Abdullah M.I. Syed

Abdullah M.I. Syed is a Pakistani-born contemporary artist, designer and curator working between Karachi, Sydney, and New York. His art practice weaves between the narratives of east and west, bringing together art historical references and concerns from each. Syed has a PhD in Fine Arts practice (2015) and MFA (2009) from the University of New South Wales, Art & Design, Australia. He also holds a BA in Design (1999) and M.Ed. (2001) from the University of Central Oklahoma, USA. Syed has been featured in seven solo exhibitions and has exhibited in several international group exhibitions and art fairs, most notably at the Hawkesbury Art Gallery and Cross Art Project in Sydney, Yifu Gallery in Shanghai and Canvas Gallery in Karachi. His awards include the Blacktown Art Prize (2010), the UNSW Postgraduate Research Scholarship (2009), and the Individual Artist of Oklahoma Award for Installation (2003). Syed’s work for this exhibition has been supported by his residency at the Parramatta Artists Studios in Sydney, and he is represented by Aicon Gallery in New York.

Alex Sheriff

Alex Sheriff is a Canadian artist and filmmaker. He received his BFA in Drawing and Painting from OCADU before moving to New York where he received his MFA in Fine Arts. He now lives in Los Angeles and works in painting, drawing, sculpture and film.

alexsheriff.com

Ali Asgar

Ali Asgar is a Bangladeshi transdisciplinary artist and cultural producer whose performances and visual narratives arise from growing up queer in a heteronormative class-based society. Their provocative street performances and gallery exhibitions exposed them to serious risk in Dhaka and, in 2016, they were awarded an Artist Protection Fund Fellowship at the University of Maine. They are currently working on an MFA in Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ali has exhibited at the Dhaka Arts Summit, the Kolkata International Performance Festival and the Asian Art Biennial. Their work has been produced in Boston, Chicago and New York City, where they were a featured artist at the PEN World Voice Festival.

aliasgarart.com

Alvin Luong

Alvin Luong is an emerging artist from Toronto. Luong works with lens-based media and performance to consider how documentations and instructions are created and how they can be interpreted. Luong has exhibited in group exhibitions at Gallery 44 and Trinity Square Video, and exhibited commissioned works at Trinity Square Video. He has performed and lectured at Blackwood Gallery. Upcoming exhibitions include a collaborative film project at Y+ Contemporary in April 2017, and a solo project at PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts in June 2017. He holds honours BA from the University of Toronto in Visual Studies.

alvinluong.com

Ambereen Siddiqui

Ambereen Siddiqui is a curator and artist with an interest in contemporary South Asian art. She received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, her B.Ed from York University and her BA from the joint Art and Art History program at the University of Toronto and Sheridan College. She has a long-standing relationship with SAVAC, having served as Education and Outreach Officer as well as Interim Executive Director. Her work has been supported by the Ontario Arts Council through grants including the Media Arts Grant, the Chalmer’s Arts Fellowship and the grant for Culturally Diverse Curatorial Projects, making this particular project with The Robert McLaughlin Gallery and SAVAC possible.

Andrea Luka Zimmerman

Andrea Luka Zimmerman is an artist, cultural activist and filmmaker. She is the first director to be shortlisted for both the Grierson and Jarman Awards, and in 2017 Zimmerman received the Artangel Open Award for her feature drama Cycle, produced in collaboration with Adrian Jackson. Currently she teaches at Central St. Martins in London, where she also studied for her PhD.

Anjana Kothamachu

Anjana Kothamachu is a visual artist based in Bangalore and Mumbai. Her work manifests itself as objects, audio, moving image and drawing. She is a recipient of Inlaks Fine Art Award 2013 and has been a resident at several residencies; Stiftung Futur Foundation (Switzerland), Sandarbh International Artists Association (India), Khoj International Artists Association (India), and The Changwon Sculpture Biennale (South Korea). She is the ISCP Inlaks artist in residence in New York in 2015.

anjanak.tumblr.com

Anna Eyler

Anna Eyler is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montréal. In her work, Eyler reflects on contemporary ideas of the sacred. Her media-based installations question strict distinctions between interior/exterior, nature/technology, absence/presence, and cyclicality/linearity. According to theorist Jane Bennett, contemporary culture is widely understood to be devoid of a sense of “enchantment,” which is an experience of being “struck and shaken by the extraordinary that lives amid the familiar and the everyday.” Through the subversion of familiar forms and objects, Eyler aim to reinvigorate these sites of wonder within daily life. Eyler holds a BA in Religious Studies and Art History from Carleton University (2010) and a BFA from the University of Ottawa (2015). Recent awards include the Governor General’s Academic Medal (2010), the Jacqueline Fry Scholarship (2014), and the Artengine New Media Award for her graduate exhibition (2015). Her work will be shown in the upcoming two-person exhibition beyond différance, and now at Ace Art Inc. in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

annaeyler.com

Aqui Thami

Based in Darjeeling, Aqui Thami uses art as a medium for storytelling, believing that it can truly empower individuals and communities. Through prints, photography, performance and direct action, Thami often collaborates with women and children from different neighborhoods, in order to construct a politically and socially engaged work. While particularly interested in Aboriginal issues in various geopolitical and historical contexts, the artist questions cultural structures of power through the lense of feminism, anti-racism and activism. Her work is rooted in traditions of participatory art and of artists books, while being closely linked to subcultures of zine and DIY (Do it Yourself). Aqui Thami is a first generation indigenous artist and academic in India. Self-taught, she is part of the art collective Bombay Underground and is now pursuing a doctoral degree in Social Work, at the Tata Institute Of Social Sciences, in Mumbai.

