Platforms: We Are Here, Live

Artist biographies

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  Janet Wang

  Janet Wang is a visual artist and educator, with a pluralistic practice encompassing traditional painting, installation work and digital media. Her work explores the construction of identity through the appropriation and disruption of social patterns and familiar gestures. She pays homage to the canons and traditions of history, using the familiar as a meeting point with the viewer.

  Past public art projects include Ten Different Things, a collaboration between ECUAD, SFU, CityStudio, and the City of Vancouver, and a commission with Public Art Richmond. Her installations have been exhibited with Truck Gallery (Calgary), Paved Arts and AKA Saskatoon, INC Hamilton, and the City of Regina, among others.

  She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia and her Master of Arts in Studio Practice from the University of Leeds in England.

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  Jem Noble

  Jem Noble is a mixed-media artist who explores the mutual composition of environment and experience, through entangled poetics of force, form, feeling, and feedback.  

  Noble’s work, sometimes in partnership with other artists and art institutions, has been included in Artforum International, the NGV Triennial, Te Tuhi, PSI/Fluid States, dOCUMENTA 13, Manifesta 7, and ICA London.

  Noble completed a BA in philosophy at Prifysgol Abertawe and a practice-based PhD in visual art at Deakin University.

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  Benjamin Siegl

  Benjamin Siegl is a visual artist, administrator, and curator. His practice thrives at the intersection of painting and animation, tracing connections between time-based media, movement, and representational image making to explore themes of queerness, semblance, and individuation.

  His background in programming and curation has afforded close collaboration with a variety of local, national, and international artists and organizations. Current creative projects include using 3D animation software to expand his painting processes and producing a podcast focusing on art and science in film.

  Benjamin received a BFA from Florida State University in 2011 and a MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2017. He is the Assistant Curator with the Pride in Art Society, a Vancouver-based queer arts non-profit and charity.

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  Robin Netherton

  Robin Netherton is a Vancouver-based graphic artist and designer. He graduated from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2020 with a Bachelor in Visual Art and a Minor in Art + Text.

  Robin is the founder of the publishing imprint Crisis Editions which focuses on out-of-print and unprinted materials. Crisis Editions regularly appears in artist book fairs both locally and internationally and titles are carried at select specialty bookstores.

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  Mark Johnsen

  Mark Johnsen is an American visual artist living and working in Vancouver. His print-based practice examines the possibilities of the unique, hand-pulled impression in an era of digital reproduction. Through studies of material exploration, traditional and non-traditional printing techniques he works to capture gestural and representational time stamps.

  He is the co-founder of Patio Press, a hybrid printmaking residency run alongside artist, Sara-Jeanne Bourget. He holds a BFA in Photography from California College of the Arts (2012) and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2020). He has exhibited throughout yhe United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Bosnia, Japan, Switzerland, and New Zealand. He is currently a sessional faculty member at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

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  Guadalupe Martinez

  Guadalupe Martinez is an interdisciplinary artist and educator who is interested in understanding the multiple and complex relationships between identity and place. Creating alternative spaces of learning and investigating the boundaries and pre-conceptions of art-making Martinez places the body at the centre of her work. Through somatic practices and collaboration, she explores the potential for embodied-research and love-actions to heal and decolonize the body-mind.

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  Ryley O’Byrne

  Ryley O’Byrne is an artist and writer from xwesam, the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the he shíshálh people (Roberts Creek, BC). Her work explores relational dynamics, intimacy, and the process of meaning-making through a diverse practice encompassing research, text, image, video, and sculpture.

  Her projects have been exhibited at the Anthology Film Archives (New York City), the National Centre for Contemporary Art (Minsk, Belarus), La Cité de la Mode (Paris), Projet Pangée (Montreal), and in Vancouver at Sunset Terrace, The International Film Centre, Unit/Pitt Society for Art and Critical Awareness, and as a part of the City of Vancouver’s Public Art Program. 

  She holds a degree from Emily Carr University and attended the Mountain School of Art in Los Angeles. 

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  Alex Grünenfelder

  Alex Grünenfelder is an artist and designer whose work employs printed matter, performance, sound, olfaction, and informal pedagogy to develop experiential connections with space, landscape, and the air. Current projects focus on the sensory analysis of atmospheric phenomena and the history of Swiss alpine dairy farms and high-altitude sanatoria as cultural sites that elicit therapeutic effects through creating particular relationships with a landscape.

  His projects have been exhibited in Canada, USA, South Korea and Switzerland.

