About UKAI Projects

Cathleen Calica is a creative visionary. As the co-founder, director and curator of 187 Augusta, ‘Cat’ has five years of first-hand experience of arts management and community leadership. As an artistic director, Cat has styled and designed sets for award winning artists and musicians as well as commercials for high profile clients such as McCain Foods, Adidas Canada and Google. Cat's work revolves around centering and celebrating BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) and 2SLGBTQ+ artistry and excellence.

Adrian Layne is an academic and creative professional, passionate about exploring the intersections of art, education, community development, and technology. Currently pursuing an M.Ed in Adult Education and Community Development at the University of Toronto, he also brings experience as a University administrator within an engineering faculty, where he champions teaching and learning for human innovation as the cornerstone of his work. In the past half-decade, Adrian has reignited his artistic pursuits, leveraging them as tools for community empowerment. This occurs through various initiatives, such as his radio show providing local artists with live music opportunities. Additionally, Adrian has also contributed to the world of dance, particularly in Krump, by establishing drop-ins and classes at local studios like Run The Flex. Technology has become a core part of his practice when creating live shows or finding novel ways to share Krump.

Agnes Cebere is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily with performance, video, and photography. Their work involves creating specific and localized social spaces and exploring the ways in which our individual sense perception can contribute to a collective space of action.

Ahmad Aiuby is an interdisciplinary artist and creative technologist from Upper Egypt. His work uses immersive and interactive media, creative coding, AI, and sound to explore the expressive possibilities offered by emerging digital technologies, and the ways in which algorithms are reshaping our everyday lives. He was a 2020 “We Are Data” artist fellow in a fellowship program by Cairotronica (EG) and IMPAKT (NL) festivals. Aiuby’s work has been exhibited at Cairographie Festival (2017) and Roznama 7th (2019), Cairotronica Festival (2021), Ars Electronica (2021), and Arab Arts Focus (2022).

Lawyer, certified mediator, and inter-arts curator, Valentine Goddard (AI Impact Alliance) is a member of the AI Advisory Council of Canada, and a United Nations expert on AI policy and governance. In 2017, she founded and is currently the executive director of AI Impact Alliance, an organization whose mission is to facilitate a responsible governance of AI and steer its use towards the achievement of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals. It is recognized by the Conseil des arts de Montréal as a digital arts research organization. Valentine designs and leads transdisciplinary programs that bridge civic engagement and knowledge mobilisation to policy and regulatory innovation. The Art Impact AI programs led to the adoption of international policies that highlight the role of the arts and civil society in AI and digital governance. She is regularly invited to take part in the analysis of emerging AI and data laws and discuss the impact of generative AI. She initiated and co-chairs the Gender Equality and the Environment in Digital Economies international expert group whose policy recommendations address critical issues for the Women, Peace and Security Agenda and sustainable natural resource data governance. In 2023, she was awarded the Mozilla Creative Media award for “Algorithmic (or not) Art to Counter Gender, Cultural and Racial Bias in AI”.

I (Albertine Thunier) study and teach in the Department of Communication at the Université de Montréal. My thesis, as well as my research-creation practices, focus on memes whether they are found on or off the WorldWideWeb. My research-creation approach aims to highlight how present and past memes operate by creating transmediatic memes. I am on the executive committee of the Hexagram network, as well as a member of the Artefact Lab. I also hold a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from UQÀM, a Master’s degree in Political Analysis and a second Master’s degree in Digital Humanities both from Université Paris 8. Also, and most importantly, I'm the admin of the esoteric memes page @montreal.affirmations.

