Hiba Abdallah is an artist and educator who frequently works with others. Her practice explores the structural legacies and futures of cities and communities by researching the intersections of hospitality, agitation, and disagreement as productive frameworks for re-imagining public agency. She currently lives and works in Tkaronto, on the traditional land of the Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River.

Daniel is a Partner who leads Deloitte’s National Third Party Transformation Practice. He has a wealth of experience working with major banking, public sector, and life sciences clients globally on supply chain and third party management.

He co-chairs The Art Gallery of Ontario’s marquee fundraiser, Art Bash, with a deliberate focus on access to art and education.

Daniel also leads Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives for the firm’s advisory business. He is a tireless advocate for underrepresented groups and drives for equal representation at the firm and in our communities.

Destinie Adelakun is an award-winning contemporary Canadian multi-disciplinary artist. Her work extends from photography to film, paintings, and sculpture; which explore themes of pre-colonized African/Indian history, mythology, religions, and spirituality. Her goal as an artist is to empower people of the diaspora by narrating African/ Indian folklore and mythology. She celebrates women of the African diaspora and plays with adornment that embodies the creative direction of the work. The self-taught artist was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and raised in Nagpur, India, and she currently lives and works between Toronto, Canada, and New York City.

Born and raised in Cavalcanti (north part of RJ). Holds a BA degree in Dance from UFRJ, works with performance, dance and audiovisual. Has worked with the Contemporary Dance Company at UFRJ and other artists such as Marcela Levi, Lucía Russo, Gustavo Ciríaco, Lilibeth Cuenca, Pablo Carvalho, Giselda Fernandes, Hilton Berredo e Lia Rodrigues. Creator of a social media project of collection and creation of memories about Cavalcanti called Cavalcanti-se (@cavalcanti.se), co-director of the artistic project BERRO (@berroaltomesmo), and member of the Frente Cavalcanti (@frentecavalcanti).

Natalie Alvarez is Associate Dean of Scholarly, Research and Creative Activities and Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the School of Performance with research specializations in performance studies, contemporary political performance and rights emergencies in the Americas, immersive performance in the public sphere, Latinx diasporic performance, art activism, and scenario-based pedagogy. She is author of Immersions in Cultural Difference: Tourism, War, Performance (U of Michigan Press, 2018) winner of the Ann Saddlemyer Book Prize by the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR). Her most recent book, Theatre & War, is currently in press with Bloomsbury and due for release in January 2023.

Sérgio P. Andrade, PhD, is an artist, professor and researcher in dance, performance and philosophy. Since 2012, he has been a Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, in the Department of Bodily Art, teaching at the Undergraduate and Graduate Dance Programs. He coordinates the Laboratório de Crítica (the "LabCrítica") at UFRJ, in which he develops several collaborative research-creation activities, training, publication, curatorship and exchange in dance and performance. Some recent results of this work are the book "Performar Debates" (2017) and the two editions of the conference and performance showcase "Trans-In-Corporados", which took place at Rio Art Museum in 2017 and 2018.

Lara is a trilingual Dora nominated Toronto-based artist by way of Beirut, Lebanon, upstate NY, and Paris, France. As an actor, she most recently appeared in The House of Bernarda Alba (Modern Times/Aluna) and The Solitudes (Aluna/Nightwood). Other favourite theatre credits include: The Silver Arrow (Citadel), Blood Wedding (Modern Times/Aluna Theatre) Upon the Fragile Shore (CorpoLuz Theatre) and The Container (Theatre Fix). Recent TV/Film credits include: Kim’s Convenience, The Handmaid’s Tale, Ghostwriter, Rabbit Hole, Murdoch Mysteries, Taken, Dark Matter. As a writer, Lara has been a member of the Banff Playwrights Unit and Nightwood Theatre’s Write from the Hip program. She was nominated for a Dora Award for Outstanding New Play (Youth Division) as part of the writing team for Les Zinspiré.e.s 8 (Théâtre français de Toronto). Her episodic radio play, Convictions, (commissioned by TfT and Radio-Canada) is in development as a full- length play and is due to premiere in Toronto in the 2023-24 theatre season.

Reneltta Arluk (Theatre and Performance; Inuvialuit Region) is Inuvialuit, Dene and Cree from the Northwest Territories. She is the founder of Akpik Theatre, a professional Indigenous Theatre company in the NWT. Akpik Theatre focuses on establishing an authentic Northern Indigenous voice through theatre and storytelling. Raised by her grandparents on the trap-line until school age, this nomadic environment gave Reneltta the skills to become the multi-disciplined artist she is now. Reneltta is the first Inuk and first Indigenous woman to direct at The Stratford Festival. Reneltta is Director of Indigenous Arts at BANFF Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Salome Asega is a new media artist and design researcher exploring the social and cultural impacts of emerging technology. Salome is the Director of NEW INC and a co-founder of POWRPLNT, a digital collaboratory in Brooklyn. Salome received her MFA from Parsons at The New School in Design and Technology where she teaches studio courses on speculative design and participatory design methodologies.