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  Clare Yow

  Clare Yow’s lens-based artworks, jointly conceptual art and documentary in nature, revolve around the politics of identity and being. Whether through performance and self-portraiture, still lifes, or walking and photographing as a woman of colour street photographer, Clare seeks to explore how race, transnationality, and feminist culture intersect with the materials of everyday life.

  Clare holds an MFA in Visual Art from the University of British Columbia and an Honours BFA in Photographic Studies from Ryerson University. Since 2003, Clare has participated in exhibitions and events across Canada such as at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and University of British Columbia (Vancouver), Two Rivers Gallery (Prince George), The Works Art and Design Festival (Edmonton), Koffler Gallery (Toronto), and The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery (St. John’s).

  Her work is held in private collections across the country.

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  Alex MacKenzie

  Alex MacKenzie is a Vancouver-based media artist working primarily with 16mm analog film equipment and hand processed imagery. He creates works of expanded cinema, light projection installation, and projector performance. His work has screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the EXiS Experimental Film Festival in Seoul, Lightcone in Paris, Kino Arsenal in Berlin and many other festivals and art spaces worldwide.

  Alex was the founder and curator of the Edison Electric Gallery of Moving Images, the Blinding Light!! Cinema, and the Vancouver Underground Film Festival. He was an artist in residence at Atelier MTK in Grenobles France, the Struts Gallery/Faucet Media in New Brunswick, Cineworks' Analog Film Annex in Vancouver and Daimon in Gatineau. Alex co-edited Damp: Contemporary Vancouver Media Art (Anvil Press 2008), and interviewed David Rimmer for Loop, Print, Fade + Flicker: David Rimmer's Moving Images (Anvil Press 2009). Commissions include Portal, (Situated Cinema WNDX Winnipeg 2012), Auroratone: Digitalis (FilmPop Montreal 2012), The Film That Buys The Cinema (Cube Bristol 2013) and Hyborian Witch (Wrong Wave/Kensington Gore 2013).

  Alex is a founding member of the Iris Film Collective in Vancouver

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  Justin Langlois

  Justin Langlois is an artist, writer, and educator. His practice explores public art, social engagement, and creative pedagogy through text-based works, long-term participatory projects, and public installations.

  His work has also been presented at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Toronto), Conflux New York, Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Creative Time Summit (Venice Biennale), Open Engagement (Pittsburgh), CAFKA (Kitchener), Art Souterrain (Montreal), Art Moves (Poland), Manif D’art Biennial (Quebec City), along with galleries and artist-run centres across Canada, and public art installations in North Vancouver, Vancouver, and Windsor.  

  He is currently the Acting AVP Research and Dean of Graduate Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

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  Chrystal Sparrow

  Chrystal Sparrow is a xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Coast Salish artist that comes from a long line of Coast Salish weavers, carvers, and fishermen that span generations.

  She describes her work as a unique living art language that voices her family's teachings and feminine Coast Salish art. Sparrow works in red and yellow cedar creating traditional welcoming Houseposts and a variety of multimedia artwork. She is well-known for being a female Coast Salish carver, a practice still rare to this day.

  Her public art can found at the Vancouver School board, Starbucks, BC Children's Hospital, and the new Lelem Community Centre in UBC.

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  Tafui

  Born in Xaymaca/Kingston, Jamaica, Tafui moved to Tiohtià:ke/Montreal where she received a Diploma of College Studies (DEC) in studio arts from Dawson College and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design Art at Concordia University. She now lives in Vancouver.

  Her work spans various media fine art, textile design, and murals. She is inspired by her love for Indigenous cultures, modern design, and traditional textile techniques. Tafui has exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery where she also collaborated to create their first charity fundraiser for arts education. 

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  Romane Bladou

  Romane Bladou’s practice is one of looking that is allowed by ways of slowness, walking, and transit. She uses methods of writing, photography, and videography to record those experiences in space and time, and of projection and reflection to translate these moments into mediated installations.

  Bladou is a sessional faculty member in the photography department at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where she received her MFA in 2020. She has exhibited her work in Canada and internationally, and published her writing and photography in various art and poetry publications. Her work has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Art Council, and the Québec Art Council (CALQ).

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  Scott Billings

  Scott Billings is a visual artist, industrial designer, and engineer. His sculptures and video installations have been described as existing somewhere between cinema and automata. Centering on issues of animality, mobility, and spectatorship, Billings’ work examines the mimetic relationship between the physical apparatus and the virtual motion it delivers. In what ways does the apparatus itself reveal both the mechanisms of causality and its own dormant animal quality? Billings addresses this question under the pursuit of the technological conundrum and a preoccupation with precise geometry and logic.

