2014 ARTISTS

A Multidisciplinary Art Conference Inspired by Feminism: II

Beaver Hall Gallery

Adriana Disman is a performance art maker, thinker, and curator based between Toronto and Montreal. Her axis of creation is always the body. She is interested in durational, participatory, and one-to-one performance. Disman is interested in the threshold of vulnerability as a catalyst for intimacy and intimacy as a catalyst for transformation. To this end, she often generates performance structures that facilitate intimate exchange with an outcome that is unknown and determined by the participant. Her performance and curatorial interests intersect with her research in Performance Studies, Critical Race and Queer Feminisms. Disman is currently pursuing her M.A. in York University’s Theatre and Performance Studies Program and is editorial assistant at the Canadian Theatre Review. She is the curator of LINK & PIN, a performance art series based out of hub 14 in Toronto. Disman also sits on the board of directors for The School of Making Thinking, an experimental college and artists’ residency located in the Catskills, NY. She is a graduate of The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre (NYC).

Photo by: Le Petit Russe

Agnieszka Foltyn holds a B.FA in studio arts and art history from Concordia University in Montreal, and lives in Toronto. As a dancer and a visual artist, her work is centered on the potential for movement within drawing. Working primarily large scale, her interest lies in the fusion of drawing-based interdisciplinary work and immersive, site-specific installations. She has exhibited in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg and her work can be found in private collections across North America and Europe. In her remaining time, she teaches visual art to youth and is part of the executive council of the Ontario Society of Artists.

Writer and spoken word artist Andrea Thompson has performed her work at venues across North America and overseas for the past twenty years. A pioneer of Slam poetry in Canada, Thompson’s work has been featured on film, radio, and television; and included in magazines, literary journals and anthologies across the country. Thompson’s poetry is hybridist and unique – blending elements of jazz, dub, hip-hop and traditional literary verse into a style all her own. In 2009 she was awarded the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word’s Poet of Honour: For Outstanding Achievement in the Art of Spoken Word, and in 2005, her spoken word CD One, was nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award. Thompson is the co-editor of the anthology Other Tongues: Mixed Race Women Speak Out, the author of the poetry collection Eating the Seed, and is a recent graduate of the University of Guelph’s MFA Creative Writing program. She currently teaches Spoken Word through the Ontario College of Art and Design’s Continuing Studies department. Her first novel is due out in the fall of 2014 from Inanna Publications

This award-winning children’s author’s first professional writing accomplishment was an article published in Black Woman & Child magazine. She has always enjoyed working with youth and writing in her pastime. Those two worlds collided during her position as a youth worker. Remembering her own personal struggles as a young African-Canadian girl, she recognized the need for reading materials geared towards black children that would help them embrace their own beauty and enchanting features. A burning desire set in to do something about it and the end result was her first children’s book titled Loving Me which was met with great success! Many parents expressed their desire to engage their young sons as well, thus giving way to her follow up children’s book titled Boy! I Am Loving Me! Angelot Ndongmo continues to reside in Brampton and is currently working on her third story!

I am a lifelong teacher, artist, and activist who has consistently articulated a philosophy rooted in the anti-racist, intersectional dialogue championed by FAC. Strongly woman-identified, my work is culturally expansive and inclusive, reflecting a feminist dance aesthetic that disrupts established hierarchies, and honors and reclaims both sacred and profane, high and low, collective and individual, formal and ordinary. Founder and Artistic Director of ABD Productions, I am a middle-aged Jewish lesbian who grew up as the daughter of civil rights activists in the U.S. South. My passion and commitment is to create a language of movement that expands western dance idioms while tackling complex subjects such as gender-based violence, Palestine- Israel, globalization, the environment, and genocide. I have made hundreds of choreographies rooted in social justice concerns. In Using the Song, (2006) I collaborated with the Rwandan organization, WE-ACTx, incorporating stories of female survivors of sexual violence, and culminating in a healing ritual with both American performers and Rwandan women. Working with San Francisco-based Oasis for Girls on Cariño: Economy of the Heart, (2008) the piece proffered a gift economy that values people for their care-based contributions to the world; the girls created original pieces and performed on stage with the professional dancers. Each project I undertake now involves a multifarious group of artists and collaborators, fostering the communities that engender revolutionary change. I create partnerships locally, nationally, and internationally to bring attention to issues, inspire activism, and inject the possibility of transformation and beauty into even the most difficult subjects

Audrey Huntley is a storyteller, documentary filmmaker and community researcher of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry. She grew up in Calgary, Alberta and moved to Europe as a young adult. She completed a Masters degree in political sciences in Marburg, Germany. Since returning to Turtle Island in 1998, she has bounced back and forth between BC and Ontario where she has been involved in working to end settler colonial violence against Indigenous women while supporting land reclamations and the struggle for sovereignty. She is the co-founder of No More Silence, a group that has been raising awareness about missing and murdered Indigenous women in Toronto for the past 10 years.

Barbara is a spoken word poet, writer, community organizer and workshop facilitator. She believes performance and facilitated creative experience act as powerful platforms for individual and community storytelling, empowerment and healing. Her lived experience as an immigrant, queer woman, faith leader and disability advocate inform Barbara’s art practice and drive her towards projects that expand our understanding of inclusivity. Having completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing and Philosophy at York University, she is now studying psychotherapy at The Gestalt Institute of Toronto. Barbara has performed on stages across Southern Ontario and has recently joined The League of Canadian Poets as their Administration and Communications Coordinator.

Cara is Toronto based multi-disciplinary creative producer and performer who believes in the power of good storytelling and cooperation. She works on combining community development with the arts and encourages the use of humor and music in everything. She has been a member of local theatre ensembles and productions with organizations such as b current theatre company and Art Starts. She has performed stand up comedy and spoken word in Toronto and Mumbai, India. Cara has worked as the Associate Producer at Goldëlox Productions in Toronto, a social issue documentary production company. Cara is currently the Community Liaison and Event Producer at Tangled Art + Disability – an annual festival dedicated to disability arts.

Carol Mark is an activist for human rights with an emphasis on women and children. Carol believes Art can change the world with the voice of women.

Carol established ACA Gallery (art, culture, aid) that “art can change the world” with proceeds of art sales to grassroots projects targeted for women and children. ACA Gallery was the first art driven gallery in Toronto to raise awareness and funds, as well as bringing awareness that art can create social change (This Magazine article).

This was a first kind of art gallery to incorporate art, artists and purchasers involved in direct participation of change. ACA Gallery was an incubator where public school children created art that had a direct influence of where the funds from sales of their artwork at the gallery were donated, exhibits to include themes on women and violence, exhibits of art by homeless women and international support to include Rebecca Lalossa, women’s only village in Nairobi Park to establish a children’s library. This village was originally established when abused women had no where to live after leaving an abused domestic situation.