Michael Belmore employs a variety of materials and processes that at times may seem disjointed, yet, the reality is that together his work and processes speak about the environment, about land, about water, and what it is to be Anishinaabe. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art & Design, he completed his Masters of Fine Art at the University of Ottawa in 2019.

Belmore’s work is represented in multiple institutions including the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

His exhibitions include: Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON, Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art at the Peabody Essex in Salem, MA and HIDE: Skin as Material and Metaphor at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York.

Anna Binta Diallo is a Canadian multi-disciplinary visual artist who investigates memory and nostalgia to create unexpected narratives surrounding identity. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at La Maison des Artistes Francophones (Winnipeg), Art Gal­lery of Southwestern Manitoba, Art Gallery of Alberta, Towards (Toronto), Access Gallery (Vancouver), Vancou­ver’s Capture Photography Festival, MAI (Montréal Arts Interculturels), MOCA Tapei, SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), and, Jyväskylä Art Museum add Keurru Museum in Finland. She holds an MFA from Transart Institute, and an Honours BFA from the University of Manitoba’s School of Art, where she currently teaches.

Sonja Carmichael is a Quandamooka woman and descendant of the Ngugi people from Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island), Queensland, Australia. They come from a family of artists and curators, and often work collaboratively to revive, nurture, and preserve cultural knowledge, practices and saltwater identity. The Carmichael’s draw inspiration from the beauty of nature and create work sourced or made from the land and sea, celebrating the ongoing richness of Country and ancestral memory embodied in living materials.

Juan Carlos Saavedra is a producer, director and actor who graduated from the acting academy M&M Studio, Patricia Reyes Spíndola and the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. He is the founder of Teatro Ciego MX, a theatre company that promotes the inclusion of people with visual disabilities and the performing arts. He is the director of Arte Ciego A.C., a non-profit association dedicated to the creation, research, promotion, development, and dissemination of inclusive performing arts at a national and international level. He is also the director of the “Other Territories” Meeting, a space that promotes research, professionalization, and dissemination of inclusive artistic proposals from various latitudes. He is currently working on the project “Methodology of training, creation and stage production based on blindness: Disarticulation of aesthetic constructs on the scene.”

Pablo Carvalho is a Brazilian musician, educator, teacher, cultural producer and multi-artist. Born in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Pablo has been shaped by the rhythms. Percussionist and interpreter creator. His musical training has been shaped by the popular rhythms of “rodas,” “sambas,” “afoxés” and “jongos,” mixed with musical experimentation and research into popular music. Currently a member of the Frente Cavalcanti collective, Production Assistant in Lona Da Maré (RJ), and one of the creators of the “Berro” Project. Pablo is also a student of History at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Chris Chong Chan Fui works with varying materials in an installation format that interconnects fields such as architecture, science, sports, economics, and the moving image. Chong has exhibited his works at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Palais de Tokyo, EYE Film Institute Netherlands, Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art, and the 2018 Gwanju Biennale. Chong has also premiered at the Cannes' Directors’ Fortnight, Vienna, BFI London, and Toronto's Wavelengths. Works within public collections include the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden.Chong is a Smithsonian Institute fellow (National Museum of Natural History), a Ford Foundation fellow, and most recently, he was awarded the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Arts Fellowship, Italy.

Karl Chitham (Ngā Puhi, Te Uriroroi) is Director of the Dowse Art Museum (Lower Hutt, New Zealand). He is interested in interdisciplinary practice across toi Māori, contemporary art and craft. Chitham was Convenor of the Rydal Art Prize, was a judge for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and The National Contemporary Art Awards, and was on the selection panel for the New Zealand Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Recent writing projects have included essay contributions for Holding Ground: Nuit Blanche and Other Ruptures, Becoming Our Futures: Global Indigenous Curatorial Practice, Traverse: Mark Igloliorte and Te Ao Mariko: Kereama Taepa.

blackpowerbarbie (Amika Cooper in real life) is a multi-faceted still and motion artist specializing in 2D animation from Toronto, currently based in NYC. blackpowerbarbie believes in the transformative and reflective power of storytelling, and approaches each body of work with sensitivity and reverence for her subjects.