Alexandra C. Yeboah is a Brampton-based writer, creative facilitator and quiet disruptor, who is currently using her curiosity to embark onto newfound paths of creativity. A second-generation Canadian to immigrant parents, Alexandra is keen on exploring the intricacies of bi-cultural identity and the different ways it intersects with everyday experiences. Some of her more recent projects have involved her writing on the themes of body image and colourism and documenting the contributions of Black pioneers in Canada. Her vision is to continue telling stories that centralize themes of marginalization and exclusion and celebrate Afrocentric heritage. Art in mainstream culture can often present a linear, one-dimensional narrative, leaving those who don’t fit within the traditional, Eurocentric norms out of the picture. Alexandra believes that there is more than one side to every story, and we owe it to the generations before and after us to champion stories that reflect the lived experiences of those from the diverse communities we serve. In the consistent sharing of these stories, we help ensure that the voices of both the storytellers and the receivers are being heard and accounted for. As Alexandra continues to immerse herself in community arts work, she seeks to help cultivate more low-cost accessible spaces that channel innovation and promote collaborative art-making, community-building, and free-flowing art.

Alexandra Lord is an artist-educator. She discovered theatre as a facilitator of community-based arts workshops and a participant in collective creation projects during her studies in English Literature and Cultural Studies at Trent University and Community-Based Arts Education at Queen’s University. This is where she first encountered the transformative power of storytelling through costume-based character development and exploration of narrative space through performative objects. Alexandra Lord is interested in producing theatre that speaks to children of all ages. She strives to build environments and construct characters that inspire us all to make believe at every stage of our lives. She studied costume and set design in the bilingual program at The National Theatre School of Canada where she began cultivating a preference for recuperating, reimagining and repurposing materials in her work, creating from a place that takes into consideration human relationships with ourselves and others all within diverse environments. She is particularly drawn to collaborative projects that demand a discourse that transcends difference, engaging in the liminal space of gender, race, and socio-economic definitions. Alexandra Lord is a graduate of the Soulpepper Theatre Company Academy. Mentored by Lorenzo Savoini she continued her development as a scenographer through further refining her skills as a set and costume designer as well as learning more about lighting and projection. Alexandra Lord is currently in the process of establishing Triga Creative with fellow Academy designers Shannon Lea Doyle and Michelle Tracey and working collectively to innovate sustainable approaches to design.

Alexandra Ruppert is a visual storyteller, illustrator and graphic designer based in Berlin, Germany. Driven by a bewildered curiosity for humans, she lets you dive into parallel universes like lucid dreams, the subconsciousness or the internet. Be prepared to be shaken up with what we call „reality“.

Ananya is an award-winning Arts Administrator, Producer and Writer who was born in India, and moved to Canada when she was ten years old. For seven years, she was the Executive Director at the Regent Park Film Festival (RPFF), Toronto’s longest running free community film festival. At RPFF, Ananya also founded and directed the Lieutenant General Award-winning and Governor General Award finalist (Honourable Mention) project, Home Made Visible (www.homemadevisible.ca), where she worked to preserve old home movies for BIPOC families across Canada. With 13 years of organizational experience, Ananya consults in areas of research, programming, financial and project management, grant writing and community engagement, supporting Senior Arts Administrators in solving problems, getting things done and increasing capacity for positive change across the organization. ​ Driven by her experience programming for a community-based film festival and consuming media alongside her own kids, Ananya is motivated to cultivate greater diversity both in front of and behind the screen in the Film and TV industry. As a filmmaker, her short experimental films and documentaries have screened locally and internationally, including the Berlinale, the Images Festival, at UNICEF, and at the Toronto Urban Film Festival, where her film "Castles on the Ground" won Best Film. As a recipient of CBC/Radio-Canada and Canada Council for the Arts Creation Accelerator funding, Ananya is currently producing and writing a kids’ animated adventure mystery series , created with collaborator Fiona Raye Clarke.