Carol has served on Toronto’s Committee on the Status of Women, a member of a women’s only film collective SHE -TV and her first short was in the UNESCO Women’s Conference in Beijing.

As a supporter of women’s rights she supported Femaid  based in France underground schools for girls in Afghanistan through RAWA, Revolutionary Afghanistan Women’s Association. Carol traveled to Afghanistan in secret in Oct 2002 with a commitment to aid the women to include 15,000 lbs of aid and a girls’ library named after Malalai Joya, the first elected woman parliamentarian on the support of a girls library

(CITIZENshift media for social change).

Presently, Carol is the founder and President of the love of tea, a purveyor of specialty pure blended teas that support art and social change through its donation programs from sales of tea. Tea infact was the focus of women’s rights in the 19th century in North America, as women could only legally gather during teatime .

Caroline Martin-Rowe was born in St. John’s Newfoundland, and has been living in Toronto since the 1980’s. Drawn to a variety of music from an early age she spent much of her youth concentrating on singing. Caroline has a foundation in classical music and is a graduate of the Etobicoke School of the Arts (Music Theatre), and the Vocal Jazz program at Humber College. Known for her elastic vocals and wide range, she has performed in well know jazz venues across the GTA and released her debut CD “Skylark” in 2013. Caroline is honoured to be taking part in the 2014 FAC.

Catherine McCormick is a queer feminist performer who wants to tear the patriarchy apart, one pussy joke at a time. She can be seen locally performing standup, improv and storytelling, and is the host and producer of the popular biweekly comedy show Queer As Fuck.

Censorious is a funny, provocative, feminist overview of the culture wars in the U.S., narrated by artists Carolee Schneemann, Martha Wilson, Holly Hughes, Renee Cox and others who fought major battles for their politically charged works. The film spans the decades from the early 1970s to recent years. Censored works in painting, sculpture, video, photography, installation and performance art punctuate the documentary. This presentation will be a screening + discussion with audience on issues raised in the film. AV needs: screen, projector, speakers, DVD deck or Time needs: 1 hour (30 min. film + 20 min. open discussion)

Carol Jacobsen, Director, Co-Producer: Carol Jacobsen is an award winning social documentary artist whose works in video, installation and photography address issues of women’s criminalization, human rights and censorship. Her work has been exhibited and screened worldwide, including at Lincoln Center, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre de Cultural Contemporanea, Barcelona; Kunstforum, Bonn; Paris Feminist & Lesbian Film Festival; Human Rights Watch International Tour, and elsewhere. She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Paul Robeson Foundation, The Center for New Television, Women in Film Foundation, Art Matters, Rockefeller Foundation and others. Her critical essays on feminism, art and politics have appeared in The New York Law Review, Hastings Women’s Law Journal, Signs Journal, Social Text, Art in America, and other publications. She is Professor of Art, Women’s Studies and Human Rights at The University of Michigan, and she serves as Director of the Michigan Women’s Justice & Clemency Project. She is represented by Denise Bibro Fine Art in New York City. Shaun Bangert, Co-Producer, Professor, Saginaw Valley State University

Shaun Bangert is a photographer and video artist whose works engage social commentary and autobiographical narratives. Her works have been shown nationally, including at the Detroit Institute of Art, Center for Creative Studies, Ceres Gallery, New York, and elsewhere. She is a Professor of Art at Saginaw Valley State University where she teaches video, graphics and multi-media. Marilyn Zimmerman, Co-Producer, Associate Professor, Wayne State University

Marilyn Zimmerman is a photographer and Associate Professor at Wayne State University. Her social documentary work presents feminist views of the post nuclear family and Detroit’s urban and industrial past. In each, she investigates the inherent limitations of these over-romanticized systems through social critiques that incorporate issues of gender, race and class. Her work is collected in the Detroit Institute of Art, The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Art Institute of Chicago and elsewhere, and has been shown throughout the U.S. and abroad.

d’bi. is an internationally celebrated African-Jamaican-Canadian dubpoet, monodramatist and educator. She is the published author of two collections of poetry, eight plays, two dubpoetry albums, and The Sankofa Trilogy. d’bi. is the recipient of two Dora Mavor Moore Awards, the K.M. Hunter Theatre Award, Toronto Mayor’s Arts Council Award, the Women of Resilience Award and The Canadian Poet of Honor Award. She is the Artistic Director of YEMOYA International Artist Residency and the originator of the personal development methodology called SORPLUSI. d’bi. is also the Program Designer and Facilitator of the Arts, Activism and AIDS Academy – a recent project of the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Her storytelling has taken her to Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia, North America, Europe and the United Nations, where she has shared her passion for equality and integrity with all whom she meets.

Danielle Nicole Smith is a self-identified feminist artist working in Toronto, completing her Bachelor of Fine Art with a major in Drawing and Painting at OCAD University. Her entire body of work utilizes various artistic methods, such as collage and hand-lettering, and often incorporates craft techniques, including embroidery and quilting. The subject matter of her work is often personal, and ranges from talking about her experiences with mental illness and medication, to exploring rape culture and popular perceptions of current feminist concerns and issues. Smith’s studio practice involves constantly critiquing her own position within the feminist movement, and acknowledging and keeping in check the privileges from which she does benefit.

Danya Buonastella A recent graduate of École Philippe Gaulier (Paris, France) and a graduate of the Humber Theatre Performance Program (Toronto, 2008). She has had the pleasure of playing a number of diverse characters in her studies and young career as an actor including Hermia (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Humber Theatre) Doctor Freeman (Our Asylum, Fringe Festival 2009) Elizabeth (No Son of Mine, École Philippe Gaulier). She is currently collaborating with D.L.T. Teatro, an international theatre collective that is focused on site specific, interactive theatre and installation art on Midway Along the Journey of Our Life (premier at SummerWorks, 2013) and The Last Seven Steps of Bartholomew S. (Bata Shoe Museum, February 2014). Death Married my Daughter, a bouffon show she co-created with Nina Gilmour, Michele Smith and Dean Gilmour (Theatre Smith-Gilmour) premiered at the Toronto Festival of Clowns and played at the Fringe Festival of Toronto and Hamilton (WINNER: Best of Fringe and Patrons’ Pick, 2013, Best Ensemble) and will be remounted at The Theatre Centre in the spring, 2014.