Selena Couture is a settler scholar and an Associate Professor in Drama at the University of Alberta in Treaty 6 territory / Métis Region No.4. Her research deconstructs conceptions of settler colonial white possession while foregrounding the maintenance of Indigenous places through performance. Publications include: Against the Current and Into the Light(2020) and On this Patch of Grass(2018). She is part of the Kule scholar cohortfocusing on Climate Resilience in the 21st Century. Her research responds to the crisis of global warming, aiming to create responsible relations with Indigenous people, lands and all other-than-human beings.

Professor in the Undergraduate Dance Program at UFRJ. Coordinator with Ruth Torralba of the Center for Research, Studies and Encounters in Dance (onucleo) – UFRJ. Dance artist, has worked with Holly Cavrell, Regina Miranda, Andrea Jabor, Lia Rodrigues, and others. Creator of the solo piece "Brinquedos para esquecer ou práticas de levante", has been artistically and academically investigating counter-choreographic practices that question and reframe dance’s colonial legacy.

Jess Dobkin has been a working artist, curator, community activist, mentor and teacher for more than 25 years, creating and producing intimate solo theatre performances, large-scale public happenings, socially engaged interventions and performance art workshops and talks. Her practice extends across black boxes and white cubes, art fairs and subway stations, international festivals, and single bathroom stalls. She operated an artist-run newsstand in a vacant subway station kiosk, a soup kitchen for artists, a breast milk tasting bar, and a performance festival hub for kids. Her film and video works are distributed by Vtape and traces of her performance work are held in performance art archives internationally.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong is a Chinese-born Montreal-based artist working with performance, photography, video, AR and VR. Dong received a BFA from Emily Carr University Art & Design and MFA from Concordia University in Canada. Dong has exhibited their works and performed nationally and internationally. Dong was a finalist for Contemporary Art Award at Le Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec 2020. Dong received Cultural Diversity in Visual Arts Award from the Conseil des arts de Montréal in 2021.

Rah Eleh is a digital and performance artist and her work has been exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally at spaces including: Images Festival (Toronto), Museum London, Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa), Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, Massachusetts), Miami Art Basel, Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem, Netherlands), MUU Galleria (Helsinki), SomoS Berlin, and Onassis Cultural Center (Athens, Greece). She has been the recipient of numerous awards including: Chalmers Arts Fellowship, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Grants and a SSHRC Canada Doctoral and Graduate Scholarship.

Dr Léuli Eshrāghi, Sāmoan artist, curator and researcher, intervenes in display territories to centre Indigenous presence and power, sensual and spoken languages, and ceremonial-political practices. Through performance, moving image, writing and installation, ia engages with Indigenous possibility as haunted by ongoing militourist and missionary violences that erase faʻafafine-faʻatama from kinship structures. Ia contributes to growing international critical practice across the Great Ocean and North America through residencies, exhibitions, publications, teaching and rights advocacy. Eshrāghi holds a PhD in Curatorial Practice (2019) from Monash University, a Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Arts Management (2012) and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Indigenous and Francophone Studies (2009) from University of Melbourne.

Peggy Gale is an independent curator and critic addressing contemporary media-related and time-based artworks. Her recent projects include "Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection," inaugurating The Image Centre (Toronto, 2012), and the 2014 Biennale de Montréal, "L’avenir (looking forward).” With Fern Bayer and Chrysanne Stathacos, she was curator of the inaugural Nuit Blanche Toronto Bloor/Yorkville Zone A in 2006. Also in 2006, she received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. A broad selection of her essays is currently in preparation, Antecedents: Art After Video.

Alexandra Gelis is a Colombian-Venezuelan, media artist with a background in visual arts and is currently a PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at York University. Her work predominantly involves photography, video, electronic and digital processes. Gelis’ work addresses the use of the image in relation to displacement, landscape and politics beyond borders or culturally specific subjects. She also works as an educator/facilitator, leading video and photography workshops for youth in marginalized communities in Canada, Colombia and Panama.

Marcial Godoy is a sociocultural anthropologist and the Managing Director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University. He is Editor of emisférica (with Macarena Gómez-Barris), the Institute's trilingual online journal. His publications include "Area Studies and the Decade after 9/11" (2016) with Seteney Shami; Religiones, matrimonio igualitario y aborto: Alianzas con y entre actores religiosos por los derechos sexuales y reproductivos en Argentina (2014) with Daniel Jones y Angélica Peña; Rhetorics of Insecurity: Belonging and Violence in the Neoliberal Era (2013) with Zeynep Gambetti; and Ciudades Translocales: Espacios, flujo, representación—Perspectivas desde las Américas (2005) with Rossana Reguillo.