aquithami.tumblr.com

Asma Sultana

Asma Sultana is a Bangladeshi born British visual Artist, currently living and working in Scarborough. She completed her undergraduate work in Drawing and Painting from Bangladesh, and has since trained in London and Toronto in Fine Art and Art History. Sultana has been invited to create solo exhibitions and has participated in many group exhibitions in Canada, England, India and Bangladesh, including ‘Dance with Me to the End of Love’ at the Forest Brook Gallery in Ajax, and ‘Methodical Mergers’ a SAVAC member show at Gallery 1313 in Toronto and group shows at Zainul Gallery and the National Museum in Dhaka;. Sultana’s works are autobiographical in nature, exploring the narrative of her identity through materials unique to her, including her hair to sew and her fingertips as print impressions.

Azar Mahmoudian

Azar Mahmoudian is an independent curator and researcher based in Tehran. She has curated exhibitions and screenings for Cultuurcentrum Bruges, Belgium; Contemporary Art Brussels; SOAS, University of London; Blackwood Gallery, Toronto; and was a 2014 Fellow of Global Art Forum 8, Dubai. She currently works as a lecturer in Tehran universities and collaborates with a project-space in Tehran.

Anna Malla

Anna Malla is a community organizer, researcher, educator, and dance-artist. She has been involved with struggles for migrant and land-based justice for the past fifteen years, including anti-mining activism, organizing alongside migrant workers, and fighting back against racist anti-terrorism laws. Anna is one of five core members of The Switch Project, a collective of political interdisciplinary Queer, Trans & Two Spirit performers co-creating new methodologies and political performance materials for the public sphere. Between 2014-2016 Anna coordinated Not a Place on a Map, an oral history and community archiving project through SAVAC. Anna currently lives in Toronto.

Basil AlZeri

Basil AlZeri is a visual artist living and working in Toronto, Canada. AlZeri’s practice involves the intersection of art, education, and community engagement, taking multiple forms, such as performance, interventions, gallery and public installation. AlZeri’s work examines the socio-political dynamics of the family and its intersection with cultural practices, drawing on the necessities of everyday life and the visibility of labour as sites of exploration. His work aims to facilitate a space for empathy through gestures of inclusivity and generosity. AlZeri’s work has been shown in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Sackville, Regina, Vancouver, Mexico City, Santiago, and Tartu/Estonia, and he will be one of the artists in residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2016.

Birender Yadav

Birender Yadav was born in Ballia district, in a predominantly rural province of Uttar Pradesh, India. He came from a family of coal miners, his father worked as a blacksmith at the coal mines of their province. Yadav was the first to step out from his family and pursue formal higher education. He first did his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, graduating in 2013. After this, Yadav qualified for a Master in Fine Arts (specialisation: Painting) from the College of Arts, New Delhi in 2015.

birenderyadav.com

Christina Battle

Chulayarnnon Siriphol

Chulayarnnon Siriphol works in short film, documentary and video art. Most of his works are inspired by personal memory and Thai political crises. His works have been screened in many film festivals and exhibitions in Asia and Europe, including in The 34th International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands (2005), Sharjah Biennial 11, United Arab Emirates (2013) and The 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Japan (2014).

chulayarnnon.com

Coco Guzman

Coco Guzman is a Spanish queer artist who uses drawing to tell stories of haunting in the context of political violence. With a degree in Literature and Art obtained in France, Coco has developed their art career in Canada. Coco’work has been shown across the Americas and Europe and has received the support of Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council. Coco is the cofounder of Colectivo Pez Luna which explores the intersectionalities between drawing, theatre and queerness. Currently pursuing their MFA at OCAD University, Coco was awarded a SSHRC scholarship for their current research.

cocoriot.com

Deepali Dewan

Deepali Dewan is an art historian with a special interest in the visual cultures of South Asia. Her research, curatorial and teaching interests encompass nineteenth- and twentieth-century visual culture of South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora. Most recently, her research focuses on aspects of the history and theory of photography in India that explore how the photographic image played a productive role in the trajectories of colonialism, nationalism, and modernity, with a view toward understanding how photography has shaped contemporary ways of viewing and being in the world. Her work has been supported by the American Institute of Indian Studies, the College Art Association, the MacArthur Program/Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 

Ed Panar

Ed Panar is based in Pittsburgh (PA) and holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (MI). His photographs and books have been exhibited internationally at venues including The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Nofound Photofair, Paris; The New York Photography Festival, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

http://www.edpanar.com

Erdem Taşdelen

Erdem Taşdelen is a Turkish-Canadian artist who currently lives and works in Toronto. His practice is rooted in conceptualism and involves a range of media including installation, video, sculpture, sound and artist books. His diverse projects bring structures of power into question within the context of culturally learned behaviours, where he often draws from unique historical narratives to address the complexities of current sociopolitical issues. Taşdelen’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions internationally, and reviewed in publications including Artforum, Flash Art, ArtAsiaPacific, Financial Times, Canadian Art and C Magazine. He has been awarded the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize in Visual Arts by the Canada Council for the Arts (2016), the Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists by the Hnatyshyn Foundation (2014), and was long-listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2019.

