TBA 2022 Closing BBQ and Book Launch

lwrds (pronounced ‘lords’; they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, independent researcher, and 2019 OCAD University graduate (BFA Integrated Media) living and creating in Tkaronto. Their ARTivist practice is informed by frameworks of Decolonial Critical Theory and is intersectional, anti-racist, anti-oppressive, sex-positive, trauma-informed, and grounded in disability justice. With a focus on Critical Design and decolonial research practices and pedagogies, they have been working as a freelance artist/designer for the past 10 years. Their studio practice conjures performance, sculptural, illustrative, poetic, and remediated mixed-media outcomes, emerging from a foundation of transgressive witchy knowledge and traversing the multiple realms of their idiosyncratic spirituality. lwrds’ work as an artist responds to their personal journey of healing sexual trauma at the intersections of gender variance, Blackness and Indigeneity (complicated by an imposed latinidad they reject due to its colonial underpinnings), and disability for reasons of neurodivergence and chronic illness. A born storyteller with a deep commitment to healing personal and collective traumas, their art-making approach is an intuitive process of learning with other non-human beings, valuing energetic exchanges with all that exists.

Melissa (Melly) Davidson (she/they) is a queer, Arab-Canadian interdisciplinary artist and arts educator. Melly’s pursuit of interdisciplinary arts includes street dance, spoken word, page poetry, and mixed media. She has been performing and competing in slams across Turtle Island since 2017, and was the co-champion of the 2019 FEMS Empowerments Slam. Melly’s primary focus has been developing poetry workshops and programs that prioritize play and exploration for local community members. Her work can be found in Arc Poetry Magazine and Pigeon Pages. Melly is part of a Lebanese diaspora which settled and found refuge in Jamaica. Originally from Mohkínstsis (Calgary, Alberta) she is now based out of Tkaronto (Toronto, Ontario). Melly is currently moved by the Fast & Furious franchise, keychains, and post-ironic playlists.

Nicole Markland (she/her) is a museum educator with a passion for art and history. She has been facilitating sharing and learning in museums and galleries for over seven years and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Museum Education at the University of British Columbia.

Nicole began working in museums in 2013, when as a volunteer, she had a transformative learning experience which made her rethink how people learn with and from each other. From that point on, many experiences have informed her practice as an educator, including working abroad as an ESL Teacher where knowledge and learning became less transmissive and more like an exchange between collaborators. For her, learning is a social and communal process, and she enjoys using art and objects to bring together unique and diverse groups of people with differing knowledge, lived experiences, cultures, and interests. She hopes to build experiences with participants that are fun and build memories which will guide, challenge, support, and follow a person throughout their lifetime.

The Talking Treaties Collective is a multidisciplinary group of Indigenous and settler artists/researchers whose projects artfully share Indigenous history and awareness of the place now called Toronto. Led by Kanien’kehá:ka interdisciplinary artist Ange Loft, associate artistic director of Jumblies Theatre, the Talking Treaties project has many branches and has engaged thousands of participants in generating symbols, poetry, improvised maps and performative explorations. Their creations include The Talking Treaties Spectacle, a site-specific mobile performance at Fort York in 2017 and 2018; the installation and three-part video By These Presents: “Purchasing” Toronto at the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art; and our illustrated book A Treaty Guide for Torontonians, for the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art.

Members of Talking Treaties Collective:

Ange Loft (Kahnawà:ke Kanien’kehá:ka, born in Kahnawake, Canada; lives and works in Toronto, Canada) is an interdisciplinary performing artist and initiator from Kahnawà:ke Kanien’kehá:ka Territory, working in. She is an ardent collaborator, consultant, and facilitator working in arts-based research, wearable sculpture, theatrical co-creation, and Haudenosaunee history. She is a vocalist with the music collective Yamantaka // Sonic Titan.

Jill Carter (Anishinaabe-Ashkenazi, born in Toronto, Canada) is a theatre practitioner, researcher, and educator at the University of Toronto. Based in Tkaron:to, where she was born and largely raised, she is an active member of the Talking Treaties Collective, serves as researcher and tour guide for First Story Toronto, and devises land activations, mapping interventions, and personal cosmography workshops.

Martha Stiegman (settler, lives and works in Toronto, Canada) is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. Her community-based research and collaborative video work examine Indigenous-settler treaty relations in their historical and contemporary manifestations, with particular attention to food sovereignty and justice as well as participatory and visual research methodologies.

Victoria Freeman (born in Ottawa, Canada) is an author, historian, theatre co-creator, and educator of British settler heritage. Her work focuses on Indigenous-settler relations and the Indigenous and colonial past of Toronto. She has collaborated on numerous community projects, including with First Story Toronto, L’Arche Toronto Sol Express, Toronto Council Fire, and Jumblies Theatre

VIBE Arts is a charity providing arts education and professional artistic mentorship to the next generation of creatives. Established in 1995, VIBE seeks to increase access and equity to the arts to encourage wellness, resilience and a sense of belonging.

Artists:

Azadeh Pirazimian is an Iranian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist, art instructor based in Toronto and a former lecturer from Iran. Through her practice, she actively investigates prevailing power structures, social norms and conventions while focusing on belonging, womanhood and everyday resistances. Her interests are a matter of representation, collaboration as practice, feminist politics and intersectionality. She aims to initiate methods within her art practice to create space for dialogue. Azadeh’s artistic approach combines different disciplines, including photography, video, performance art, painting and illustration, while her methodology is consistent. Over the years, her works have been showcased at several exhibitions in Iran, Canada and the Netherlands.

Akshata Naik is a contemporary visual artist, educator, researcher, and administrator based in Toronto, Canada. Born and raised in Mumbai, Akshata has lived in Vadodara and the UK. Her works reflect upon her lived experiences of moving homes, cities, and countries. Through a lens of immigration, war, displacement, home, and belonging. She works towards co-creating with her viewers an immersive experience and interactive art installations which consist of drawing, painting, ephemeral temporary sculptures, and art in virtual reality. Akshata has exhibited internationally in North America, Europe, and Asia, including solo and group exhibitions at galleries in the UK, Canada, and India.

Jenny Chen is a visual artist living in Toronto. She makes art to process information about the world around her while raising questions about existentialism and spirituality. Her work uses symbols to create mystical environments because she wants viewers to wonder about life beyond the material world. She graduated from OCAD University in 2016, with a major in Drawing and Painting and a minor in Illustration. Since then, she has mainly worked in watercolour, pen and clay. Her works have been showcased in various exhibitions in Toronto and Montreal.