Grahn (b. 1982) is of south Sámi descent. She grew up in Jokkmokk and received a Master of Fine Arts from the Royal Institute of Art in 2013. She lives and works in New York. Grahn works primarily with narration in text, photography, installation and sound. Intense emotions, such as contempt, desire and vindictiveness, are often the point of departure in her praxis. Among other venues, her work has been exhibited at Art Edition 2014 at Hangaram Art Museum of the Seoul Arts Center, South Korea 2014, Passagen Konsthall, Linköping 2015, and SP, Tromsö 2015. She also published the novel Lo & Professorn in 2013.

Claren Grosz is a Toronto based theatre and visual artist and Artistic Director of Pencil Kit Productions. She is the recipient of the 2018 Ken MacDougall Emerging Director Award and the 2015 My Entertainment World Outstanding Direction (Small Theatre) Award. She recently published her first illustrated chapbook of poetry, starting with the roof of my mouth (Gap Riot Press, 2022). Some of her favourite theatre projects included directing CHICHO (Pencil Kit Productions/Theatre Passe Muraille, 2019) and co-creating and directing Shadow Girls (Pencil Kit Productions, 2018). Upcoming: Creator/Performer, I love the smell of gasoline (RUTAS Festival, 2022). When she isn’t making art, Claren teaches children and teenagers math on zoom.

Originally from London, UK, Sebastian Greenall moved to Canada in 2010. Settling in Toronto, Sebastian currently works for Cadillac Fairview (CF) as an architectural and master planner with a strong focus on public realm, landscape and horticulture. He encourages a contextual and narrative-based approach to planning, architecture and placemaking. As part of his work, Sebastian acquires and commissions art on behalf of CF for a variety of contexts. Some notable commissioned projects include the new pedestrian bridge at the CF Toronto Eaton Centre, Catherine Widgery's "Time's Shadow" at the CF Rideau Centre in Ottawa (in collaboration with the City of Ottawa's Public Art Program), John McEwen's "Miracle" at CF Sherway Gardens, two drawings by Zachari Logan for the TD Tower in Vancouver, and most recently, a polyptych based on Toronto's waterways by Linda Martinello as well as a painting by Ron Moppett for the lobby of 95 Wellington in Toronto. Sebastian has also worked with the City of Toronto to facilitate performances by Brandy Leary (Anandam Dance, 2018) and Bekah Brown (Chasing Red, 2019) for Nuit Blanche at the CF Toronto Eaton Centre.

Inuvialuk artist Maureen Gruben employs an intimate materiality. In her practice, organic and industrial materials merge to forge critical links between daily life in the Western Arctic and global environmental and cultural concerns. Based in Tuktoyaktuk, she holds a BFA from the University of Victoria and has exhibited regularly across Canada and internationally. She was longlisted for the 2019 Aesthetica Art Prize and the 2021 Sobey Art Prize, and her work is held in national and private collections.

Amrita Hepi (b. 1989, Townsville of Bundjalung/Ngapuhi territories) is an artist working with dance and choreography through video, the social function of performance spaces, installation and objects. Utilizing hybridity and the extension of choreographic or performative practices, Hepi creates work that considers the body’s relationship to personal histories and the archive.

Tsēmā is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and a member of the Tahltan Nation. She uses Potlatch Methodology to create conceptual artwork influenced by her mentorship in Formline Design, her studies in visual culture (BA, MA) and time in the mountains. Tsēmā sits on Tu’dese’cho Indigenous Wholistic Leadership Development and YVR Art Foundation governing boards; she has shown in various places in Canada and internationally presenting her work that connects materials to mine sites and bodies to the land.

Dr. Heather Igloliorte, an Inuk from Nunatsiavut, holds the Tier 1 University Research Chair in Circumpolar Indigenous Arts and is an associate professor in the Department of Art History at Concordia University in Montreal, QC. Her essay “Curating Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: Inuit Knowledge in the Qallunaat Art Museum,” was awarded the 2017 Distinguished Article of the Year from Art Journal. Heather has been a curator for fifteen years; her exhibition SakKijajuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut received an Award of Outstanding Achievement from the Canadian Museums Association in 2017. Heather also directs the SSHRC Partnership Grant, Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership (2018-2025).

Mark Igloliorte (Inuk, Nunatsiavut) is an artist, essayist and educator. He is an associate professor of Frameworks and Interventions in Indigenous Art Practices, Department of Studio Arts at Concordia University.

As a scholar and artist his work investigates relating to indigenous futures through a grounding in the embodied practices and language. Igloliorte's artistic work has been exhibited in solo and group shows across Canada as well as internationally. Including including New Zealand and The Netherlands.