  Billings holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia, a BFA from Emily Carr University, and a BASc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo. He teaches at UBC and Emily Carr as a sessional instructor.

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  Dona Nabata

  Dona Nabata is a multimedia artist who has shown work at the Burnaby Art Gallery and Cityscape Artspace, and has an upcoming show at the Richmond Art Gallery. Her work is in private collections in both Canada and the United States. As a third-generation Japanese-Canadian, her work has revolved around identity, culture, and awareness.

  She uses personal photographs and found imagery in her collage-based paintings and drawings. She is interested in visuality and straddling inner and outside states of consciousness.

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  Chipo Chipaziwa

  Chipo Chipaziwa is a visual artist who predominantly works in the medium of performance art.

  Chipaziwa’s practice concerns itself with the fluidity of identity, the performativity of the Black body, and Chipaziwa’s own investigation of disrupting the gaze of the other.

  Chipaziwa has previously worked with the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver, FADO Performance Art Centre, and Live Biennale.

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  David Ezra Wang

  David Ezra Wang was born on Munsee Lenape land (New Jersey), raised on Ketagalan land (Taipei), and currently studies as an uninvited guest on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) land. When he's with himself, he's an artist, or a writer. When he's with others, he's a friend, a comrade, a teacher, a spirit, or a stone in a river.

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  Josephine Lee

  Lee holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in both science and fine arts and has exhibited throughout Canada, the United States, and the EU. She was recently awarded the Oscar Kolin Fellowship, the Vera G List Sculpture Award, a Gail and Stephen A Jarislowsky Outstanding Artist Award at BANFF, the BIPOC Studio Award at Griffin Art Projects, and a Canada Council for the Arts grant for Research and Creation.

  Lee recently completed residencies at BANFF Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver, and the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery in a collaboration with physicists at the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute Research Centre. Lee received an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons The New School of Art, Media, and Technology, is a doctoral student at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts’ inaugural PhD in Contemporary Arts program, and works as a sessional lecturer at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and the University of British Columbia.

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  Edson Sithole

  Edson Sithole is an independent filmmaker whose work focuses on the immigrant experience, in particular the African diaspora. His last short film, The Violin, was screened at the Oregon Short Film Festival, Vues d'Afrique in Montreal, and Seattle Black Film Festival. His journey in film included stops in fine arts and architecture. While in school he took a film class as an elective and it unlocked in him a need to tell stories with a political and social urgency.

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  Svava Tergesen 

  Svava Tergesen is an interdisciplinary artist who combines elements of sculpture, collage, and cooking. Her work reimagines experiences of domesticity, gender, and health. Her work has been exhibited at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver, and she was recently long-listed for the New Generation Photography Prize.

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  Gina Ortiz

  Gina is a Mexican-Canadian visual artist. Her work reflects on themes of journey and freedom with bold and elevated use of colour that constantly plays within the borders of abstract and figurative form. She is known for designing spontaneously, fluidly, and without constraint working with acrylics, wax crayons, ink on paper or canvas board, combining collage and printmaking techniques.

  Gina studied Architecture at Universidad de Monterrey in Mexico where she grew up. After relocating to Vancouver in 2011, Gina studied illustration and screen-printing at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

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  Zoe Kirk-Gushowaty

  Zoe Kirk-Gushowaty works experimentally with moving image and sound, exploring the perimeters of inner and outer landscapes within film and time based media. She is interested in the tactile processes of analog filmmaking, with much of her work incorporating 16mm and 8mm formats.

  She is a founding member of the Iris Film Collective whose work has been shown in the form of multi-channel screenings, installations, and performances in festivals, galleries, and museums internationally.

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  Lucien Durey

  Lucien Durey is a queer artist, writer, and singer. He is the son of Americans who immigrated to Northern Saskatchewan in the 1970s.

  His mixed media and performance-based practice engages with found objects, photographs, sounds, and place.

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  Katie Kozak

  Katie Kozak is a queer artist of Métis and Ukrainian settler descent. She grew up in Denare Beach, Saskatchewan, with ancestral roots in the Métis communities of St. François Xavier, and Boggy Creek, Manitoba.

  Her visual art practice contemplates connectivity to land, and centres on relationship, ritual, and traces. She begins her process by spending contemplative time in nature, with other living beings.