Celebration of Life: Remembering April Hickox

Members of the OCAD University community are invited to attend a Celebration of Life to remember April Hickox, a beloved faculty member who passed away on Aug. 15, 2025. During this celebration, we will collectively reflect on her contributions to OCAD U and as a well-known Canadian lens-based artist, educator and independent curator.

Join us on:

• Friday, Oct. 3, from 3 to 6 p.m.
• OCAD University
• 100 McCaul St., Great Hall, second floor

Please RSVP

Note that space is limited in the Great Hall, and there are two separate registration links:

Faculty-only registration

Students, faculty, staff and alums

If the seats in the Great Hall reach capacity, please proceed to Room 284 in 100 McCaul St., where the celebration will be livestreamed internally.

For more information, please email Madge Yao in the Faculty of Art.

Call for images

We plan to share images that reflect April’s spirit, her capacity to connect and her ability to inspire so many. If you would like to share your memories and submit images of April, to be included the slideshow (used only for the purposes of this event), please upload your photos to Dropbox by Sept. 26, 12 p.m.

About April Hickox

A graduate of OCA (before it became OCAD U), April taught for more than 30 years at the University and chaired the Photography program for close to 10 years.

Over the course of her career, which spanned over 40 years, she mined the distinctions between personal and public sites through film, video, photography and installation.

Her work with objects and still life was rooted in narrative histories that individuals accumulate throughout their lives and the ability of inanimate objects to shape memory. She was also known as a landscape photographer who explored notions of the wild and what we know wilderness to be.

April’s work also reflected her deep interest in the climate crisis, environmental issues, land stewardship and our relationship to natural elements. She lived and worked on the Toronto Islands all her life, exploring and documenting this urban park. 

An active community leader, April was founding director of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, and a founding member of Tenth Muse Studio and Artscape Toronto. She was also a member of the curatorial board of Art With Heart, Casey House and a long-term artist-in-residence at the Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts.

Her works are held in the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Canada Council Art Bank, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Agnes Etherington Art Centre and Burnaby Art Gallery.

To find out more about April, we invite you to read the news story on the OCAD U website.