Serena Keshavjee coordinates the Curatorial Practices stream of the Masters in Cultural Studies, while teaching Modern Art and Architectural History at the University of Winnipeg. Her academic publishing focuses on the intersection of art and science in visual culture at the fin-de-siècle. In 2015 she co-edited with Fae Brauer, Picturing Evolution and Extinction: Regeneration and Degeneration in Modern Visual Culture (Cambridge Scholars Press) for which she was awarded an SSHRC grant. Keshavjee’s current SSHRC funded research is a book and exhibition on a Canadian medical doctor who studied and photographed ectoplasmic materializations of ghosts for 15 years.

Alicia Laguna is a stage artist, curator, producer, and artistic co-director of Teatro Línea de Sombra since 1993. With them she has been a company actress and a creator of plays addressing the context of Mexico’s socio-political reality for over ten years. She has been a curator at the Transversales Encuentro Internacional de Escena Contemporáneasince its inception in 1998. As an actress she has participated in movies such as Norteado (Northless) directed by Rigoberto Perezcano and has won the prize for best actress at the Abu Dabhi Film Festival. She was, along with film director Maria Berns, a co-creator of the experimental film So Long.

Egly Larreynaga Pacas is the founder of Teatro del Azoro, La Cachada Teatro, and the Azoro Cultural Association (ACA) which produce original theatre works about current social issues. Her work has toured across Latin America, the US, and Spain. Since 2020 she runs an old cinema in the historic centre of San Salvador as a cultural centre, a project that has been featured in national and international media. Her pedagogical methodology is the focus of the films Espejo Roto (directed by Marcela Zamora, 2013) and the award-winning documentary Cachada: the Opportunity (directed by Marlén Viñayo, 2019), which has toured across Latin America, Europe, Japan and Nepal.

Gabriel has been with Concord Adex since 2001 and has led the development of all the Concord CityPlace and Concord Park Place projects. As a registered architect, Gabriel has a clear understanding of the aesthetic aspects of building design, and as a developer, the need to balance the aesthetics against budget, schedule and efficiency objectives. Apart from leading the projects through the approval processes, Gabriel is also responsible for the public art program of Concord CityPlace and Concord Park Place, with the objective being the successful integration of the different layers of art opportunities into a coherent whole.

Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Cree/Halfbreed; German/Polish): interdisciplinary artist, singer-songwriter, thinker! Her family roots are from Papaschase First Nation / amiskwaciy wāskahikan (Edmonton) and Kikino Metis Settlement, AB. Her work investigates and articulates a dynamism of nēhiyawin (Cree worldview) in contemporary time-place incorporating Indigenous language(s), music, audio, video, VR, sewn objects, the olfactory, and audience/user participation to create immersive environments towards ‘radical inclusion’ and decolonisation. Cheryl has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally and is the recipient the 2021 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art.

Description goes hereDáiddadállu / Dine Arnannguaq Fenger Lynge wass born and raised in Kalaallit Nunaat, but has lived in Sápmi for 19 years.

On a daily basis, she works as managing director of the Dáiddadállu artist collective in Kautokeino. She works with the development of the collective and its members. Dáiddadállu is currently working on making Sami artists visible through films via SoMe.

Dr. Shana MacDonald is an artist-activist-scholar of Scottish, French, and Mi'kmaq ancestry from the Qualipu First Nations of western Newfoundland. She is Associate Professor in Communication Arts and the current President of the Film Studies Association of Canada. Her interdisciplinary research examines feminist, queer, Indigenous, and anti-racist media activisms within social and digital media, popular culture, cinema, and contemporary art. Dr. MacDonald is a co-director of the qcollaborative (qLab), a feminist design lab dedicated to developing new forms of relationality through technologies and public performance. She is lead author on the forthcoming book Networked Feminist Activisms (Lexington Press).

Dr. Janine Marchessault is a Professor in Cinema and Media Studies, and holds a York University Research Chair in Media Art and Social Engagement. Her research has engaged with diverse models of public art, festivals, and site specific curation, as well as 21st century moving-image archives and notions of collective memory/history. She is a founder of the Future Cinema Lab, A Trudeau Fellow, and a Member of the Royal Society of Canada. She is the PI for Archive/Counter-Archive: Activating AV Heritage (2018-2024 SSHRC Partnership Grant) counterarchive.ca, a research collaboration involving more than 14 community and artist-run archives in Canada.

