultural Centre. She believes in building meaningful relationships with ourselves, each other, and the world around us through shared imaginative experiences. Cheng is currently working to develop audio-reactive light installations for immersive concerts, gallery spaces, and public spaces.
pinginteractive.studio

From Toronto, cellist Cheryl O is a dedicated multi-media collaborator blending her improvisations with live theatre, dance, film, circus arts, text, poetry, painting and electronica. She is a regular performer for Contact Dance, CoExistDance, and performs weekly circus ambience performance classes at Hercinia Arts Collective, where she continues to explore the deep relationships between sound, movement, time and energy. She also explores this synergy with spoken word and poetry artists throughout the city playing both acoustic cello and with pedals and loops. Cheryl is a founding member of unQuartet; an improvising string trio creating film scores and live performances. Cheryl also receives commissions for dance and circus projects and will be part of several granted projects for the 2021 season, including ‘TAURA’ an exciting Flamenco dance work with Sofi Gudiño, an extended dance piece depicting both the bull and the bull fighter in a female form.
Instagram: @cherylocellojuice

ANTI-RACIST ARTIST NETWORKS: EMERGING FORMS OF COMMUNITY, SOLIDARITY, AND CARE | PANEL | JULY 21, 3-4:30PM |FREE

Fallon Simard’s memes and videos capture the conflicts created by colonialism, land, politics, and capitalism. The Anishinaabe-Metis artist creates moving and still images as an embodied and visceral response to Indigenous identity that dispels current tropes of Indigeneity. Simard’s work instead investigates intensity and burden as products of injustice(s), human rights violations, and colonial violence. In his videos and memes, Simard illustrates bad feelings and harms from different Indigenous contexts to reveal new modes and effects of colonial-capital-racial policy. Simard’s work mobilizes grief, intensity, and trauma as mitigation tools to colonial-capital policy. Fallon Simard additionally creates policy recommendations into legislation, services, programs, and organizations to advocate for the human rights and substantive equality of Two Spirit, Queer and Trans Indigenous people.

Geneviève Wallen is a Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal-based independent curator and writer. She obtained a BFA in Art History at Concordia University (2012) and a MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University (2015). Wallen’s practice is informed by diasporic narratives, intersectional feminism, intergenerational dialogues, BIPOC alternative futurities and healing platforms. Her ongoing research focuses on the notion of longevity as a methodology for resistance and care work in the arts. Her most recent curated exhibition, Made of Honey, Gold, and Marigold (2020), was on view at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. Wallen contributed essays for C magazine and the anthology Other Places;Reflections on Media Arts in Canada, edited by Deanna Bowen. She is an Exhibition Coordinator at Fofa Gallery, a member of YTB (Younger than Beyoncé) Collective, and is the co-initiator (with Marsya Maharani) of Souped Up a thematic dinner series conceived to carve spaces for care and support building among BIPOC curators and cultural workers.

Syrus Marcus Ware is a Vanier scholar, visual artist, activist, curator and educator. Syrus uses painting, installation and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture, and he’s shown widely in galleries and festivals across Canada. He is part of the Perfor-mance Disability Art Collective and a core-team member of Black Lives Matter – Toronto. He has won several recognitions including the TD Diversity Award 2017, “Best Queer Activist” NOW Magazine 2005, and the Steinert and Ferreiro Award 2012.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Belinda Kwan is a Chinese-Canadian settler curator interested in exhibitionary forms of critique, pedagogy, and advocacy. Her research-based practice explores how processes of knowledge translation and legitimization produce or influence transgenerational trauma. More recently, her work has focused on how notions of scientific and mathematic ‘objectivity’ shape the socio-political imaginary. She has curated for the Society of Literature, Science, and the Arts (int’l); Varley Art Gallery (Markham); Art Gallery of York University (Toronto); and Myseum of Toronto. She is a Co-Director at Bunker 2 Contemporary Art Container and a board member of Trinity Square Video (Toronto).