Aphiraa Gowry is a multi-faceted artist; she makes paintings, digital drawings, photography, garments, and a fusion of these mediums. She has a fundamental instinct, throughout her artistic initiatives, to explore and integrate eco-consciousness— as a set of practical principles, but also as an overall worldview framed by certain values. She feels that young artists have a special power to contribute solutions to the daunting environment-related challenges of our time, from climate change to refugee crises, by using tools of artistic expression to expand understanding of these issues. Many of her community members also come from families streaked with marginalization and violence. She herself was raised in a refugee family, who escaped genocide in Sri Lanka. Most importantly of all, she has lived experience in areas of the world where the climate crisis is being felt most acutely, from tropical rain-forests, occupied lands, to remote islands. She has taken the time to understand and build inter-community solidarity between vulnerable communities who are being systematically harmed, or even erased, by an environmental disaster; and she is working to channel her passion for human rights into artwork which can raise awareness around these issues. Creating her sustainable clothing line is much more than making well-designed clothing. It's addressing ethical labour conditions of factory workers, preventing long-term dangerous health effects of farmers, and minimizing the dangerous environmental impact of fast fashion. Most importantly, it represents an alternate solution for how revolutionary our wardrobes and sense of style can be.

Bad Machine is a comic, improviser, writer, loop musician, and screen/voice actor based out of Toronto. He is weird. They've done stage shows with the Second City, written for games, magazines, TV, and the Beaverton, voiced a host of strange, animated characters, and appeared in a bevy of films, tv shows, web series, commercials, and comedy sketches. They've also performed live all over Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and the United States. They love weird literature, 90s animation, video games, genre movies, and ramen. Most of their free time is spent improvising music for people or hanging out with their German Shepherd (his name is Beans).

Ben McCarthy’s practice plays out a dichotomy between embodied and intellectual pleasure. He is drawn to the allure of sonic texture, of the natural and synthetic sounds that attune and disorganize one’s perception. Through experiments in signal processing and emerging technology he seeks to arrange a sensual present that invites embodied attention. McCarthy works from the intuition that one’s experience of sound and voice is dense with personal and collective association. With sound, text, and documentary he thinks through the social and economic conditions that produce the listening subject. 'Toronto-based producer & sound artist Ben McCarthy is easily one of the most underrated producers in the city.' Adam Piotrowicz, SBVRSV.press

Bianca Weeko Martin is a writer, architectural researcher, and passionate practitioner of the arts and the Internet. Her work is informed by a wide range of experiences from architectural offices to interdisciplinary installation studios to fine art museums, from Mexico City to Berlin to Toronto. Bianca has previously collaborated with UKAI Projects, DesignTO, the Bentway, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Goethe-Institut Toronto. Projects have explored the counter-narratives of domestic space and suburbia, bringing together ancestral knowledge and contemporary dissemination methods. Bianca’s first book Architectural Guide Manila is projected to be published in 2024 by DOM Publishers. She enjoys food, films, surfing, and scuba diving.

BLC is a multi-disciplinary designer and entrepreneur working at the intersections of brand, music, venture & social equity. Bianca is currently co-designing spaces, products and experiences that empower people to design their own futures.

Borelson is a multi-disciplinary artist and creative director based in Toronto. After a multi-lingual upbringing in central Africa (Gabon, Congo), he went on to spend some years in France following some disruptive family events, before relocating to Canada by himself. His unique music is mostly hip-hop and Afro-fusion infused, mixed with other music influences such as jazz, classical music, gospel. After a mix-tape (2014) and an EP (2016), Borelson released his debut album in May 2020 titled 'As Far As Eye Can See' along with a docuseries about the success stories of immigrants and first-gen Canadians, both projects inspired by the quote ‘I didn’t come this far to only come this far’ and the power of visualization. Borelson’s creations revolve around the concept of Afro-futurism and the Ubuntu philosophy, aiming to give more drive, hope and a sense of collective freedom through mutual respect and balance. As an explorer and bridge builder between communities across the universe, Borelson has performed in Paris, London, Miami, Austin (SXSW 2018), Ghana (Year Of Return), as well as Montreal and Toronto (Afrofest, Nuit Blanche, Toronto Biennale, RBC Music virtual showcases, Fashion Art Toronto,…). His shows whether solo or with a live band, always bring high vibrational energy and are worth attending.