Dr. Brian Martin is a descendant of Muruwari, Bundjalung and Kamilaroi peoples and has been a practicing artist for twenty-seven years exhibiting both nationally and internationally in the media of painting and drawing. His research and practice focus on refiguring Australian art and culture from an Indigenous ideological perspective based on a reciprocal relationship to Country.. Brian is the inaugural Associate Dean Indigenous in the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture (MADA) at Monash University, where he leads the Wominjeka Djeembana research lab. He is also Honorary Professor of Eminence at Centurion University of Technology and Management in Odisha, India.

Amparo Marroquín Parducci is a Professor in the Department of Communication and Culture at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) of El Salvador since 1997. She is part of the coordinating team of the research group on Political Communication and Citizenship for CLACSO and a researcher at the International Center for Studies on Border Epistemologies and Political Economy of Culture in Chile. Her research has focused on examining the way in which identities, cultures, and narratives in the media have changed since migratory processes gained prominence, the conformation of memory and intangible heritage, and the ways in which different forms of violence are named, in particular those that began in the 1990s.

Victoria Mata is a Venezuelan-Canadian settler in T’Koronto and a poly-lingual choreographer, dance artist, and activist with a background in expressive arts therapy. Mata’s career was first sculpted by pedagogic, self-directed training, followed with training under internationally renowned choreographers. Mata’s sensibility to inclusion and border stories is due to her eclectic upbringing in three continents before the age of fifteen. Her intimate, dynamic and visceral aesthetic is rooted in traditional Venezuelan dance genres reframed through contemporary expressions. Intersectional, multi-framed community-arts and the abolishment of violence against women are some of Mata’s passions. She is a recipient of the Metcalf Foundation, a finalist of the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award and received 2 Ensemble Dora nominations. Mata deeply believes in the arts as a core and tangible mode of sustaining and transforming the paradigms of oppressive tropes to populate a sphere of discourse, play, exploration and possibility.

Cathy Mattes (Michif) is a curator writer, and art history professor based out of Sprucewoods, Manitoba, Canada. Her curation, research and writing centers on dialogic and Indigenous knowledge-centered curatorial practice as strategies for care. Curatorial projects include Kwaata-nihtaawakihk (Co-curator Sherry Farrell Racette, Winnipeg Art Gallery, March 2022), Radical Stitch (Co-curators Sherry Farrell Racette and Michelle Lavallee, Mackenzie Art Gallery, April 2022), and Inheritance: Amy Malbeuf (March 2017, Kelowna Art Gallery). She has a PhD in Indigenous Studies from the University of Manitoba, and currently teaches at the University of Winnipeg in the History of Art and Curatorial Studies programs. Mattes has been beading since she was 20 years old, when she was first taught by her auntie Jean Baron Ward. Since then she has taught beading and moccasin-making in workshops, university courses, and around her kitchen table with family and friends.

Carla Melo (she/her) is a director, performer, researcher and educator whose works have been presented in the U.S., Brazil and Canada. She is a co-founder of CorpOLuz Theatre with Lara Arabian and former Co-Artistic Director of Corpus Delicti, a butoh-inspired ensemble based in Los Angeles. Her artistic and scholarly works are invested in the ways in which corporeality articulates collective memory and marginalized identities, as well as how the body intervenes into public urban spaces. She holds a PhD from UCLA and is currently an Assistant professor at University of Toronto Scarborough’s Arts, Cultures and Media department.

JP Marchant is an independent filmmaker. He is the Director of Operations for Cinemobilia, a mobile media digitisation and preservation lab associated with Archive/Counter-Archive (counterarchive.ca). His most recent films use found footage, archival research, and his family’s home movies to complicate popular understandings of class, affect, and his own family's Latin American migration.

Karen Mills, the founder of Public Art Management is a graduate of the Christie's Fine Arts Course in London England and a former curator and gallery director in Vancouver BC. She, along with her son Ben, has managed some 300 public art projects for private and public sector clients around the globe including management of the Legacy Public Art Program for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, the Integrated Art Program for the Canadian Embassy in Berlin, projects for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, the Integrated Art Program for the Gordie Howe International Bridge as well as a major installation in the National Capital Region in Canberra Australia. She is currently working as a subject matter expert and consultant on the development of Therapeutic Art Programs for four new hospital campuses in Ontario. Mills has curated the Concord Adex public art program in Toronto for 25 years. She is also a mentor to emerging artists interested in advancing a career in public art.

Born to an Anishinaabe mother and a French father, Caroline Monnet is a multidisciplinary artist from Outaouais based in Montreal. After studying at the University of Ottawa and the University of Granada in Spain, she pursued a career in visual arts and film. Her work is regularly presented internationally and can also be found in prestigious museum, private and corporate collections. Her practice is often minimalist yet emotionally charged. Monnet has become known for her work with industrial materials, combining the vocabulary of popular and traditional visual cultures with the tropes of modernist abstraction to create unique hybrid forms. She is represented by Blouin Division Gallery.