A QUEER GUIDE TO GIF-MAKING | WORKSHOP | JULY 21, 6-8PM |PWYC

Alex Jensen is an early career multimedia artist living and working on the unceded traditional lands of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, in Victoria, BC. Alex is a third generation settler of Scandanavian-English-German descent and was born and raised in the interior of BC. Alex received his BFA from Thompson Rivers University in 2017 before moving to the island to further develop his artistic practice and career in the arts. His practice engages primarily with the themes of memory, popular media, relationships, and queer identity. Through his work, Alex explores ideas of self, and aims to create a space for both contemplation and connection with others. Alex primarily works with image-based media including photography, videography, printmaking, and intermedia sculpture.

YOU NEED PROTOCOLS: WORKING WITH INDIGENOUS CULTURE IN THE DIGITAL REALM | PANEL | JULY 22, 3-4PM |FREE

Meagan Byrne is an pihtawikosisân (Métis) digital media artist and game designer born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario. She has been creating digital interactive works since 2014 and is heavily influenced by both RPG games and all the stories she heard growing up. Her designs incorporate narrative, game mechanics, sound and traditional art and are deeply rooted in Indigenous Futurisms, language and Indigenous feminist theory. She sees her work as a constant struggle to navigate the complexities of Indigenous identity within a deeply colonized system. Meagan uses her work to explore questions of cultural belonging, the Indigenization of media and the future of Indigenous language and culture. Meagan is the current Owner/Lead Game Designer of Achimostawinan Games, an Indigenous-run and staffed video game studio.

Elijah Forbes (he/him/his) is an Odawa Two-Spirit transgender man working in comics, illustration, and writing. He has written for Fieldmouse Magazine and Model View Culture, shown work in physical and online galleries, and worked with companies of all sizes to create expressive and uplifting Indigenous work. Indigenous modes of gender and presentation are most important to his body of work, as well as themes of nonbinary ways of being. His most important current project is heading the Indigenous Comics Collective, a group created to make space for Indigenous voices in the convention and professional spheres.

Taylor McArthur (Nakota of Pheasant Rump Nakota First Nation, Saskatchewan) is a digital artist who works at the intersection of 3D animation, video game design and video. Her developing body of work is evocative of Indigenous Futurisms and seeks to situate her Indigenous culture within both the modern and a potential future.

PERFORMANCE IN QUARANTINE | PANEL | JULY 23, 5-7PM |FREE

Cat Bluemke is a member of Tough Guy Mountain, a Toronto-based art collective making interactive performance art about unpaid internships. Working together since 2012, they have created video games, musical theatre, and gallery exhibits in which audiences explore a fantasy world of corporate serfdom. The collective has exhibited their work and performed across Canada and the United States.

Keiko Hart practices pronunciations of self through expression of language, race, gender and queerness. They employ digitally mediated performances to explore in-between spaces that defy definition. By creating participative and collaborative experiences, they invite spectators to (re)consider their relationships to space and narrative. Since completing their MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University in 2019, they have gone on to facilitate programming at various Toronto-based non-profit organizations. They currently act as Programs Director for Subtle Technologies where they helped found the Curatorial Mentorship Program, an initiative that actively advises and supports the next generation of curators, artists and, cultural makers in an intergenerational framework of skill and resource sharing developed to endure our changing realities.

Moderated by Katie Micak

COVIDFASHION | PERFORMANCE | JULY 23, 8-9PM |FREE

Natalie Logan is a documentarian and visual artist who specializes in light sensitive recording media from digital cameras to analog holography. In addition to completing an Honours BA at the University of Toronto, she has a Masters in Fine Art from Ryerson University in Documentary Media. Natalie has been a longstanding Research Assistant at Ontario College of Art & Design University’s PHASE Lab (Prototype Holographics for Art and Science Explorations). Outside of academia, Natalie has studied with notable artists and filmmakers such as Paolo Soleri and Werner Herzog. She has participated in international holography residencies such as August Muth’s Light Foundry in Santa Fe and Guillermo Heinze’s Light Kitchen in Germany. As a freelance documentarian, Natalie has worked with many arts organizations some of which include Inter Access, Gardiner Museum, Power Plant, CBC Arts, Mercer Union and Evergreen Brickworks.
natagraphy.com

