Coffee Chats is a series of virtual casual gatherings with the CEAD team with industry guests. Hosted virtually in small intimate groups, these gatherings will provide a space for group conversations with practitioners who are interested in supporting OCAD U students and grads to offer mentorship, and share their professional insights and journey, while collectively creating an online community.
Marjan Verstappen is a visual artist, curator and art educator. Her art practice involves installation, painting, drawing, photography and performance. Through these disciplines she explores biological, economic, and social interventions into natural systems, in order to understand their meanings, machinations, habits, and failures. She makes distinct bodies of work, often speculative in nature, that explore how we shape the land, how we grow and consume food, and how we live with one another. As a founding member of YTB Gallery - a nomadic art gallery and collective - her curatorial work is dedicated to advancing the careers of young artists. As an educator she facilitates workshops with a multiplicity of communities, these workshops are often focused on developing drawing skills as a meditative practice, something that she is dedicated to in her own artistic work. Marjan grew up in Aotearoa New Zealand, She moved to Canada in 2012, she lives in Toronto.
Notable exhibitions of her artwork include Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood (Art Gallery of Ontario), INSTRUMENTA II (National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta) Atlas of Nowhere (Ashburton Art Gallery, New Zealand) and Know The Ways (Flux Factory, NYC).
Marjan is open to talking about:
- Building community/collaboration at OCAD and beyond as a newcomer.
- Negotiating failure: building a roadmap for your career when things don't work out.
- Networking/developing artistic connections in Canada and your country of origin.
This Coffee Chat is co-presented with the Neighbourhood Arts Network.
Website: www.marjanverstappen.com
Instagram: @far_stepping
Auto-captioning will be available at this event.
This event will not be recorded.