Wanda Nanibush is an Anishinaabe-kwe curator, image and word warrior and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation. Based in Toronto, Nanibush is the inaugural curator of Indigenous Art and co-lead of the Indigenous + Canadian Art Department at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She founded aabaakwad in 2018 which yearly gathers together Indigenous artists, curators and writers most recently at the Venice Biennale. Wanda’s latest retrospective Robert Houle Red is Beautiful is touring.

Shelley Niro (born 1954) is a Mohawk filmmaker and visual artist from New York and Ontario. She is known for her photographs using herself and female family members cast in contemporary positions to challenge the stereotypes and clichés of Native American women. A multidisciplinary contemporary artist skilled in photography, painting, sculpting, beadwork, multimedia, and independent film, Niro is a member of the Turtle clan of the Kanienkehaka (Mohawk Nation) from Six Nations of the Grand River.

Juma Pariri seeks to listen and learn from plant secrets. They move in the friction between the arts of the body, undisciplined pedagogy, and the indigenous struggle for environmental justice. They are part of the social movements Retomada Kariri and the Wyka Kwara Multiethnic Association. Among others, they activate the platform AGITPORN! – POR NO a la desigualdad, for social decolonization!, to learn from indigenous ancestors about anti-monocultural sexualities, cuisines and crops, and the audiovisual springboard United against colonization: many eyes. They areabout to take up a post-doctoral project-flight, called Indigenous perforMAGICAL ACTivations at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics (New York University).

Sage Paul is an urban Denesuline woman based in Toronto and a member of English River First Nation. Her ethos centres family, sovereignty and resistance for balance. Sage is the Executive & Artistic Director and co-founder of Indigenous Fashion Arts. She has worked in Indigenous arts for 18 years, created and led several fashion arts projects and collaborations and has been recognized by her community and the art and fashion industries as a leader and changemaker.

Beatriz Pizano (Actor/ Director/Playwright) is the founder and Artistic Director of Aluna Theatre, a company recognized for its unique approach to creation, its daring political work, and its experimentation with multi-language productions. She has received a number of prestigious awards including the John Hirsch Prize, the Chalmers Fellowship, the K.M. Hunter award and numerous Dora awards and nominations.  She is the first Latinx actress to win a Toronto Critics award and a Dora for her performance in Blood Wedding.  In 2019 she was named one of TD’s 10 Most Influential Hispanic Canadians.  She is passionate about nurturing the next generation of artists creating with a TransAmerican vision.

Kimberly Skye Richards is a settler scholar and dramaturg who engages performance as a vehicle for resisting extractivism, inspiring just transitions, and moving through impasses. She obtained a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California-Berkeley in 2019, and was a Public Energy Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow in Transition in Energy, Culture, and Society at University of Alberta (2021). She co-edited an issue of Canadian Theatre Review on “Extractivism and Performance,” which won the 2022 Patrick O’Neill Award for editing (CATR). She currently teaching in the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at the University of British Columbia and is on the Mission Circle of SCALE.

Debbie Ebanks Schlums is an artist-researcher and Vanier Scholar pursuing a doctorate in Cinema and Media Studies at York University. Her research explores archiving methodologies of the Jamaican Diaspora through storytelling and media art installation. Debbie was Co-Director of the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film (2016-2020) and Co-Producer of Saugeen Takes on Film and is a member of the Odeimin Runners Club media art collective forming new connections between Indigenous and Jamaican communities through the arts.

Meera Sethi is a contemporary Canadian visual artist with an interdisciplinary, intuitive, and research-based practice.

Her work lies at the intersection of the subjugated body and histories of cloth with a particular focus on South Asia and it’s diasporas.

Using painting, drawing, fibre, photography, illustration, performance, and social practice, she delves deep into the ways we understand and appreciate cloth, clothing, and the body, including it’s histories, it’s resonances, and it’s possibilities.

Elyla Sinvergüenza is a transdisciplinary artist and uses performance art as the fundamental resource of their artistic practice, constantly moving through photography, video, relational art, installation, radical activism, travestismo as political action in Central America, and site-specific performance workshops. They are the first Nicaraguan artist to ever receive a grant from the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, in the category of Emerging Artist in 2018. Their artwork has been shown in Spain, Holland, Nicaragua, Canada, United States, China, Cuba, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, France, and Chile. Barahona lives and works in Managua, Nicaragua.