Brian Jiang (they/she) is a queer trans multi-disciplinary artist of Chinese-descent based in Tkaronto. Their practice comprises of animation, illustration, painting, graphic design and beyond. Brian graduated from OCADU’s illustration program in 2020. As an artist collaborator working within the cultural sector, their arts-practice is informed by their love for the communities that they belong to. Brian’s work draws upon mythology, the natural world, and lived experiences to explore the ties between identity, diasporic migration, kinship, and ecological connections. They have been commissioned by Pride Toronto, Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Inside Out Film Festival, Xpace Cultural Centre, Maisonneauve Magazine, LinkedIn StreetARToronto and more.

bryan depuy (he/him or they/them) is an artist, game developer, and writer based in Toronto, Canada. Since coming of age in the Washington, DC punk/anarchist scene, he has aspired to balance creative practice with ongoing accountability to the communities that support and inspire him. As a queer white settler on Treaty 13 / Dish With One Spoon territory, he struggles to meaningfully embody anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anarcha-feminist ideals.

Cẩm-Anh Lương |is a Berlin-based multimedia artist from Vietnam known for her work centered around experimental storytelling, digital media, and the politics of memory. Using storytelling as a strategy, Cẩm-Anh examines forgotten memories resulting from the impacts of western colonization, propaganda of regimes, and stereotypes that have been imprinted on East Asian bodies. Her work is interested not only in the end results, but also in the process of exploring uncharted territories. She collaborates with several collectives in Berlin, including Neue Nachbarschaft// Moabit, menseer_projekt, and *foundationClass*Collective, to investigate the intersection of new media art, technology, and social justice. Her artistic practice is complemented by her work as an educator for outreach projects, advocating for alternative voices that empower marginalized communities by challenging dominant narratives. Cẩm-Anh's work has been featured in various exhibitions and festivals, including a group performance for Berlin Biennale 10, nGbK, Vorspiel Berlin, and documenta-fifteen.

CAM Collective is a group of three multidisciplinary artists – Carisa Putri Antariksa, Amreen Ashraf, and Maria Denise Yala – who specialize in world-building, speculative storytelling, and exploring the intersections between life and digital tech. Their use of mixed reality (MR), creative coding, and physical computing allows them to create works that blur the boundaries between the physical and digital realms, enabling audiences to engage with their art in novel and exciting ways. Through their projects, CAM Collective aims to offer fresh perspectives on the ways technology is shaping our world, and to encourage viewers to reflect on their own relationship with digital media and technology. They aim to create worlds and narratives that offer a glimpse into possible futures and challenge us to consider the implications of our rapidly changing technological landscape.

Chase Young is an American artist (b. 1999) based in London. His work is concerned with the built and natural environment, emergent culture, and speculative futures. He works with computation to make sculptural and durational installation and investigative video. He is often heard regurgitating something he read in Spike, telling people to listen to New Models, and suggesting people watch Whit Stillman movies. Aside from his independent practice, he is one-half of the multi-faceted creative entity Black Helmut where he designs objects and [REDACTED].

circle4 is a self-taught new media artist based in Toronto. Her art leverages computer vision to explore automated perception. Her past projects are characterized by their immersive, participatory nature, as well as their innovative use of technology; face detection, custom application, robotics, and feedback, through which participants examine perceptions of self, behaviour, desires, motivations, and actions within the technological systems they inhabit.

Clare Aimée (b. 1992 on lək̓ʷəŋən territory, Vancouver Island) is a Métis Canadian artist that has been working in Iceland for the last 8 years. She graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from the Icelandic University of the Arts in 2020 and in 2019 went on academic exchange at The Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Czech Republic. In her practice she often works with performative gesture and interactive experience – inviting people into familiar frameworks with poetic fellowship as a goal. Her work has been shown in Switzerland, Chile, Czech Republic, Portugal, Iceland, Denmark, Greece and Canada.