Nina Gilmour Training-Theatre Performance at Humber College, Toronto and École Philippe Gaulier, Paris. Theatre credits include Louison in Théatre Français de Toronto’s Le Malade Imaginaire, Semele in Tatiana Jennings’ Pentheus, Juliet in Shakespeare Link’s Romeo and Juliet, Dewey Dell in Theatre Smith-Gilmour’s As I Lay Dying. Spring 2014-Ensemble in FIXTPOINT’s Tale of a T-shirt and co-producer, co-writer and co-star in Death Married my Daughter at the Theatre Centre.

Danz Altvater is a queer Canadian stand up comic and improviser. From tales of family dysfunction to adventures in androgyny, her performance style blends unforgettable characters, deadpan delivery and vivid imagination. In 2013 she was nominated for the Tim Sims Encouragement Fund Award for emerging comedic performers. She is a graduate of The Second City Conservatory Program. She produces a monthly show with the improv team Disco Taxi.

Canon Cook has worked in the trades for most of her working life. Being a Hobo/Migrant Worker–was a life dream and Canon has achieved this to some effect. Canon now owns her own landscape and design business as well as a painting business. Self-employment was the best way to combat the inherent sexism in trades although the learning curve has been steep. Canon is also in the development process of some performance works surrounding her experience in tradeswork.

Devon Scoble is a Toronto writer and mother. She blogs about food, wellness, and all aspects of motherhood: from conception to pregnancy to the politics of birth, loss, and nursing. She’s particularly interested in the impact of gender norms on parenting expectations and childrearing choices, and is pleased that for now, her son likes dolls and trucks in equal measure.

EGR is an accomplished artist, illustrator and muralist who believes art has the power to create positive change and build strength in communities. Her work challenges perceptions of public art, graffiti; and women in society, by portraying their physical power in both nature and in the city, and a dichotomy between nature and mankind. EGR has taken an active role in painting and creating live art murals at events, on just about any surface you could imagine, from canvas to concrete, in Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal and BC Canada; Detroit, Vermont and New York, USA, as well as Florence, Italy. Her work was included in Canada’s first national exhibition of street art at the Institute for Contemporary Culture at The Royal Ontario Museum; The Art Gallery of Ontario, as well as galleries and city walls worldwide.

Elaine Stewart: The ‘victorian wheelchair’ is one commentary on my life experience with a wheelchair, psychically and physically bound to an object I can’t move without or live easily with. Its presence summons up a cacophany of understandings for me. The restraintsplaced upon women in victorian times by social constructs, still continue to reverberate in my wheelchair.

I entered the world according to wheelchairs eighteen years ago. Eventually I decided to

return to school, art school. I finished my diploma studies at TSA two years ago. I still continue to study with other artists. While I was at school I started exploring the impact of the wheelchair, the multiple ways it affects my reality and my perceptions. I want to invite others to explore a world they might not know.

Gilda Monreal is an international award winning visual artist, actress, filmmaker, and writer. She is Co-Director of the Essencia Arts Collective, who believes that art can be a tool for social change and community empowerment. Born and raised in Canada to Chilean immigrants, who left their country during the Pinochet military dictatorship, Gilda grew up questioning and valuing the significance of human rights. Her artistic vision is a social one that questions and celebrates the beauty, dignity and perseverance of those who have, or continue to, overcome adversity and oppression- whether human, animal or nature.

In visual arts, her chosen mediums of expression include painting, murals, video and installation. As a filmmaker, she directed the documentary “The Wall That Speaks”, produced by the NFB, National Film Board of Canada. She also co-wrote, co-produced and acted in the film COLD, which has gone on to win two international “Best Picture” awards. Her work has been produced in Canada, USA, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, France and Senegal.

Jade Lee Hoy is a creator of worlds, using space design to create experiential environments. Space design borrows upon the concept of set design, taking it to different and at times unconventional environments. Utilizing her strong design aesthetic, Jade transforms industrial and institutional spaces into safe and engaging community spaces. Her spaces can be immersive, creating a mood and an experience that sets the tone for the activity, event or performance in the space. Past projects include: Aneemah’s Spot (SummerWorks), Wombmanifesto: The Rebirth (Manifesto Festival), Strange Sisters (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre), I say this as a gift (Rhubarb Festival), Artist Lounge and Pathways to Education Office (Daniel Spectrum, Artscape Building), RAWLUCK Launch Event, and Ian Kamau’s Album Release Party. She is also active in fashion through her vintage clothing line Hilary & Denise, and has experience working in video and photo set design.
With a joint honours BA in International Development and Cultural Studies Jade is also a community arts organizer, passionate about motivating through the arts and collaborating with others in innovative ways. She has lived in 4 countries and has worn many hats from working with elephants as a Mahout to teaching environmental literacy on a sailing barge in Thailand. As Manifesto’s Internship and Outreach Director, she launched the School of Community and Culture’s youth internship program which housed 23 youth interns from diverse backgrounds in its first year. She has built partnerships such as the (Hot) Doc Accelerator program, which engaged 60 young film makers across Ontario, as well as with UNAC, TCHC and Ryerson University. Jade worked as an apprentice with City of Toronto’s Art Services building skills in program development and planning. In her capacity with the city, Jade utilized her outreach expertise, engaging young people from Scarborough in a series of consultations.

Jen Lewis was born in 1979 in Flint, Michigan. She received her B.A. (History of Art) in 2001 from the University of Michigan and has resided in the Ann Arbor area since 1997. Beauty in Blood is the serendipitous result of switching feminine care products in early 2012. After just a few uses of the Diva Cup, Jen became entranced by the designs her poured blood made in the toilet: the stark contrast of bright crimson against the porcelain white; the varied plunging speeds at which the clots, fluid, and tissue travelled to the bottom; and the patterns made by the fluid from first impact followed by its subsequent movement as it dispersed through the water. Captivating. Unexpected. Undeniably attractive. These previously never observed qualities could benefit both men and women by challenging the socially conditioned ‘ew’ response many people have to menstruation. Recognizing this as a potential tool to shift society’s perceptions and reactions to menstruation, Jen enlisted her partner, Rob Lewis, in her artistic vision to photograph her menses and assist in the creation of aesthetically pleasing, abstract photographs that captured this unpredictable and traditionally unseen beauty.

Jennifer McKinley is a writer, producer and performer from Toronto. She is a graduate of the Humber School of Comedy and the Second City Conservatory Program and she has studied Clown Through Mask and Joey & Auguste with Sue Morrison. Never one for sitting still, Jennifer has also stage managed for contemporary dance company Kinetic Elements (“Eternal Eclipse”, “reSURGEnce”); for Alumnae Theatre, she was the production manager for 2013 New Ideas Festival, producer of “The Underpants” and is one of the co-Artistic Producers for 2014 New Ideas Festival. Jennifer was the associate producer for “The List” (No Exit Theatre Company), she is a regular contributor to Mooney On Theatre and a member of the organizing committee for Toronto’s Feminist Art Conference. Jennifer has been working in clown since 2010 and is a staunch believer in the healing and transformative power of the medium.