Ayodele Hudlin, owner of Zipette, is a designer of women and girls fashion and graduate from George Brown College Fashion Arts Program. Zipette offers interchangeable syles that focuses on minimization and sustainability, while bringing quality and fun to girls dresses. Zipette has gone on to participate in marketing events like The One of A Kin SHow and The Bump to Baby Show. Ayodele is a member of DMZ, one of Canada’s top start-up mentorship programs for entrepreneurs in technology and fashion at Ryerson University. Ayodele is an advocate for the community and has a passion for teaching children sewing as an art and craft so they can integrate it into their lives and are able to express themselves freely. Working with Artstarts over the years, she has collaborated with other talented artists to present The colour Wheel PRoject at Nuit Blanche 2019. Ayodele hopes to inspire others through her work and provide a platform for people to express themselves through fashion and art.
Instagram: @zipettedresses

Daniel Rotsztain is the Urban Geographer, an artist, writer and cartographer whose work examines our relationship to the places we inhabit. He is the author and illustrator of All the Libraries Toronto and A Colourful History Toronto. His work has also appeared in the Globe and Mail, Spacing Magazine and Now Magazine.
theurbangeographer.ca

Julie Reich (Toronto, ON) is a multifaceted producer/composer. As a musician, Reich’s alias is Bile Sister, and performs with large acts such as King Cobb Steelie and Lust for Youth. Festivals include NXNE, POP Montreal Festival, and Big on Bloor. DJ performances include AGO’s First Thursdays (DJ Garbage Body). Releases include Faucet (Healing Power Records), a 7” (Personal Records), and upcoming record TBA. Reich tours internationally as backup singer in New York’s ‘Chandra’ performing recently at Primavera Sound (Barcelona, Spain) and Rough Trade Records (NYC). Reich produced and composed the soundtrack for indie video-game Disconicon (Laura Dobson, 2018) and is composing the score and sound design for video-game, SEED (Brendan Lehman). She produced/composed the score for upcoming documentary, Trappist Symphony (Kenn Fisher, Natalie Logan), and is producing/composing the documentary score and sound design for “There is No Coming and There is No Going” (Zeesy Powers).
juliereich.ca

Diséiye Thompson is a custom clothing brand based in Toronto, Canada. The self-titled brand emerged in 2016 by Nigerian born Diséiye Thompson, who was classically trained at Ryerson University & The Academy of Design. Diséiye draws inspiration from their culture, their various intersecting communities, especially the ballroom community, as well as their vast knowledge of fashion history. Their design skills and techniques have evolved from their apprenticeship with Greta Constantine to their time designing at Lea-ann Belter Bridal. Diséiye has become notable as a stylist; after styling music videos and live performances for artists like Aiza and DVSN.
diseiye.com

Lana Kuidir is a Syrian Interdisciplinary Artists and entrepreneur who is inspired by the beautiful complexity that exists in Humanity and the world as a whole. Focusing on exploring what is hidden behind the norm, Kuidir applies the tension in contradictions that define us to her work through merging physical reality with artistic expression. Kuidir’s philosophy is build on “Pausing time to create timeless pieces”.

Lana Kuidir has developed a raw perspective on sculpting a refined dimension of her work, by virtue of an education background in Interactive Arts and Robotics, at Ryerson University specializing in Wearable Technology and showcasing her art work at the Burroughs and the Gardiner Museum.

Later, Lana started experimenting and finding new ways to use textiles as a medium which led her to study Fashion Design at Academy of Design and showed her debut collection in Toronto and Quebec City. Lana also launched the “I AM ME” Campaign that aimed to empower women through creating therapeutic processes with RCJP in Toronto.
@iamlanakuidir

Renika Hall is a creative artist with a special interest in the Performing Arts as a dancer and a growing passion for costume design. With a background in Afro-Caribbean dance from the early ages of 4, performing, storytelling and dressing up for stage shows were always a highlight for Hall. Originally growing up in Ottawa, she moved to Toronto to attend Ryerson University and also to continue exploring dance opportunities in a bigger city. After some years of dance training, teaching workshops and performing in videos, Hall became more interested in wardrobe and costume for performers and began to assist with coordinating and styling on projects. Flash forward to now, she is ready to launch her own design platform called “Nika 44play” to show her own concept designs, cosplay and create her own stories. Hall is looking forward to new collab opportunities with other artists and organizations who are interested in creating impactful art that tells a story and inspires minds.
Instagram: @re.nika44 & @nika44play