The Conference segment of the Festival presents moderator led panels of the 2020 exhibition artists and community partner members. Festival attendees are encouraged to choose one of multiple panels occurring during each of the two Panel Sessions.
2020’s Community Partners include Living Hyphen, Red Embers, OCAD Student Union, Office of Diversity, Equity, and Sustainability Initiatives (ODESI) and Tangled Art + Disability
You can find information about participating panel artists on the 2020 ARTISTS page.
For full Festival schedule click here.
Panel Session One
11:15 am - 12:45 pm
PANEL 1 / ROOM 230
Traversing the Liminal Through Symbols and Place-making
Defining space across colonial borders through fragmentation, representation and visibility.
Shohana Sharmin, Hanan Hazime, Paulina Padilla, Natia Lemay
Moderator: Marissa Largo
PANEL 2 / ROOM 558
My Feminism, My Matriarchy
Celebrating motherhood and the matriarchy within a feminist art framework.
Jamilah Malika Abu-Bakare, Sarah Cullen, Annina Ruest, Kahsto'serakwathe Paulette Moore
Moderator: Johanna Householder
PANEL 3 / ROOM 556
Keeping it Corporeal
Engaging the body as a site of feminist activism and healing.
Vanessa Godden, Samantha Lyn Aasen, Jessi Eoin, Sarah Mo and Adwoa Toku from the Las Lobas Collective
Moderator: Maya Desai
PANEL 4 / ROOM 544
Reappropriating Sites of Trauma
Responding to gender-based violence with strength, endurance and evocative, visceral imagery.
Andrea Westbrook, Hannah Rothschild, Jody Chan, Tara Tomlinson and Jasmine Hawamdeh of The Lucky Ones project
Moderator: Nicole Collins
PANEL 5 / ROOM 669
Resistance, Rematriation, and Diasporic Futurity
Exploring speculative feminist futures that centre memory, magic, transformative healing and celebration.
Queen Kukoyi, Kamee Abrahamian, Kadine Lindsay
Moderator: Alia Weston
PANEL 6 / ROOM 542
Allegories of the Abject and Obscure
Challenging the boundaries of the body, and the limits of speech along with other hegemonic dichotomies.
Michaela Bridgemohan, Marissa Sean Cruz, James Knott, Allison Morris
Moderator: Linda Carreiro
Panel Session Two
3:15 pm - 4:45 pm
PANEL 1 / ROOM 650
Storytelling Our Ancestors
Telling ancestral stories, reclaiming historical space, and declaring,
“We’re still here.”
Dawn Setford, Shelby Lisk, Gloria C Swain, Emily Norry
Moderator: Andrea Fatona
PANEL 2 / ROOM 558
Magnifying the Unseen
Rendering the unseen visible through radical inclusion and conspicuous exclusion.
Aquil Virani, Anahita Jamali Rad, Janina Anderson, Kat Singer
Moderator: Sughanda Gaur
PANEL 3 / ROOM 550
Office of Diversity, Equity, and Sustainability Initiatives (ODESI)
Environmental Justice: Leadership between genders
Andrea Bastien (Indigenous Climate Action) discusses how leadership in environmental justice often comes from those who operate between genders. Interdependence, authenticity, and taking up space with art-based action in care of the seven generations ahead.
Moderator: Victoria Ho, Sustainability Coordinator, Office of Diversity, Equity & Sustainability Initiatives
PANEL 4 / ROOM 542
Living Hyphen - Narrative Healing Across Generations
Exploring the significance of intergenerational dialogue and storytelling in our healing as individuals living in between cultures.
Panelists: Nelu Handa, Kitt Azores, Julie Mai
Moderator: Justine Abigail Yu
PANEL 5 / ROOM 667
Red Embers Artist Panel
In conversation with the artists about the creation of the Red Embers project and its impact on community.
Red Embers is a large-scale, community-based, public art installation that honours the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and the strength of community resilience. Thousands experienced this celebration of the power of art and design at Allan Gardens in 2019. For the first time in the City of Toronto's history, monumental art by Indigenous womxn artists was displayed for free to the public.
Red Embers consists of 13 banners that follow the cycle of the 13 Grandmother Moons within the Lunar System. The Grandmother Moon is the leader of feminine life. For a woman who has experienced domestic violence or sexual assault, it is the Grandmother Moon that provides healing and a rebalancing of energy.
The banners raise the profile of the Indigenous creative sector while demonstrating non-hierarchical partnerships between Indigenous design principles in the built-environment led by Indigenous womxn.
Red Embers was made possible by the design team consisting of Tiffany Creyke, Larissa Roque and Lisa Rochon.
Panelists: Catherine Tammaro, Hillary Brighthill, Pamela Hart, Lisa Rochon
PANEL 6 / ROOM 642
OCAD Student Union
The election of the Ford Provincial Government in 2018 sparked a resurgence of political activism across university and college campuses in Ontario. The OCAD Student Union presents the tactics and collective work of the OCAD Student Strike group that led to the largest strike action in Ontario in over twenty years in 2019. Join OCAD Student activists as they discuss political art making, harnessing anger, and cultivating a culture of collective action on campus.
Find them on Instagram
Khadija Farow, Gino Marocco, Rachel Asevicius, Lex Burgoyne, Moksha Khanna
Moderated by Emily Condie
PANEL 7 / ROOM 669
Tangled Art + Disability
Tangled Art + Disability presents a discussion about Disability Arts, how accessibility can be defined in a radical, feminist framework and used to resist institutions of ableism, moderated by Jack Hawk and joined by Sean Lee, Eliza Chandler and Kristina McMullin.