Jess Beaulieu is a stand-up comedian, sketch performer, writer, feminist, professional complainer, and you. She is you. Jess co-hosts and co-producers an all-female variety comedy night called CHICKA BOOM (chickaboomshow.com) with her pal Laura Bailey. They recently put on a Toronto Fringe Festival version of the show which received NNNN’s in Now Magazine and was considered one of the hits of the festival. Jess has performed at the Boston Women in Comedy Festival, the Chicago Women’s Funny Festival, where she was featured in the Chicago Sun-Times, and was selected to perform in the 2012 Fresh Meat Showcase at Second City. In her mother’s wise words, “Jess does entertainment type things! Isn’t that… interesting?”

Joan Lillian Wilson is an artist and writer from Cobourg, ON. She is a graduate of OCAD U where she majored in photography and minored in art history.

Jordan Clarke currently maintains a studio in Toronto’s Historic Distillery District. Most recently, Jordan received funding from the Ontario Arts Council.  In addition to appearing in solo and group exhibitions in Ontario and abroad, Jordan’s art has been published in the anthology Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, edited by Adebe DeRango-Adem and Andrea Thompson.  Another of her paintings provided the cover art for A Many-Splendored Thing, poems by Peter Austin.

In 2008, Jordan studied at the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto, completing the Drawing curriculum.  In 2007, she graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design, receiving a BFA. While attending OCAD, she was fortunate enough to participate in the off-campus studies program in Florence, Italy, 2005-2006.

Kahsenniyo is from the Mohawk Nation, wolf clan from Six Nations. A mother first, but also a poet, activist, youth worker, advocate as well as a community organizer. Kahsenniyo transforms her love for her community, people and family through her passionate performances. A beautiful story teller, she walks her audiences through her historical and present day frustrations with the Indigenous struggle.

Kanwal graduated from Second City’s Program in Improvisational Comedy in 2012. She identifies herself as a Pakistani-Egyptian-Emirati-Canadian and her passion for music, performance and dance has always been core to her nomadic experience. She inherited her quirky sense of storytelling from her villager grandmothers. After completing Andrea Thompson’s OCAD course in Spoken Word, Kanwal participated in the Sound Poets Circle and the SpeakOut slam in 2013 (Toronto).

Kara Stone is a student at York University, achieving an MA in Communication and Culture. She previously completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film Production. Her work consists of feminist art with a focus on gendered perspectives of affect, mental illness and emotion. Coming from a theatre background, she transitioned into film and video making, working as a picture editor on dramatic and documentary features, shorts, music videos and activist videos. Now, she is expanding her mediums of focus and experimenting primarily in alternative modes of video interactions, traditional crafting, and videogames.

Kate Fraser is an advocate for creativity. A community-first philosophy guides her work as a producer and programmer: She’s dedicated to providing holistic and professional programs, resources and development opportunities. As the founder of My City My Story and Blitz Grassroots Film Camp, and a collaborator with dozens of youth-led organizations across the city, she’s established herself as a unique resource for young creatives. Need a link? Hit her up. Kate has a vast network of creative, community and professional resources throughout Toronto as well as in New York, Nairobi, and Rio de Janeiro. Kate has also produced several short films and music videos, and has worked with Manifesto, Schools Without Borders, Ignite The Americas and Arrivals.ca. She is currently the Grants Program Manager at ArtReach Toronto.

I’m an emerging artist, struggling with finding and understanding my voice. For me my experience with the art world has been somewhat of a shock, while I had a very naive ideas about it being my sanctuary and my place to finally fit in, I still find myself as the boisterous outsider. Along with that I have troubles classifying my own work as art; it is more of a mix of stand-up comedy and performance art, a kind of artistic comedian. With my work I want to invite the viewer into my safe place, allow them to feel at ease and to show them that they’re not the only ones. I was gifted with the ability to talk openly and not be intimidated about what others think, if my work can spread more outrageousness then I’ll be satisfied.

Lido Pimienta (b.1986) is a Toronto­ based Colombian born interdisciplinary artist­ curator and musician. She has performed, exhibited, and curated around the world since 2002. Pimienta is currently pursuing a degree in Art Criticism and Curatorial Practice at The Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU). Her work explores the politics of gender, race, motherhood, identity and the construct of the Canadian landscape in the Latin American Diaspora and vernacular. In 2007 Pimienta created The Tiny Box Collective alongside Kyle Mowat and Toni Darling in London Ontario, the collective focused on marrying art, music and performing arts as a way to integrate the artistic community in the city. In 2010 supporting the release of her first album Color LP Pimienta toured Latin America, USA and Europe gaining international recognition not only as a music performer but as advocate for feminism, LGBTQ rights and immigration politics in Canada. In 2012 she created Bridges, a multi­disciplinary festival featuring artists and musicians from South America and Canada working in similar ways as a way to break with Latin pre­conceptions. In 2013 she created Girl Talkz, a curated show featuring female­ up­and­coming performing artists in Toronto. In 2014 she created GlitClit ­ A dj collective alongside music partners Kvesche Bijons and Blake Macfarlane, now HIGHWORLD, this dj collective aims to integrate electronic and live music (Petra Glynt, Mas Aya), opening doors to djs, mcs and performers outside of Toronto, as a way to integrate music communities in the GTA. All projects still active today.

Limitless Productions presents dance and theatre excerpts from an upcoming production called ‘Sita’s Rising’. The ‘Sita’s Rising’ project is based on the mythological tale of a queen who was asked to prove her innocence over and over again after she was kidnapped. One part of the story mentions Sita having to walk through fire to prove her innocence. In India, this story is often used as way to prove the innocence of many women. Real life injustices to women such as kitchen burning or the treatment of widows (as untouchables) have often been justified and rationalized because of this old mythological story about Sita. Sita was wrongly accused as many women around the world are for acts that are caused by other people. Thus, women carry the shame and guilt of doing something wrong and often don’t speak up about it out of fear that they will be re-victimized. ‘Sita’ represents every woman who has felt injustice but is too afraid to speak up due to being wrongly accused. SHE also represents women who for centuries have played a role to fit the norm out of fear of not being accepted. Limitless breaks down the barriers and showcases new indo-contemporary works that tackle some of these systemic issues. Choreographed by Artistic Director and Social Dance Activist Ashima Suri (www.ashimasuri.com) , Limitless is proud to use dance and theatre to tackle social issues effecting women across the world and we would be proud to present this work at FAC in 2014.