www.erdemtasdelen.com

Fan Wu

Golboo Amani

Golboo Amani works in photography to performance, space intervention, digital media, and social practice. Her work considers pedagogical tools and methodologies as ready-made sites of social engagement. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in venues including the Rats9 Gallery, Hemispheric Institute Encuentro (Montreal), Blackwood Gallery (Mississauga) Union Gallery (Kingston), XPACE Artist-Run Centre, FADO Emerging Artist Series, Rhubarb Festival (Toronto), TRANSMUTED International Festival of Performance Art (Mexico City), 221A Artist-Run Centre, and the LIVE Biennial of Performance Art (Vancouver). Recent works include a Public Reading a participatory performance on public transit for the Artist-Run Newsstand and the School of Bartered Knowledge an ongoing social practice work that holds space for dialog and negotiations around knowledge production.

golbooamani.blogspot.ca

Hagop Ohannessian

Hagop Ohannessian is a multidisciplinary artist who connects nature and the human mind through sculpture and multimedia art installation. Inspired by a passion and curiosity for nature, Hagop uses a range of materials and methods, including metal wires, copper sheet, concrete, paints, LED, and sound, to interpret and express the underlying forms, structures, and dimensions hidden within the natural world. He combines these formal studies with environmental installation techniques to create immersive multimedia experiences that invite a deeper engagement with nature by creating a relational, empathic experience with plants and animals.

Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Hagop currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada. He graduated in 2002 from Institut Européen de technologie in Beirut with a degree in Electronics and Plastic Arts.

Harkeerat Mangat

Harkeerat Mangat is an artist and musician from Vancouver, Canada. His work engages with a dichotomy between improvisational structures in music and the technical apparatus of recording and reproduction in film production. He is currently based in Düsseldorf, Germany where he studies with Christopher Williams at the Kunstakademie.

Hiba Ali

Hiba Ali is a new media artist and writer based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She holds two undergraduate degrees from the School of the Art Institute Chicago with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film, Video, New Media and Animation and a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Critical Studies. Her research focuses on how diverse populations utilize digital technology in ways that empower the community.  She joined Project Prospera as the Digital Storytelling, Research, and Film Coordinator in December 2015 and is involved with civic engagement and immigrant outreach projects. She is also a volunteer with the South Asian American Policy Research Institute.

hibaali.info

Huma Mulji

Huma Mulji holds an MFA from Transart Institute, Berlin, and a BFA from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi. She has exhibited widely including at the Karachi, Venice and Gwangju Biennials, Whitechapel Gallery (London), and Asia Society (NY). She is currently a Lecturer in Fine Art, at Plymouth College of Art, UK.

Jude Ratnam

Jude Ratnam worked for an NGO before becoming a filmmaker. He obtained a degree in sociology and psychology from the University of Kamaraj in southern India, before studying cinema at the School of Media Art and Managment in Sri Lanka. In 2006, he left his post at the NGO, no longer able to bear the hypocrisy of a job consisting of preaching reconciliation while civil war still raged, and the country was violently divided and impoverished. After months of rumination on how he could reach the greatest number of people in an intimate yet political way, he chose to make films. This gave him the courage to commit to a project for 10 years, despite the risks involved. He had the backing of a French team (his co-writer Isabelle Marina introduced him to the producer Julie Paratian), along with some Tamil and Sinhalese partners, since his aim was to put into practice a dialogue of reconciliation during the actual shoot. Jude Ratnam is also a film critic and cofounder of the Colombo Film Circle, and manager of the KRITI-A Work of Art production company, which co-produced Demons In Paradise. He is currently working on some new film projects in Sri Lanka.

Kat Estacio

Kat Estacio is a musician, artist, and a creative arachnid in Toronto. Her work as a diasporic queer woman of colour occupies the cranny in between the intersections of nostalgia and decolonization. She is a founding member of Pantayo, a lo-fi R&B gong punk band. Her solo compositions blend drifty experimental synth tones with the soft percussive timbre of kulintang, a departure from the more rhythmic stylings of the larger outfit she shares in Pantayo. A strange hypnotic world unfolds that is both starkly daunting and deeply inviting. A sinister and brooding trip, modern and traditional listeners are pulled into a new terrain, and there is nowhere to hide. soundcloud.com/kat-estacio

Khaled Hourani

Khaled Hourani is based in Ramallah, Palestine, and has exhibited widely including a retrospective at the CCA in Glasgow and Gallery One in Ramallah, dOCUMENTA (13), and the 2011 Sharjah Biennial. He attained a BA in History from Hebron University and was awarded the title of Cultural Management Trainer by Al Mawred Culture Resource and the European Cultural Foundation (Egypt). He has had several solo exhibitions locally and internationally and participates frequently in-group exhibitions. Hourani has curated and organized several exhibitions locally such as the young Artist of the Year Award for the years 2000 and 2002 for the A.M. Qattan Foundation. He is a co-founder of the International Academy of Art in Palestine and recently received the Leonore Annenberg Prize by Creative Time for Art and Social Change, New York.

Kohila Kurunathan

Kohila Kurunathan studied Art and Art History at Sheridan and U of T. She currently works as a graphic/web designer at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network, and in the past has worked with Canadian Art magazine, SAVAC, Blackwood Gallery, the Ontario Association of Art Galleries, and the Art Gallery of Mississauga. Kohila sits on the CARFAC Ontario Board of Directors as Vice President.