Connor MacKinnon is a sculpture artist originally from London, ON. He received an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts from Fanshawe College, a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and most recently a Master of Fine Art from the University of Victoria with his thesis exhibition Historical Fictions (2022). His SSHRC funded research explored the physical and conceptual reconstruction of fragmented histories and historical objects through the use of generative and parametric algorithms as well as a framework of imagination, potential, and fictionalization. These examinations resulted in his participation in an online special project through the In-ruins Residency based out of Italy, linking archeology and contemporary art, and the Duplex art residency in Lisbon, Portugal where he crafted another fiction based on local history. As a recent Kwi Am Choi Exhibition Scholarship recipient he applied this historical fictionalization closer to home in his exhibition A Fragmented History: Port Moody (2022) at PoMo Arts. MacKinnon currently lives and works in Kelowna, BC where alongside his artistic practice in which he explores the physical and conceptual reconstruction of objects and the variability and multiplicity within their essential structures, he is a studio technician at UBC Okanagan supporting fine arts students and faculty with metalworking and digital fabrication.

Cyril Chen is an animation filmmaker, designer, writer, and media artist based in the Treaty 4 and Treaty 13 territories of Canada. Their emerging career spans communications, UX design, digital archiving, animation, illustration, design, sculpture, 2D/3D, mixed media projection, installation, and storyboarding. They currently work as an educator and visual storyteller with organizations such as Hi-Vis Film, CBC Creators Network, and Saskatchewan Filmpool. They have worked with UKAI as a digital prototyping artist for the New Not Normal online residency.

D.Blavatsky is a multi-disciplinary producer, DJ, and rave organizer based out of Montreal Canada. Mainly focused on audio-visual installation work, their practice desperately confronts our search for connection amidst an unravelling social backdrop of growing isolation, hyper-stimulation, mass paranoia, and the self-mutilating aspects of capitalist realism. Emerging as a dominant creative force across underground rave communities across the world, the SIM Residency was D’s first-time bridging their audio-visual practice with group exhibition work.

Dan Tapper is an artist whose work focuses on revealing hidden worlds through technology and how methods of data processing shape human experience. His work spans DIY radio astronomy – converting the electromagnetic emissions of planets and our own ionosphere into sonic installations – to generative art inspired by emergent behaviors found in nature. For the past 2 years he has been experimenting with artificial intelligence, attempting to convert his practice into a feedback loop between nature and machine. His work stems from experiences he had as a child moving through mud and bracken in the hillier areas of the UK. He was fascinated by the sounds created as he moved through these landscapes as well as the endlessly evolving noise of wind and water. As a very digital artist, he has always attempted (with varying degrees of success) to maintain a connection to these early roots. He was lucky to find this connection in a footnote of an electronics manual. Here he discovered the strange and wonderful world of Very Low Frequency (VLF) natural radio. Through simple circuitry and coils of wire he was able to listen to electromagnetic activity occurring within the earth’s ionosphere – lightning strikes, Aurora borealis and even occasional bursts of noise from passing planets and the sun. Human generated electrical activity was very present in this band too, so he found myself hiking up hills, far away from cities and human inhabitants to listen to and capture these ionospheric sounds. These excursions made him think about how technology translates information, allowing us to experience sounds and spectrum outside of the human sensory range.

Daria Morgacheva aka Dora is an electronic musician, producer, pianist, known musically as Garden of Magic. Grounded in a scientific background in physics and biology, she finds inspiration in the fusion of science, technology, and nature. Eager for collaborative opportunities, she’s drawn to themes like extended reality, technology/nature, and trans/posthumanism, open to exploring a myriad of topics.  “Garden of Magic” is an experimental dance electronic solo project by Daria Morgacheva. Daria plays keyboards, synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers, traversing various terrains of UK dance music, world music, jazz, and even classical music. Through her improvisational style she weaves hypnotizing patterns which shift and transform in organic ways as if moving through an ever-changing metaphysical landscape. She brings listeners to a magical place where they feel uplifted, inspired, and compelled to dance, defying gravity.