Lishai Peel uses the power of the pen to connect, reflect and educate. She was raised in Europe and the Middle East, but is a daughter of India’s diaspora. Every time she steps to the stage, her words carry the rich tradition of storytelling that her grandmother gifted to her.

As part of her journey, she has competed in national and international poetry slams, including representing Toronto at the Women of the World Poetry Slam, The Vancouver International Poetry Festival and the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in 2011. In the same year she organized the first Canadian Underground Individual Slam. In 2012, she completed a spoken word residency at The Banff Centre. Alongside her 4 teammates, she is the 2012 national slam champion.

Currently Lishai facilitates spoken word programming in various schools throughout the GTA with Unity Charity. She is the coordinator of Uniffect – a group of 25 young artists who are leaders in the youth poetry scene and their communities. With thanks to funding from The Toronto Arts Council and The Ontario Arts Council, Lishai is currently recording her first album.

Outside of poetry, Lishai is the coordinator of Toronto Women’s City Alliance and a strong advocate for women’s inclusion, equity and equality in the municipal political arena. From City Hall to the classroom to the stage, Lishai continuously strives to use poetry as a medium for social change and community building.

Lynx Sainte-Marie is a disabled/chronically ill, non-binary/genderfluid, Afro+Goth Poet of the Jamaican diaspora with ancestral roots indigenous to Africa and the British Isles. Lynx is the creator of QueerofGender, a grassroots organization and transnational visibility project, celebrating the various experiences of gender within Black, Indigenous and People of Colour communities. Lynx serves on various committees dedicated to disability justice and art as a tool for social change & collective healing. As a writer and performance artist, Lynx tackle issues around identity, isolation and love. As an activist and workshop facilitator, Lynx stresses the importance of spaces where marginalized communities can share their stories – stories often erased from mainstream narratives.

Mahlikah Awebsitewe:ri (Walking Woman) is a drum talk poetic rapologist of Mohawk (Kahnawá:ke) & Mi’kmaw (Bear River) heritage, with Nova Scotian roots. She began as a Slam Poet with the Ottawa based Young Poets of the Revolution and at the Honey Jam Showcases in Toronto, Ontario. Mahlikah has been able to integrate her love for poetry into music, theatre. digital storytelling and anything involving the 4 elements of hip hop culture with the mentorship of artists such as: Digging Roots, Martha Redbone, Jani Lauzon, Lillian Allen, Afua Cooper, Amah Harris, Ruth Howard, Pauline Shirt, Rishma Dunlop, Michee Mee and institutions like: Royal Conservatory of Music, CanStage, ImagineNative, Banff New Media Centre, OISE, York University and Ryerson University.

Mariel Rosenblüth is a photographer and activist born in La Paz, Bolivia. Growing up in Montréal, her fascination for capturing and observing the world led her to a degree in Communications from Vanier College. Meshing poetry, images and social consciousness, she uses photography as a tool to engage youth in exercising critical thought towards normative world views, encouraging them to challenge the status quo. Combining her passion for photography and concern for societal issues, her narratives result in impactful presentations of an alternate scale. Mariel is a member of the Essencia Art Collective, where she participated in 2011. Her work has been produced in Bolivia, Sénégal and Montréal.

Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Melissa Koziebrocki is an interdisciplinary Artist whose performance based artwork focuses on the body as the physical site of trauma. She approaches this problematic subject matter in a satirical manner, using the tactics of kitsch intervention and misandrist humour, presented under the conventions of high art. Koziebrocki’s practice is irreverent and anti-authoritarian. It subverts normative notions around gender and patriarchy and exposes the injustice of the status quo enforced by a male centered system. Koziebrocki uses costuming and set design to inform her practice: whether that takes form as a site specific performance installation, a photograph, or a painting.

She has curated and has been a participating artist in such exhibitions as Bend Over: Images of Gender Exploitation (2013), Meat Curtains (2013), Please Copy Us Forever (2011), The House that Masons Built (2010), and A Soft-Core Peephole (2010). She has also worked in the curatorial departments of Art in General, the Justina M. Barnike Gallery, and the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts.

My name is Michelle Gauthier, I’m 21 years old, and I’m currently attending the Ontario Collage of Art and Design (OCADU) for a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Criticism & Curatorial Practices. I believe that the work I am submitting for the FAC Toronto 2014 event fits with the Call for Submissions because I am a firm believer in embracing sexuality, gender, and the body as a whole. I feel very strongly about fighting trans- phobia, racism, and for protecting reproductive rights. With my work I hope to provoke and intrigue view- ers. I strive to promote self-love, to embrace femininity and individuality, and to show that there is no cause for shame when it comes to what is natural. I have taken mediums like cross stitching (which have been primarily thought of as a conservative feminine craft) to depict things which are very expressive and opinionated. I try to create a strong juxtapo- sition of form and content, and I hope that it will help the viewer to question society’s opinions and norms about these subjects. Just like every person and body, none of my works are exactly alike.

Miranda Fay is currently working to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts at NSCAD University, majoring in interdisciplinary studies. Her work shows an obsessive repetitive behaviour as she uses her body to perform actions to interact with objects. She often uses objects or mediums from her body or objects we interact with on a daily basis. Hair exemplifies her ideas as hair is part of the body but is not at the same time; it is – or was – part of her identity that is now separate. Her work attempts to regain sense of self with figuring out what makes up our identity how our body occupies and alters spaces and objects.

Morgan M Page (Odofemi) is a trans feminist performance+video artist, activist, writer, and Santera currently living in Toronto. She is the winner of the 2013 New/Upcoming Artist of the Year award from the SF Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art and as founder/curator of the world’s only trans women’s fine arts festival TWAT/fest, Morgan won a MOTHA for Group Exhibition of the year, 2013. Her work explores sexual violence, grief, mourning, and the transsexual body as site of political conflict.

Natalie Norman’s witty jokes and outrageous storytelling are a force of nature in the Toronto comedy scene and a huge embarrassment says her Jewish parents. Natalie’s comedy is often political, sometimes smart, and always hilarious. Don’t be fooled by her pretty weave. She is a fierce feminist and a Spice Girls enthusiast, who loves talking about her period. She may or may not have a 5 minute long joke about her period (she definitely does). For three years Natalie has been rocking the Toronto stand-up circuit, like it’s her job, even though she gets paid very little. Natalie was also recently featured in Post City Magazine’s “meet a comedian” segment. She was featured in the 2012 Fresh Meat showcase giving attention to the most promising up and coming comedians. Natalie also performed in the 2013 Canadian Music Week. Her proudest accomplishment is producing the Humourless Feminists Comedy Show, in conjunction with Slutwalk Toronto, and the stand-up show Stories from the Red Tent. These two highly successful shows raised money for the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre and Planned Parenthood Toronto.