Kristina Guison

Kristina Guison is a Manila-born, Filipino-Canadian artist based in Toronto, a graduate of OCAD U for BFA major in Sculpture/Installation and a minor in Integrated Media from OCAD U in 2016. Her practice derives from pathways of socio-political interactions and intersections between pre-colonial and contemporary cultural identities in the heavily globalized 21st century. She combines social practice with fabrication-based process that are research-based, performative, culturally immersive, collaborative and generative. Her body of work for the past recent years has existed in different forms ranging from experimental research projects, gallery shows and artist residencies across Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Andalucía, Cleveland, Toronto and The Philippines.

kristinaguison.net

Kush Badhwar

Kush Badhwar is a filmmaker interested in shifting definitions of traditional mass-media, collaborating with unorthodox actors and using artistic intervention for improvised and informal political engagement. He is currently undertaking the India Foundation of the Arts Archival Fellowship in India’s newest state, Telangana.

Laleh Khorramian

Laleh Khorramian’s work takes theatre and the spectacle as its point of departure, to explore aspects of human nature and emotional states of consciousness. Her experimental animations are subjective accounts of historic events, ancient myths, and biblical themes. By removing cultural and historic specificity from these narratives, she examines the essence of their visual forms and emotional content. Khorramian’s work has exhibited internationally, and she currently lives and works in New York.

lalehkhorramian.com

Leila Pourtavaf

Leila Pourtavaf is a Toronto-based writer, independent curator and doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. She was a founding member and coordinator of the projet Mobilivre– Bookmobile project, and editor of The Bookmobile Book (2015) which chronicles the project’s history. She is also the editor of Féminismes Électriques (2012), a bilingual collection of essays which reflect on the last decade of feminist art production.

Lily Jeon

Lily Jeon is a designer and a maker with a B.Arch Sci from Ryerson University. Her work focuses on multi-disciplinary designs that transform everyday life into enchanting experiences, with the desire to ignite public engagement, empathy, and dialogue. She is interested in fabrication as a means of empowerment, having a variety of previous local and international design-build experiences, and advocates for the importance of hands-on experiential education. She has previously worked at Ryerson’s Design Fabrication Zone and is currently Makerspace Facilitator at the University of Toronto.

lilyjeon.ca

Maha Maamoun

Maha Maamoud is a Cairo-based Egyptian artist. Her work has been shown in biennials and exhibitions at such venues as Sharjah Art Foundation, the New Museum (NY), Tate Modern; and Museum of Modern Art, NY (MoMA). Maamoun’s solo shows include Lingering in Vicinity, Gypsum Gallery and The Night of Counting the Years, Fridericianum, Kassel in 2014 and upcoming solo show at Sursock Museum, Beirut. She is a founding board member of the Contemporary Image Collective (CiC), an independent non-profit space for art and culture founded in Cairo, and a co-founder of the independent publishing platform Kayfa-ta.

Mahardika Yudha

Mahardika Yudha works as coordinator in Research and Development Division at Forum Lenteng and Media Art Division at ruangrupa. His works have been exhibited extensively, including in the Singapore Biennale (2013) Videobrasil (2013) and SeMA Mediacity Biennale Seoul (2014).

Manar Moursi

Manar Moursi is an architect and artist. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Manar also holds a dual Masters degree in Architecture and Urban Policy from Princeton University. In 2011 she founded Studio Meem, an interdisciplinary research studio. Her design work has been widely published and received multiple awards. In addition to her practice with Studio Meem, Manar writes regularly, participates in art exhibitions and teaches. Her writings on urban issues have appeared in Domus, Thresholds, Lunch, Mada, Cairobserver, the Funambulist and Egypt Independent. Her book Sidewalk Salon: 1001 Street Chairs of Cairo co-authored with David Puig was published by Onomatopee in 2015. She has taught at several institutions in Cairo and is currently teaching at the University of Waterloo.
In addition to my design practice, I write and publish regularly, as well as maintain an art practice and teach. My writings on urban issues have appeared in Domus, Thresholds, Lunch, Mada, Cairobserver, the Funambulist and Egypt Independent. My book Sidewalk Salon: 1001 Street Chairs of Cairo co-authored with David Puig was published by Onomatopee in 2015. I’ve exhibited my photography work at the Contemporary Image Collective in Cairo, Onomatopee Eindhoven, and the Goethe-Institut (Algiers, Rabat, Amman). In 2014 I collaborated with Mahatat for Contemporary Art on the design and construction of the Wonder Box – a contemporary revival of traditional peep show boxes with live performances. The project traveled in the streets of Cairo for the duration of a month.
studiomeem.me

Maria Alejandrina Coates

Maria Alejandrina Coates is a Uruguayan born, Toronto-based curator whose practice is focused on creating environments that can challenge, disrupt, and re-organize normative perceptions of reality and cultural identities. She recently served as Curator for e-fagia visual and media arts organization, as well as a Board Member for Gendai Gallery. She co-founded and currently contributes to the community based sos curatorial collective. Maria received a bachelors degree from the University of British Columbia; and a Masters degree in Art History and Curatorial Studies from York University. She is a mother of two and maintains an active curatorial practice in Toronto, ON.

Marina Fathalla

Marina Fathalla is a cross-disciplinary artist and writer currently based in Toronto. Her projects are fueled by a particular sensitivity to site, at the intersection of its poetics and its politics. She explores modes of preserving land history, and strategies for preservation in museum contexts. Her upcoming project titled Land Reform is a publication examining the history of agrarian land reform in Egypt, and explores the nuances around the value of land through the lens of  tourism and thedesert as a spiritual landscape.