Darian Razdar is a writer, artist, and independent scholar. His work ties together poetics, landscape, and abstraction through the methods of poetry, photography, publication, art-writing, and collaboration. Darian performs creative field research to experiment with unconventional and embodied methods of learning with place. Darian’s field work for Locating Belleville (2018) inspired his Community Power Mapping workshop series (2017-2022), which he facilitated for over 300 participants in 4 countries. Critically re-thinking the project, Darian created Poetics of Place (2022-present), a workshop-research-publishing project that challenges conventional notions of what maps are and how they do. Darian is also an actively publishing poet and photographer. His titles include: Morning Poems (San Press, 2023); Eye of Water (self-published, 2023); and Counter-Map: A Poetics of Place (Reflex Urbanism, 2022). His critical and poetic writing can also be found in Peripheral Review; C Mag; Vallum: Contemporary Poetry; The Blasted Tree; PM Press; Pleasure Dome; The Asian Canadian Living Archive; Upping the Anti; QT Literary; Hearth Garage; Toronto Star; Progressive City; and Metropolitics. Darian holds a BA in Social Theory & Practice and French & Francophone Studies from University of Michigan and an MSc in Urban Planning from University of Toronto. With roots in the Great Lakes and Caspian Sea basins, his practice is currently based in Toronto and Mexico City.

Dashiel Carrera is a Half-Argentine novelist, sound media artist, and Human-Computer Interaction researcher. The author of the novel The Deer (Dalkey Archive Press, 2022) and an editor at Conjunctions, his writing has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, LitHub, BOMB, and FENCE and has received support by the Banff Centre. As a media artist and researcher—working at the intersection of sound and technology—his work has been supported by the MIT Media Lab, Harvard’s metaLab, the School for Poetic Computation, HackPrinceton, and elsewhere. He is currently a Computer Science PhD Student at the University of Toronto where his work seeks to find new metaphors for AI design.

Ensemble Jeng Yi is a Korean performing arts ensemble based in Toronto. Formed in 1998, they build upon the conventions of Korean performing arts and create a variety of innovative productions including site-specific works, interactive performances, and multi-disciplinary productions.

I am an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and writer in Toronto that believes art can change our relationship with space, objects, and new technologies. My practice is inspired by music, and I’m interested in fabrication methods within visual arts, sculpture, and speculative fiction.

Over the past 20 years Erika-Jean has been challenging conventional knowledges and ideologies embedded in symbols, systems, and objects. Her method of art making speaks from a perspective of cognitive difference in the style of non-conformity, undoing, miss-fitting, and troubling. She is currently researching artificial intelligence and machine learning (AIML) framed by the concept of criptechnoscience. Erika-Jean recently completed a residency with Ingenuity Engineering Labs at Queen’s University to develop her latest AIML project. Past collaborations include Ferment AI, The Manitoba Neuroscience Network, Medialab Prado. She has exhibited at the University of Winnipeg, Science Gallery, MAT-UCSB, Boston Cyberarts Gallery, and The Bauhaus-Archiv. She is a board member of the Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba. (AANM) Erika-Jean currently lives in Winnipeg-Treaty 1 territory, home of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and Nehiyaw (Cree) original peoples, and national homeland of the Red River Metis. This site is entangled with the Mississippi migratory flyway, on the bed of an ancient glacial lake, at the northern limit of the monarch butterfly's migration, 300 km from the geographic centre of Turtle Island. 49° 53' 42.2772'' N 97° 8' 18.4236'' W.

Founded in 1982 by Esmeralda Enrique, the Esmeralda Enrique Spanish Dance Company has a history rooted in flamenco and Spanish Classical dance. While maintaining the tenets of traditional flamenco singing, dance and music, the company presents a style that holds in perfect balance tradition and classicism with a contemporary aesthetic. They believe the art of Flamenco – song, music and dance; embodies a complex musical and cultural Andalusian tradition.