I am a daughter of the Yalpanam-Tamil diaspora. I first gives thanks to the ancestors and elders who’ve come before her, building the foundations on which she continues to do work for and with others. I am a writer, performance artist, and filmmaker. I have worked extensively with multiple community-based organizations and performance groups across Toronto, including Manifesto Community Projects, The Remix Project, ArtReach Toronto, b.current Performing Arts, and Schools Without Borders. I am currently finishing up production on my first feature documentary Shadeism: Digging Deeper, a follow-up to my original short, Shadeism (2010). I am also co-producing a series of three short films called The Things We Don’t Say and co-writing my first feature film through Refuge Productions, which I co-created and where I currently serve as an executive producer. Having completed my Bachelor of Journalism at Ryerson University, I am now in my last year of graduate school, working towards my M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies at York Univeristy (diaspora/performance/women’s studies). I am also currently training as a full circle doula with the International Centre for Traditional Childbearing. I believe in love.

Nicole is a published poet, freelance editor, aspiring novelist, and optimism enthusiast from Toronto. She has spent the last year away from prose in an effort to find her place in the poetry scene, although she plans a return to prose soon. She helps to curate the reading series “outrageous,” and co-founded the organization words(on)pages, which creates, edits, and binds poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.

Niki D’Amore lives in Toronto, Ontario. She is an ABD PhD candidate in the department of Social and Political Thought at York University. Her written work has been published in the Radical Philosophy Review and in Filozofski Vestnik. Her creative work has shown at various events and academic conferences in Canada and the United States. She is presently exploring dissociation in eating disorder with the supervisory support of Paul Antze, Shannon Bell and Meg Luxton.

Julia Li lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. Her photographic work has been featured in the Art Exhibits of Toronto Public Library. Additionally, a collection created of her collaboration with Niki D’Amore, titled How to Depict Dissociation in Eating Disorder, was featured in the Politics of Play, Graduate Research Symposium Art Exhibit (2013). Julia’s subject matter ranges widely from candid documentaries to artistic creations. She captures and explores the relationships among people, environments, and communities. Her work also connects and reflects individuals’ experiences and emotions.

As a feminist artist, I am interested in blurring the lines between what is considered empowerment and what is subordinate through captivating and sometimes dark imagery. My work prompts viewers to grapple with ideas of identity, desire, and self- creation while it also considers the criticality of youth. Often erratic and raw, my work addresses the adolescent portrayal of the self by exploring profound emotions and building outward facades. In an attempt to hold on to past experiences, both good and bad, I fetishize them in my work, in turn creating a mediated memory. My construction of memory begins to form by choosing to photograph select times in my life and specific moments of personal experience. These photos in turn create a string of memories mediated by the medium. My photographs influence my paintings by being tangible indexical objects documenting time. Once these memories are translated into paintings I allow them to enter the realm of the unreal and fantastical. Affectations of this kind function as a subtext in my work since they highlight the artificiality of painting (it is, indeed, at a remove from the immediate realism of a photograph), while also enabling my freedom to inject the work with more symbolic meaning. Subsequently, the images are more loaded than they were in their original incarnation – when they were simply photographs – because they have begun to take on the potent, and more loaded, possibilities that only oil paint will afford.

Nisha Ahuja, actor, theatre creator, and Yogic & Vedic/Attmic Energy Medicine practitioner, has performed and created classical, contemporary, and original work across Canada, the Netherlands, and India. She was an actor with the National Arts Centre Resident Acting Company and toured her one-woman shows, Yoga Cannibal and Un-settling, and is developing The Besetting of Reena Virk with Subtle Vigilance Collective and her excerpts of her play Cycle of a Sari will be published in Playwright Canada Press’ anthology Refractions: Solo. She is currently developing Maan-i-fest and Straight as Jalebi. With nisha as a guide in yogic practice, she shares sessions that focus on meditation, pranic flow, and listening to the wisdom of the body. nisha’s work is dedicated to deconstructing colonial boundaries between art, traditional medicines, spirituality, and politics.

Olivia Appiah-Kubi is an emerging artist and Post-grad student working mostly in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. But living in Brampton. The core theme of her work is essentially the relationship within the White person and the Subject of colour. her use of wording for the second part makes it ambiguous citing her exploration of Ethnic subjectivity. Her different bodies of work don’t strive to answer that question, but rather to ask it in different ways. She is interested in Jungian Psychology, particularly of how the collective unconscious was a reservoir of all the experience and knowledge of the human species. She juxtapositions that with relationships within nature, Escapism in the public sphere, and a physical or spiritual, ontological wound that only the body remembers. Since 2012, Olivia’s practice has becoming more diverse and includes painting, installation, photography, video, performance and set design. she has a strong interest in experimenting with materials.

Olivia was born in Toronto and lived with her Large group of family (including relatives) in a single house in Mississauga. As she grew, the community of relatives started to drift to other places including her father who left his young wife and 3 kids. She soon remarried and moved to Brampton, Ontario, Canada at a young age where the young Olivia spent most of her life to this date. Olivia would described herself as an introverted and solitary child, saying that she was most happy when she was left alone to his thoughts. She always thought that she was at a constant war with her body and mind; from eating disorders, to sexual maturity, to creating immense worlds in which she can only access. After completing courses from Sheridan and Humber College in Journalism, Health studies and Visual and Digital arts. She enrolled at the Ontario College of Art & Design in hopes of seeking and being taught in a more challenging artistic environment. Currently she is acquiring her BFA in for Sculpture and Installation, (a long, long process she notes.)

Olivia Plummer (b. 1987) dovetails her art practice around the notion of embodiment, physical ideals, and emotional/physical trauma. In a number of her photographic series she explores pain, surgery, body ideals. More recently she examines emotional separation from her AFO (Ankle Foot Orthotics) that support her physically. Olivia’s personal story is unique in the fact that she is a native North American, grew up in Toronto and struggled with the trauma of ten plus surgeries to physically reshape her body.

Entering into the establishment of OCAD University has given Olivia the freedom and rights to explore her life story as a physically disabled woman. By sharing her work to an abled-bodied public by shedding a spotlight on differently-abled public. Olivia’s walking disability used to be a source of embarrassment for her but now through creative exploration her perspective has shifted and the “disability” she once felt burdened by has changed into a “different ability” and become a beacon of inspiration for her artwork. As well as the portraying the minority of differently-abled people, Olivia has worked mutually with homeless youth and adults in Toronto in a documentary style series to state age-old political agendas that have fallen by the way side.