Meera Margaret Singh

Meera Margaret Singh is a visual artist based in Toronto. She holds a BA in Anthropology and a BFA in Photography from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg as well as an MFA from Concordia University, Montréal, Québec. Singh has been the recipient of several residencies and awards, including Canada Council for the Arts production/creation grants (2013, 2011,2009), Toronto Arts Council Visual Arts Grant (2010), Ontario Arts Council Mid-Career Grants (2011, 2013). She has been selected as participant in an artist residency at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2015); JACA in Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Banff Centre, Alberta; as the McCain Artist-in-Residence at OCAD University, Toronto and as the summer resident at the Centre for Innovation in Culture and the Arts in Canada in Kamloops, British Columbia. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions and festivals throughout Canada and internationally. She is currently an instructor in the Photography department at OCAD University in Toronto.

meeramargaretsingh.com

Melissa General

Melissa General is from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. She is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design and completed a Masters of Fine Arts degree at York University. Working in photography, installation and video, concepts involving memory, history, land and her Indigenous identity have been a focus in her practice. Her work has been exhibited at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Harbourfront Centre, Art Gallery of Peterborough, Gallery 101, Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography and has been included in the 2016 Contemporary Native Art Biennial in Montreal.

Michael Rakowitz

Michael Rakowitz is an artist living and working in Chicago. His work has appeared in venues worldwide including dOCUMENTA (13), P.S.1, MoMA, MassMOCA, Castello di Rivoli, the 16th Biennale of Sydney, the 10th and 14th Istanbul Biennials, Sharjah Biennial 8, Tirana Biennale, National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, and Transmediale 05. He has had solo projects and exhibitions with Creative Time, Tate Modern in London, MCA Chicago, Lombard Freid Gallery in New York, Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago and Kunstraum Innsbruck. He is the recipient of the 2018 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts; a 2012 Tiffany Foundation Award; a 2008 Creative Capital Grant; a Sharjah Biennial Jury Award; a 2006 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Grant in Architecture and Environmental Structures; the 2003 Dena Foundation Award, and the 2002 Design 21 Grand Prix from UNESCO. He was awarded the Fourth Plinth commission in London’s Trafalgar Square, on view through 2020. A traveling survey of his work premiered at Whitechapel Gallery in London  in June 2019, and is currently on view  at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Torino, Italy. It will travel to the Jameel Art Centre in Dubai in 2020. Rakowitz was recently named the 2020 Nasher Sculpture Prize Laureate and is Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University.

michaelrakowitz.com

Mohammad Fauzi

Mohammad Fauzi is a researcher and filmmaker. His work has been shown in OK. Video “FLESH” 5th Jakarta International Video Festival, Indonesia Art Festival (ARTE), Hamburg International Short Film Festival, ARKIPEL Jakarta International Documentary & Experimental Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival (Experimenta).

Myung-Sun Kim

Myung-Sun Kim is an interdisciplinary artist and a cultural programmer, currently based in Toronto. Her work as sculpture, performance, and socially engaged practice, explores ideas around foodways, undocumented history, fiction, memory, resilience, and community care. She has presented her work across North America and in Finland, including FADO Performance Art Centre, Gardiner Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, articule, Plug In ICA, and Gendai Gallery. Recently, she completed her Fellowship with the Toronto Arts Council’s Leader’s Lab at the Banff Centre.

myungsunkim.com

Nadia Kurd

Nadia Kurd is a curator and art historian with a PhD in art history from McGill University (2014). Her dissertation examined the making and meaning of mosque architecture in North America. She has written for a number of artist catalogs and publications such as FUSE Magazine, the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, Journal of Canadian Art History and Proteus: A Journal of Ideas. In addition to working at arts organizations such as the South Asian Visual Arts Centre, Ontario Association of Art Galleries and the Prison Arts Foundation, Nadia is currently the Curator of the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, where her focus is on community engagement and emerging artists in Northwestern Ontario. In recognition of her work, she was awarded the Northwestern Ontario Visionary Award in 2014.

Nahed Mansour

Nahed Mansour is a Toronto-based curator and multidisciplinary artist working primarily in video, installation, and performance, She is currently the Constituent Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada. Previously she held the position of Artistic Director at SAVAC, as well as Director of Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts, Toronto.

http://www.nahedmansour.com/

Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit

Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit is a new generation film director in Thailand. His first feature film ‘36’ (2012) won New Currents Award at Busan International Film Festival. His second feature ‘Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy’ (2013) screened at Venice Film Festival. Working with the film studio GTH, his film ‘Heart Attack’ (2015) won 8 awards including Best Picture from Thailand National Film Association Awards.

NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati

NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati is a Nepal-based photographer and curator. She attended Mt Holyoke College, Massachusetts and the SALT Institute of Documentary Studies, Portland, Maine to study documentary photography. Her work seeks to embrace themes such as change, identity, gender, and history within the context of ‘the New Nepal’. She enjoys working across platforms to connect visuals, sound, research, education, activism; using storytelling as an underlying approach. In 2007 NayanTara co-founded photo.circle, a photography collective that has created a vibrant platform for emerging and professional photographers in Nepal. In 2010 photo.circle established the Nepal Picture Library, a digital photo archive containing over 55,000 images that contributes to the study of Nepali photography, and raises questions about memory, identity, and the history of the region through images. NayanTara’s work has been exhibited internationally, including Photo Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2015), OBSCURA Festival of Photography, Malaysia (2013), Delhi Photo Festival, India (2013), International Human Rights Film Festival, Switzerland (2013), and Kirkkopuisto Photo Annual, Finland (2013). The residency and exhibition presented by Gallery 44 and SAVAC will be her first in Canada.

nayantara.com.np

Nehal El-Hadi

Nehal El-Hadi is a writer and researcher whose work explores the relationships between the body (racialised, gendered), place (urban, virtual), and technology (internet, health). As a scholar, my hybrid digital/material research methods are informed by my training and experience as a science and environmental journalist. I advocate for the responsible, accountable, and ethical treatment of user-generated content in the fields of journalism, planning, and healthcare. My writing has appeared in academic journals, general scholarship publications, literary magazines, and is forthcoming in several anthologies and edited collections. I am currently a Visiting Scholar at the City Institute at York University and sessional faculty at the Department of Human Geography, University of Toronto Scarborough.

nehalelhadi.com

Nguyen Trinh-Thi

Nguyen Trinh-Thi is a Hanoi-based moving image artist whose work engages with memory and history. Her works transcend the boundaries between cinema, documentary and performance. She has exhibited her work internationally. including Jeu de Paume, Paris; the Lyon Biennale; Asian Art Biennial Taiwan; Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial; and Singapore Biennale.

nguyentrinhthi.wordpress.com

Oliver Husain

Oliver Husain is a filmmaker and artist based in Toronto. Husain often starts with a fragment of a story that he encountered randomly, a rumor, maybe gossip. The outcome is a video or film, a text or a textile; something foldable that can be stored away easily, or something standing on thin chopstick legs. 

husain.de

Otty Widasari

Otty Widasari lives and works in Jakarta and has been a documentary filmmaker since 2001. She majored in journalism and visual arts. Besides documentary filmmaking, she produces video arts, painting, writing and media research. She published a book AKUMASSA: Community-Based Mass-Media Watching (2013). Her feature documentary The Dragon Who Walks on the Water (2012) was screened at DMZ Docs in Paju, South Korea.

Patrick Cruz

Patrick Cruz is a Filipino-Canadian multidisciplinary artist. He holds an MFA from the University of Guelph and a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Cruz’s experience migrating from the Philippines to Canada informs his studio practice, prompting him to question notions of displacement, diaspora and the adoption of a new cultural identity. In 2015, Cruz was awarded the first prize at the 17th Annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition. Cruz has presented his work across North America, Europe and Asia.

Solo exhibitions include Low class minimalism and the gentrified amateur (2016), Projet Pangeé, Montreal, Canada; Bulaklak ng Paraiso (Flower of paradise) (2016), Centre A, Vancouver, Canada; Goose Egg Sanctuary (2015), Pablo, Taguig, Philippines; Electronic Birthstone (2014), Dynamo Arts Association, Vancouver, Canada; Fresh off the boat (2014), Mulitplex, Portland, USA; West coast Maximalist (2013), Sunset Terrace, Vancouver, Canada; Yin Yang Temple (2011), Unit/Pitt, Vancouver, Canada. Group exhibitions include Survival Guide (upcoming, 2017), Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada; and something like fire dancing (2016), Susan Hobbs, Toronto, Canada; Auto Feeling (2015), Katzman Contemporary, Toronto, Canada; Material Art Fair (2016), Mexico City, Mexico; Dark Side of the Sun (2013), Art Informal, Mandaluyong, Philippines; Radiation (2014), The Art Center of Chulangkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; Welcome to Sax Island (2012), Or Gallery Berlin, Berlin, Germany and Collage Drop Outs (2011), Finale Art File, Makati, Philippines.

patrickcruz.org

Pallavi Agarwala

Pallavi Agarwala is an illustrator and animator from New Delhi, India. After working as a graphic designer and freelance illustrator in India, she completed her Masters at the Royal College of Art (London, UK) on the Commonwealth Shared Scholarship in 2016. Agarwala’s work draws upon the poetic language of animated documentaries as means to reconstruct narratives. With a focus on the lives of people in modern cities, she is interested in addressing and representing the underrepresented in her work. Using experimental techniques in drawing, film, and collage ‘cut-ups’ to visually construct metaphors regarding disruption and change, Agarwala believes in approaching subjects with humour and plurality. Considering this as vital to her process and to her efforts to represent the notion of the ‘other’ she is also interested in thinking about the future of cites and how this theme of difference is experienced within urban environments.

pallavi-agarwala.com

Panchal Mansaram

Panchal Mansaram was born in 1934 in Mt. Abu, Rajasthan, India and studied at the Sir J. J. School of Art. Shortly after studying at the Rijks Academie in Amsterdam, he migrated to Canada in 1966. In 2016, the ROM acquired over 700 pieces from the artist’s archive reflecting over 50 years of his work.

Pavitra Wickramasinghe

Pavitra Wickramasinghe is a multidisciplinary artist mainly concerned with new ways of conceptualizing the moving image. Her current work is an exploration of notions of traveling, fluidity of place and memory. Selected exhibitions include: SIGHTINGS, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (Montréal), Yeosu International Art Festival (South Korea), Cable Factory (Finland), Stuttgart Filmwinter (Germany) and Centro Cultural del Matadero (Spain) among others. She is a recipient of numerous residencies, awards and grants including, Art Omi (NY), La Chambre Blanche (Québec), Pépinières Européennes pour jeunes artistes, (Spain), National Museum of Contemporary Art (South Korea), and The Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art.

pavitraw.com

Payal Kapadia

Payal Kapadia is a filmmaker and artist based in Mumbai. Her work includes documentary, experimental film, and animation. Her films have shown in various international festivals including the Zurich Film Festival (2014), Experimenta, India (2013), and The Cairo Video Festival (2011, 2013). Her work ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ was selected for the prestigious Artport, Forth Biennale competition in 2014.