Evangeline Y Brooks (she/her) is a third culture kid and visual artist working to maintain sustainable and accessible artist communities in local Toronto and online DIY spaces, which are often fleeting against our current culture of immediacy. She looks to counter this by slowing down towards careful, intentional movements, while minimizing workloads by learning from tradition – embracing the paradox that slow planning that allows us to make quick moves. Coming from overlapping homes and cultures, she sees mirrored structures in how we use hybrid digital/physical spaces, and in how these overlaps lead to strength when digital capacities are used not as end goals, but as tools towards making our lives smoother. With experience in live-stream artist spaces and building accessibility IRL and online, she’s bringing a hybrid forward mindset to UKAI, and looking to further support local and online communities with sincerity and radical compassion.

Ferme Lanthorn is a regenerative farm growing sustainable materials for fine arts and functional craft, in the thriving arts and maker community of Wakefield, Quebec. They specialize in basketry willow with over 20 specialty varieties for weaving, furniture making, living structures, and sculpture. With backgrounds in arts and education, they host residencies, workshops and cultural events. Lanthorn is led by co-directors Bob Labbe and Mary Ellis, who joined the Intelligent Terrain research group to explore the role of living willow structure in arts pedagogy, relationship with technology, and culture. Mary Ellis has a background in Education and Art with over a decade of experience teaching and creating. Mary’s experience in software development as Creative Director for MasterpieceVR, 3D software company using virtual reality to make 3D modeling intuitive and efficient. As an educator, Mary has worked with artists with varying skill sets and levels of experience. They are passionate about representation and making content creation and creative expression more accessible.

François Bangwe is a refugee visual artist from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Currently he lives at Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi having forcedly fled from his home country.

Frank Pakaine is a Malawian visual artist living in Malawi’s capital Lilongwe. He is passionate about abstract art and draws his inspiration from sunsets. Frank has 15 years of painting experience, and he conducts painting training for both children and adults in a project called ArtOn workshops.

Greta Grip enjoys pulling the strings of what is traditional knitting and winding it around the digital age. Grip knits with her hacked knitting machine, hacked by removing its original brain and replacing it with an USB port. Focused on a practice of exploring the use of layering texts and symbols, colours and textures; Grip’s work challenges the understanding of what knitting is supposed to look like.

Helen Lam is an Ottawa-based extended reality (XR) and narrative designer with experience in video games and virtual reality. She brings perspectives from a variety of mediums to each project, keen to experiment with the boundaries of each technology. Fascinated with XR and its impact on modern society, her projects exist where art and technology intersect in order to explore how we create engines of meaning for our everyday lives. Her most recent work is an Augmented Reality portal experience Now That I’m Here (2022), exhibited online in the Tender Circuits exhibition with the Digital Arts Resource Centre. Her previous projects include a collaborative video game made in 48 hours featured in the 2021 Ars Electronica Festival, and fiction that has appeared in the Ottawa-based indie zine Subscribe/d.

Heran Genene is an explorer, thinker, content creator, community mobilizer and vlogger. She is interested in exploring the future of remote work and freelancer work. She is looking at the future of digital “nomad-ing” and for ways to bridge opportunity gaps for equally talented creative youths outside of North America – specifically, youth who face disproportionately more barriers to paid opportunities and networks. This year she started an agency called Digital Knowmads. It is an attempt to provide opportunities to digital creatives through global-network-building and paid-gigs. Her professional history is deeply rooted in the grassroots community and youth services sector, primarily through Young Diplomats (an Ethiopian and Eritrean Youth Development NPO). Over 6 years, her passion projects were building diasporic networks; internationally and locally, enabling youth through the arts and arts platforms, and most recently, destigmatizing mental health in the community through social media campaigns (2015). She completed a B.A. in International Development Studies at York University in 2017, specializing in environment and culture (anthropology). All her combined experiences have informed and influenced her methods and integrity as a social enterprise. The idea is to use tech and digitization to try to dismantle pre-existing barriers for young people across the globe.