Working in a multitude of mediums Olivia can be qualified as a multi-disciplinary artist, using photography, performance art, sculpture and site specific installation as avenues to showcase her work.

Rebecca Singh is is presenting Women on Wiki this project seeks to increase the number of local female artists who are searchable on Wikipedia. Singh the grew up in Norwood/Parkdale, a working class downtown Edmonton neighborhood. Rebecca has spent the last 20 years working as a producer, performer, writer, and curator in the Canadian performing arts, film and television industries. She is the Principal Artist and Studio Manager of Theatre Local and the Director of Cultural Affairs for the Israeli Consulate in Toronto and Western Canada.

Rema Tavares is the Founder of Mixed in Canada (MIC), a national cultural resource centre for mixed-race identified Canadians. She is also an artist and has been photographing mixed-race identified Canadians since 2011. These photos have shown in several exhibits including “Defining Moments: Discovering our Canadian Stories”, a year-long international show of work by 26 youth under 30. Rema has also been asked to speak at the “Spaces of Multiraciality: Critical Mixed Race Theory” course at the University of Toronto, at Ontario Public Services regarding mentorship and diversity, as well as Elementary Schools and radio shows about her work with MIC.

Rose-Ann Marie Bailey (1971) Jamaican born artist began using photography as a medium to document alternative images of Black people than that offered by the mainstream media. Toronto-based photographer, Bailey is a graduate of York University where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) and Education degrees. She is currently pursuing a Master of Education at York University, with a focus on community arts-based community health research. Bailey interprets her personal observations of her subject’s body image, sexuality, and vulnerability through a post-colonial, identity and health equity lens. Her discursive and figural production on the visual representation for non-conforming sexual and gender identities emotionally interrupts the media’s narrow assumptions about Black men and women’s personhood. As an accomplished photographer and artist, Rose-Ann has been working in a digital format for the past 10 years, but instills the esthetics of a historical photographic foundation to enhance the final production. Her work is closely connected to her passion for image production of Black bodies, as this was her deliberate opportunity to capture memories, validate existence and build self-esteem, allowing her images of her subjects to become a political instrument- rewriting representation.

Salomeh Ahmadi, through contemporary photography, explores images of Muslim women who wear the hijab. An Arabic term for ‘veil,’ which recreates how we both hide and reveal identities made by us and those around us. The images juxtapose stereotypes against the aesthetics of openness; a woman in relation to her environment giving the subjects qualities of being free. Some themes she explores are: identity, culture, belonging, perception, marginalized groups and stereotypes in order to elevate messages of empowered identity while deconstructing stereotypes. This project looks closely at the intersection of religion, power and stereotypes, and about the ways in which reality is constructed between the surface and the inner reality. As a female artist there is an underrepresentation of Muslim female models in contemporary art. As an artist she demonstrate the ways in which womyn are actively involved in producing identities that cut across cultural spheres and involve complex struggles over different modes of being. She looks at how participants and observers construct and transform through the images. She creates another medium for the messages of her Muslim friends, one that resists and critiques the status quo. It is a journey through the various curtains or veils of reality, to meditate on the many meanings of reality.

Shalak Attack is an emerging Canadian-Chilean visual artist dedicated to painting, muralism, graffiti urban art, and canvases. Ever since graduating from Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) with a bachelor degree in Fine Arts with honors, Shalak has manifested her artistic expression on urban walls across the world. Shalak is a co-founder and member of the international art collectives “Essencia”, the “Bruxas”, and “Os Clandestinos”. Shalak also works with several mixed media approaches such as jewelery, illustration, installation, sound, video, and tattoo art. In the past ten years, she has participated in numerous artistic projects and exhibitions in Canada, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Palestine, Jordan, Isreal, Belgium, Spain, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Senegal. Shalak shares her passion for freedom of expression, and has facilitated visual art workshops to youth of under-privileged communities and prisoners in various countries across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and recently in Africa. Her artistic work and community art-reach is rooted in the social and cultural values she received from her family growing up across Canada. Since then, her most impacting education has been learning from different communities around the world. Public walls has become her favourite place to paint, she uses graffiti as an art form to create accessibility to culture for diverse communities. In Shalak’s artistic practice, she fuses the spirit and the aesthetics of traditional South American muralism with contemporary graffiti/ street art. Vibrant colours speak through evocative portraits of both real and imaginary characters. Shalak uses colour as a tool to create visual narratives that celebrate and question cultural identity and socio-political values. Her murals have contributed culture, life, consciousness and personality to public and otherwise forgotten spaces. Shalak often seeks to collaborate and dialogue with communities and other artists for the evolution and enrichment of her visual language.

Shelby Lisk is a photographer and art student finishing her final year of her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Ottawa. In her artwork she deals mostly with ideas of her own identity by investigating gender roles, relationship dynamics, and her cultural identity as a Mohawk and Canadian woman. She investigates these roles through her imagery and performative actions, using photography and video as her main mediums. She would like her viewers to question a part of their own lives when looking at her work and experience a sense of her perspective through the visual aspects. Her work can be interpreted as a feminist approach to an investigation of personal identity.

Susan Blight is Anishinaabe from Couchiching First Nation. A visual artist, filmmaker, and arts educator, Susan’s films and video work have been screened nationally and internationally at such venues as Media City International Film Festival, Experiments in Cinema, and the ImagineNative Festival. In addition, Susan has exhibited across North America, most notably at Gallery 44, The Print Studio, Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts, and the Art

Gallery of Windsor. Susan is co-founder of The Ogimaa Miikana Project, an artist/activist collective working to reclaim and rename the roads, streets, and landmarks of Toronto with

Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe language) and in July 2013, she became the fourth member of the Indigenous Routes artist collective which works to provide new media training for indigenous youth. Susan Blight received a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Windsor in

Integrated Media, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies from the University of Manitoba. She currently works as Aboriginal Student Life Coordinator at the University of Toronto and is the host of Indigenous Waves radio show.