Prachi Khandekar

Prachi Khandekar is a writer and designer. Her work often takes the form of exhibitions and narrative environments that invite reflection on the culture we are enmeshed in. In particular, she’s interested in offering environments of critique within the prevailing experience-based economy.

She holds a B.A. in Architecture from the University of Toronto and an M.A. in Design Writing Criticism from the University of the Arts, London. Notable exhibitions she has produced as an independent curator are STUFF: The Culture of Obsolescence and BT Heritage: Seeing Voices. Prachi has also designed several exhibitions and storytelling projects for the Paul H. Cocker Gallery and FCAD at Ryerson University.

prachikhandekar.com

Priya Sen

Priya Sen is a filmmaker and artist working across film, video, sound, and installation. Her work has largely centered around questions of form, urban ethnographies, music, and migration–mainly in New Delhi, a city in which she chooses to situate her practice. Priya Sen will be present for this screening.

Quratulain Butt

Quratulain Butt was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and trained as a miniature painter and sculptor at the National College of the Arts in Lahore, and the Hunerkada Academy of Visual and Performing Arts Islamabad. Her work shares concerns like social hierarchy, war conflict, hypocrisy and self – reflection and hope. She is now based in Canada.

Rajee Paña Jeji Shergill

Rajee Paña Jeji Shergill is an interdisciplinary artist born in Winnipeg who currently lives in Cherry Hill, Nova Scotia. Through textiles, sound and video, Rajee explores memory, familial inheritance and diaspora.

Safiya Randera

Safiya Randera is a multi-disciplinary artist primarily working within the fields of painting, experimental video and creative documentary. Randera has received international acclaim for her films My Father, the Terrorist? (2010), My Girl 2012 (2011), Health Status Survey (2000), and Jangri (1998). She has over a decade of experience as an independent director, producer and editor, addressing diverse topics such as disability, feminism and multiculturalism. In 2012 Randera broadened the scope of her visual art practice by incorporating the spiritual practices of her ancestors as well as learning from the Shipbo. Establishing a commitment to these traditions has lead to an indelible relationship with plant medicine. Randera has since been initiated into the medicine way and works as a channeller and energy healer. Her current thematic focus in the visual arts is an exploration of how we materialize the unseen through a connection to the plants and other spirits. Ongoing attempts to harness the mysteries of natures and inviting a public into an unseen, immersive and luminous world are key interests in her work.

safiyarandera.com

Sahej Rahal

Sahej Rahal is a Mumbai-based artist whose installations, films and performances are part of an elaborate personal mythology created by drawing characters from local legends to science fiction. By bringing these into dialogue with each other, Rahal creates scenarios where strange and indeterminate beings emerge into the everyday. Rahal has exhibited internationally and most recently exhibited at the Kochi Muziris Biennale (2014).

sahejrahal.tumblr.com

Sandy Saad

Sandy Saad currently works as the Public Engagement Coordinator at Koffler Gallery.

Sameer Farooq

Sameer Farooq completed an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2014) and a BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (2005). His interdisciplinary practice investigates tactics of representation and enlists the tools of installation, photography, documentary filmmaking, writing and the methods of anthropology to explore various forms of collecting, interpreting, and display. Upcoming projects include an ambitious public installation at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, a residency with Open Studio, Toronto, and an exhibition inaugurating the University of Reno’s new arts centre. He has exhibited internationally and nationally at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), the Art Gallery of York University, Maquis Projects (Izmir), Blackwood Gallery (Mississauga), Trankat (Tétouan, Morocco), Sol Koffler Gallery (Providence), Artellewa (Cairo), and Sanat Limani (Istanbul). Reviews and essays dedicated to his work have been included in C Magazine, The Washington Post, BBC Culture, Hyperallergic, Artnet, The Huffington Post, Canadian Art, and others. Farooq has been awarded several grants from the Canada Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and the Europe Media Fund, as well the President’s Scholarship at the Rhode Island School of Design.

sameerfarooq.com

Sanaz Sohrabi

Sanaz Sohrabi uses image making practices, moving image and video, in order to analyze the status of the image as a gateway into a larger study of the photographic archives and their capacity to engender different temporal-spatial modes of spectatorship.

sanaz-sohrabi.com

Sashikant Thavudoz

Shahir Krishna

Shahir Krishna is an interdisciplinary artist currently working in textile and costume design. Their/Her art explores the schism that is created when existing within a diaspora, weaving together moments of historical psychosis with delicately textured ephemera to create new realms of spiritual possibility for the queer soul. Their/Her inspiration wades in opalescent silver swamps, perfumed by gender torment, romantic hallucination, karmic law and the mythical creatures lounging beneath the ruins of utopia. In this life, Shahir is a diasporic/queer/transgender/indian/malawian/canadian entity.