Originally from Iran, Hooria Rahimi is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Montreal, QC. Through her artistic practice, she explores human perception through the manipulation of light and reflection in space with a sense of nature and science. By working primarily with light in different forms along with other translucent materials such as mirror and optical glass, Hooria transforms the appearance of a space and bends the reality into something illusory. Her artworks address the major environmental and social issues that the world and humans are struggling with today. Interactivity is an important part of her practice; has led her to create immersive installation arts during the past years with a focus on spectatorship. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Sculpture from the Art University of Tehran and is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Intermedia at Concordia University. She is an artist-in-residence at Poetic Societies in Detroit, MA since 2018 and has participated in several group exhibitions in Iran and recently in Canada.

The Humming Collective is an interdisciplinary art collective based out of Kensington Market, Tkaronto, operating since 2016. Serving as a virtual arts publication and dynamic community-engaged collective, The Humming operates laterally among its members and advocates for an anti-oppressive approach to art-making and sharing that’s rooted in relational, anti-colonial visions and earthly trust towards just futures.

Ian Garrett is a designer, producer, educator, and researcher in the field of sustainability in arts and culture. He is producer for Toasterlab, a mixed reality performance collective. He is the director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts and Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University, where he is Graduate Program Director for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. He maintains a design practice focused on ecology, accessible technologies and scenography.

Jasmine Ghandtchi has Iranian-German roots and lives in Berlin. She works as a freelance intercultural mediator, language teacher and artist in Germany and worldwide. Connecting the dots between humans, art, culture, technology, nature, language is the core of her work. She loves developing new creative forms of learning. Her passion is storytelling, drawing, cooking and Yoga.

Jason Yung is a New York-based Canadian new media artist working primarily in light, using LEDs, but also using other mediums. ​Working with new media since 2016, Yung aims to bring together the visual principles of traditional painting with new media. Yung looks at painting the same way David Bowie did -- that is, everything is painting. ​Art is Yung’s second career. Previously, he was a Canadian diplomat. His experiences serving in the Afghan war led to his career change to art. Yung has strong interests in psychology, philosophy and spirituality. ​Yung graduated from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) in 2019. ​

JC Fung is a transdisciplinary creative technologist and educator, originally from Tkaronto (Toronto, ON), now living in K’emk’emeláy (Vancouver, BC). As a queer, trans, and non-binary person of colour, they are most interested in exploring liminalities: learning from and centering the experiences of people and communities that find individual and collective meaning in the between spaces. Currently, their practice explores themes of divestment from exploitative technologies, decolonization, and advocacy for inclusive, ethical, and anti-oppressive practice.

José Andrés Mora is a Venezuelan-Canadian artist who creates work in interdisciplinary media. Mora’s current text-based video installations reflect intimate politics of language told through animated text utterances. With a particular focus on experiences around displacement, cultural hybridity, and assimilation, Mora creates display mechanisms that affect the personal connotation of his texts.

Katie Sullivan is a researcher, curator and designer who holds a Master’s in Strategic Foresight and Innovation (MDes) from OCAD University. She uses co-creation and design thinking to deeply and intentionally explore and design for complex societal challenges. Her work combines research insights with creative practices, like dance, and highlights lived experience as expertise. Currently, Katie’s practice focuses on the creation of concept-driven models that facilitate relationship-building and enhance group communication. As her cross-sectoral experience spans business, social services, and the arts, her design work investigates how we better express ourselves, how we connect with each other and how we gather across disciplines.

Kélig Puyet is an advocacy leader committed to social justice and participatory democracy, Kélig is a driver of policy changes at local, national, and international levels. Kélig has proven experience in building long-lasting relationships with governmental and non-governmental decision-makers and developing bottom-up campaigns and tools.