Whyishnave Suthagar is an installation artist from the GTA. Her practice focuses on creating site specific installations using projection, light design, thread based weavings and original soundscapes. Her works play with light, space and sound to create immersive meditative experiences. Themes she explores in her work include ancient myth, dreams, memory and the subconscious mind. More specifically she uses the ideas found in ancient myth to understand the world we live in today. Her work is meant to assess her present surroundings using a lens of the past. As a second-generation Tamil-Canadian, Whyishnave often draws from her heritage and upbringing, being a part of a family who left Sri Lanka during the civil war of 1983-2009.

Tamara Toledo is a PhD candidate in Art History and Visual Culture at York University. She is a co-founder of the non-profit arts organization, Latin American Canadian Art Projects. Her research focuses on Latin American diasporic art in Canada shaped by violence, trauma, and displacement, while following decolonial practices that defy hegemonic tendencies within contemporary art. Toledo has presented at various conferences in Montreal, New York, Vancouver, Chicago, Mexico City, and Toronto. Her writing has appeared in ARM Journal, C Magazine, Fuse, Canadian Art, and Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture Journal of the University of California. Toledo is currently the Director/Curator of Sur Gallery.

Antonio Torres-Ruiz (PhD. in Political Science) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Development Studies at the University of Toronto, and an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC), at York University, in Canada. He defines himself as both a transdisciplinary academic and a social justice activist. His areas of interest and expertise are Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), Knowledge Democracy, Epistemic and Policy Networks Analysis, Identity Politics and Racialized Social Groups in the Americas, Global Development and Political Economy, Democratization, Equity, Ethics, Human Rights and Health. He collaborates with several NGOs and Arts Companies in Canada, Italy, and Mexico, and is a member of the UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education’s Knowledge for Change (K4C) network.

José Torres Tama is a performance and visual artist, published poet and playwright, and cultural activist. His “Taco Truck Theater” ensemble explored the anti-immigrant hysteria and received a prestigious MAPFUND grant. He is an NEA award-recipient, and his acclaimed solo “Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers” has sold-out a two hundred-seat theater at Vanderbilt University, and theaters in Los Angeles, Houston, and Minneapolis. From 2006 to 2011, he contributed post-Katrina commentaries that aired on NPR’s “Latino USA.” ” In 2019, Northwestern University Press published the full performance script of “Aliens” in the anthology “Encuentro: New Latinx Performances for the American Theater.”

Emele Ugavule is a Tokelauan Fijian storyteller. Her research and practice area of interest is Oceanic Indigenous-led storytelling, working across live performance, screen & digital media as a writer, director, creative producer, performer, educator and mentor. Her work explores creative processes and outcomes grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing, and nurturing the vā where embodiment, cultural expression, digitisation and neuroscience intersect. Emele is a sessional academic at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (Acting and Bachelor of Performing Arts), the host of the Unravel & Solwata Kin podcasts, Lead Editor of Talanoa and the founder and director of Studio Kiin.

Nadine Valcin is a bilingual Canadian filmmaker of Haitian descent whose documentary and dramatic work deals with questions of race, language and identity. Her film Whitewash (2016), produced as part of an artist’s residency at Osgoode Hall Law School, examines slavery in Canada and its omission from the national narrative through the history of prominent families on Prince-Edward-Island. Her short film Heartbreak (2016), one of thirty finalists among 1700 submissions in the Toronto International Film Festival Instagram Shorts competition, is a tribute to Black mothers raising children in a society structured by anti-black racism.

Jorge A. Vargas is Artist Director and co-founder of Teatro Línea de Sombra, a leading artist collective in Mexico renowned for its politically engaged theatre that uses documentary techniques, video editing, film embedding, site-specific performance to explore issues of displacement, migration, violence and human rights. Vargas alternates between devising experimental theatre and directing plays written by authors such as Roland Schimmelpfenning, Jon Fosse, Anthony Neilson, Neil LaButte and Lars Noren. The Association of Theatre Writers and Critics (UCCCT) twice honored Vargas with awards for Best Research Theatre Director.

Adeyemi Adegbesan is a Toronto-based multi-disciplinary artist whose practice aims to examine the intersectionality of Black identity. Reflecting on Black cultural ideologies from pre-colonial, colonial, present day and future timelines; across regions, religions, varying levels of income and political lines, Adegbesan examines the dichotomy of the richness of Black experiences with the imposed societal homogeneity of ‘Blackness’. Through his work Adegbesan pulls from these varying elements to create Afro-futuristic portraits that embody themes of history, fantasy, speculative futures, and spirituality.