Sumugan Sivanesan

Sumugan Sivanesan is an independent researcher, writer and artist working across art, activism and academia. Often working collaboratively, he has produced videos, performances and installations for art spaces and festivals internationally. In Australia, Sumugan regularly contributes to the arts and cultural press. He also prints zines.

sivanesan.net

Surendra Lawoti

Surendra Lawoti moved to the US after completing high school in Kathmandu. He received his BA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago (1999) and his MFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2005) in Boston. Surendra’s work stems from his interest in social issues, politics, image-making and activism. His work has been exhibited internationally including at Gallery 44 and Harbourfront Centre in Toronto; Les Territoires in Montreal; O’Hare International Airport and Glass Curtain Gallery in Chicago; Gallery Kayafas, Photographic Resource Center and Tufts University Gallery in Boston; Nepal Association of Fine Arts in Kathmandu; the Goethe-Institut in New Delhi; ArtScience Museum in Singapore and Galeria Ateneo Porfirio Barba Jacob in Medellín, Colombia. He has received awards from Artadia (Chicago), Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Chicago and Somerville Arts Council. He now lives in Toronto, where he teaches Photography as a Sessional Professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University.

surendralawoti.com

Swapnaa Tamhane

Swapnaa Tamhane has been working across several platforms as an artist, curator, and writer. She has exhibited at FOCUS Photography Festival, Mumbai; Art Gallery of Mississauga; and A Space Gallery, Toronto. Her book, Sar: The Essence of Indian Design, was recently published with Phaidon Press. She is curating an exhibition of contemporary Canadian art for the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, opening in July 2017.

Tala Madani

Tala Madani is an Iranian-American artist, whose work is rich in narrative and heavy in irony. Her paintings depict darkly comic mise-en-scénes, whilst her descriptive and intimately scaled paintings, and painterly video animations, depict uncomfortable scenes in which bald, middle-aged men engage in absurd scenarios that fuse playfulness with violence and perversity. Madani’s work has been exhibited internationally, including the New Museum, New York (2009), Venice Biennale (2011), Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2014).

Tazeen Qayyum

Tazeen Qayyum is a contemporary miniature painter who received her BFA in Visual Arts from the National College of Arts Lahore, Pakistan in 1996. Her work has been shown internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, some of which include ‘Holding Pattern’ at the Toronto Pearson Airport, ‘ The Veiled’ at the Textile Museum of Canada, ‘The Rising Tide’ at the Mohatta Palace Museum, Pakistan, and ‘Urban Myths & Modern Fables’ at both the University of Sydney, Australia and at the Dorris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Qayyum’s work was included in the 10th Asian Biennale in Dhaka, Bangladesh (2002), the 2nd Painting Biennale in Tehran, Iran (2002) and has been featured at the Sotheby’s and the Christie’s South Asian Modern & Contemporary Art auction in New York (2008-12). Qayyum was awarded a UNESCO bursary (2000) to work and exhibit in Vienna. Qayyum lives and works in Toronto, and in addition to her practice, conducts workshops to introduce miniature painting to artists and students.

tazeenqayyum.com

Tharmila Rajasingam

Tharmila Rajasingam is a Tamil-Sri Lankan-Canadian multidisciplinary artist living and working in Toronto. Her practice includes installation, performance, sculpture, drawing, painting and print-making. Her work takes up the concept of identity through cultural practices, rituals, time, memory and repetition. Her new works have typically involved audience interaction and engagement. She holds a BA from the University of Toronto, and has participated in projects and exhibitions at Gallery 1313, VMAC Gallery, Labspace Studio, AWOL Gallery, and Gladstone Hotel.

tharmilarajasingam.com

Trudy Erin Elmore

Trudy Erin Elmore is an emerging, new media artist based in Toronto, Canada. Her work deals with issues of mortality, technological evolution and the paradoxical human condition relating to and existing in a hyper consumer culture. Although her practice is largely digital, she remains weary of the ‘new way of seeing’ —mediated almost entirely by electronic screens— and of technological evolutions’ contingency upon systems of wealth and resource extraction. Hailing from a rural life in the Kootenay Mountain Range in BC, she spent her formative years hiking in the back country and tending a hobby farm. Upon her arrival at OCAD University she was exposed to new medias and the digital method of creation. Elmore became enamored with the limitless and serial nature of digital realm, where the complexities of the mind can be represented. Her art practice is based in digital medias, print, and video and sound installation. Elmore participated in OCAD Universities’ Nomadic Residency Program with Ryan Gander (2016) and Pedro Reyes (2015). She was awarded the Summer Student Artists in Residency at Trinity Square Video for her selected screening at Video Fever (2016). Elmore has recently showed work in the 2016 Toronto Images Festival and in the 2016 Luminato Festival.

trudyerin.com

Yuki Aditya

Yuki Aditya lives and works in Jakarta, Indonesia. Yuki Aditya has been the festival director of ARKIPEL International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival since the first time in 2013, held by Forum Lenteng. He graduated from Fiscal Administration from University of Indonesia and managing several programs and one of the initiators of a platform together with audio visual collectives around Asia and Latin America.

Zinnia Naqvi

Zinnia Naqvi is an image based artist working out of Toronto. She received a Bachelors of Fine Arts (BFA) from Ryerson University’s, Image Arts: Photography Studies program. Zinnia is rooted in documentary practice and continues to seek inspiration through cultural observation. Her work addresses issues of globalism, trans-nationalism and identity. She is avidly working in the Toronto arts scene and has assisted with the production of various exhibitions over the past year.

zinnianaqvi.com