“Suzy Lake was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1947. In 1968, she immigrated to Montreal, Quebec following the 1967 Detroit riots. Influenced by social and political involvement concurrent to the early conceptual period, she is known for her large-scale photography dealing the body as both subject and device. Lake was one of a pioneering group of artists in the early 70’s artists the to adopt performance, video and photography in order to explore the politics of gender, the body and identity. Early examples of her work form part of two touring exhibitions titled WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution 1965 – 1980, first showing at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in March of 2007. In April of 2007, her work was featured in Identity Theft: Eleanor Antin, Lynn Hershman, Suzy Lake 1972-1978 at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. In a 1993 retrospective catalogue, Martha Hanna responds to this politicization: “Although she has not overtly addressed feminist issues, the politics of feminism is an undercurrent in all her major photographic works to date. The attention to power relations that feminism implies may be seen in Lake’s work as symbolic of a personal struggle, and her artwork is evident of her progress”. Lake’s work continues to use references to the body as a means to investigate notions of beauty in the context of youth and consumer culture. She has a long exhibition career in Canada, and has also shown her work in Europe, the United States, South America and Asia. She is represented by: Georgia Scherman Projects (Toronto), Galerie Donald Browne (Montreal) and Michael Solway (Cincinnati).” (excerpt from Lake’s Website)

Description: PsXXYborg is the game art piece emerging from OCAD’s game:play lab, which employs feminist philosophy and feminist design ethics to collaboratively create an ongoing game project, which lives as a single player installation inside of a custom painted tent. The new technology, ScreenPerfect, which was designed as the game engine on which PsXXYborg would run, is a dual screen game platform, which allows players to navigate between many different video files as they choose their own adventure, in this case, to upload their consciousness into the Nous. Self contained inside of a 3-person tent, players enter one at a time to play, emergine once again from the PsXXYborg womb, reborn. Statement: PsXXYborg aims to create a critical player, one who is rewarded by going off path, to discover that the game is the same, no matter how unique one has been convinced they are by the capitalist agenda of individual creation methods, that drive the markets for the search of the unique and authentic. Presenting itself as a promise to acknowledge your ultimate personal value, by offering a way to upload your unique consciousness into the infinite digital ether, known for our purposes as the Nous, is a calling out of the Ray Kurzweil’s of the world, who seek immortality through a technological ascension they believe to be just around the corner (see: The Singularity is Near). PsXXYborg opens the doors to those pilgrims who seek to escape their human, fleshbased existence, and mount their true self, their consciousness, into a higher realm, which the body denies them access to.

Teresa Ascencao is a media artist whose work deals with gender and sexuality constructs through unique cultural perspectives and technological approaches. Often using out-of-the-ordinary interactivity, her poetic and kitschy artworks invite audiences to rediscover gender and sexuality through peculiar folk and pop inspired artworks. The methods through which audience members interact are critical to the artwork’s concepts. Teresa Ascencao was born to Azorean parents in Sao Paulo, Brazil and immigrated to Canada at a young age. She holds a Graphic Design Diploma from Humber College and graduated with distinction from the University of Toronto’s Honours Fine Art Studio program. She holds an MFA specializing in Media Art and Sex-Positive Feminism from OCAD University. Ascencao’s work has been exhibited widely in Canada and internationally. She lives and works in Toronto and teaches at OCADU.

Vanessa McGowan is a Toronto based Spoken Word Artist and Singer/Songwriter steeped in social justice, advocacy, counselling and workshop facilitation with 13 years experience in social services. She is one of the founders of “WordSpell” Toronto’s only on-going female spoken word series and was the 2012 Grand Champion of Toronto’s Bill Brown’s 1-2-3 Slam. Her first chapbook “Divine Cockeyed Genius” was released in October 2012. “Raw power wrapped in polished performance; Vanessa caresses your heart and knocks you in the guts. Makes you feel and makes you feel like feeling. Confrontational, comforting – a consummate poet and performer.

Wanda is an Anishinabe-kwe word and image warrior, curator, community animator, arts consultant and Idle No More organizer from Beausoleil First Nation. Wanda Nanibush is the 2013 Dame Nita Barrow Distinguished Visitor at University of Toronto. She is also Curator in Residence at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. Wanda Nanibush has over 15 years experience in the arts sector of Canada. Nanibush has worked in non-profit arts organizations such as the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, ANDPVA, Peterborough Arts Umbrella, imagineNative film and media arts festival, ReFrame, and LIFT. She has published in many books and magazines including C magazine, Fuse, Muskrat, the book Women in a Globalizing World: Equality, Development, Diversity and Peace and This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years since the Blockades and co-edited InTensions journal on The Resurgence of Indigenous Women’s Knowledge and Resistance in Relation to Land and Territoriality: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives.

Wendy Coburn is a Toronto-based artist and educator. Coburn’s work explores representations of women in popular culture; ideas of nationhood; the roles of image, spectacle and myth in mediating cultural difference; queer and sexualized bodies, everyday objects, material culture, and human/animal relations.

Coburn’s work has been exhibited and screened in galleries and festivals including Photophobia (Art Gallery of Hamilton), the Living Effect (Ottawa Art Gallery), MIX (New York Gay & Lesbian Experimental Film/Video Festival) Transmediale International Media Art Festival (Berlin, Germany), Beaver Tales and Uneasy Pieces (Oakville Galleries), Kassel Documentary Film & Video Festival (Kassel, Germany), and the Dublin Lesbian & Gay Film and Video Festival (Dublin, Ireland).

Wendy Coburn studied at Dundas Valley School of Art, Ontario College of Art, and holds an MFA from Concordia University. Coburn worked several years as Assistant Dean and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Art at OCAD U, where she now teaches sculpture and interdisciplinary courses.

Warp & Weft : Fibres, Film, and Feminist Collaboration in the Gallery Warp & Weft (2013), a collaboration between fibre artist Mary Grisey (MFA, York University) and experimental filmmaker Zoë Heyn – Jones (PhD, Visual Art, York University) , was a process – based exhibition that took place for 10 days in November 2013 at York University’s Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts Special Projects Gallery. In the gallery space, Grisey planned, conceived, and created a floor – to – ceiling abstract weaving with hand – dyed fibres and repurposed metal. This corporeal and performative act of creation was captured in time – lapse on 16mm film by Heyn – Jones. The film was subsequently hand – developed onsite and hung up to dry in the gallery; the materiality, processes, and labour inherent in both practices thereby resonating within the space. Perhaps the most salient facet of the project , however, was immaterial: opening up a space for the artists’ respective practices and collaboration to be made visible to the public and to each other facilitate d unparalleled and unique discussion. Issues of gendered labour and art practice , feminist/feminine aesthetics, conviviality, marginalized forms versus canonical works, and revisionist art histories were discussed in various informal conversations throughout the duration of the project. This presentation will contextualize Warp & Weft within the wider discursive fields of contemporary feminist social practices and gendered labour in visual art. Grisey and Heyn – Jones will discuss the various valences of these concerns and show documentation of the project in order to address fundamental questions crucial to contemporary feminist art.