## Breadcrumb 1. [Home](/index%2Ephp/) 2. [Overview](/index%2Ephp/academics) 3. [Faculty Members](/index%2Ephp/academics/explore-faculty) 4. [Wrik Mead](/index%2Ephp/markdownify/node/3964) # Wrik Mead ![](https://ultima7-its.ocadu.ca/bios/wmead/portrait) wmead@ocadu.ca Faculty Information Associate Professor, Tenured Faculty of Art Wrik Mead has been making experimental queer animated films for over 35 years, building a deeply personal and defiantly imaginative body of work that spans more than 50 films. Rooted in the psychodramatic, his films explore queer fantasy, desire, dreams, and the unstable terrain between the personal and the political. Through frame-by-frame manipulations and fractured narratives, he explores queer embodiment, loss, eroticism, and the unconscious, offering viewers an invitation into a world where nothing is fixed and everything is in motion. Whether through intimate documentary or surreal animation, his work resists convention—alternately offering a cinema of feeling, fragmentation, and transformation. His work defies easy categorization, instead carving out space for queer longing in all its complexity and contradiction. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art (1988, with Honours), he later earned his MA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London (2004). His films have been Internationally exhibited and celebrated for their vulnerability, sensuality, and raw visual language—charting a queer lineage that is as much about survival as it is about invention. He lives and works in Toronto and teaches at OCAD University, continuing to shape and be shaped by the evolving landscape of queer experimental film. ### Education #### MA Fine Arts **Type:** Fine Arts Goldsmiths University of London #### Honours AOCA **Type:** General Studies Ontario College of Art and Design ### Services #### Co-organizer and Curatorial of Festival of the Body **Type:** Faculty of Art Ontario College of Art and Design #### Jury Member **Type:** Media Arts Canada Council for the Arts #### Jury Member for Grants to Emerging Artists **Type:** Media Arts Ontario Arts Council #### Jury for Grants to Artists **Type:** Arts Toronto Arts Council #### Jury Member for Grants to Artists **Type:** Art Ontario Arts Council ### Employment #### Associate Professor **Type:** Experimental Animation Ontario College of Art and Design #### Interim Chair **Type:** Faculty of Art, Experimental Animation OCAD University #### Co-Chair of Experimental Animation **Type:** Experimental Animation Ontario College of Art and Design #### Interim Chair **Type:** Photography, Printmaking and Publications in the Faculty of Art Ontario College of Art and Design #### Chair **Type:** Sculpture/Installation, INTM, EXAN and the Fabrication Studios in the Faculty of Art Ontario College of Art and Design #### Sessional Faculty **Type:** Integrated Media in the Faculty of Art Ontario College of Art and Design ### Funding #### Stop-Motion Puppet Casting **Type:** Grant Under the apprenticeship of Terril Calder, I learned how to create cast silicone stop-motion puppets. #### OUT **Type:** Grant Production and post-production for a 30 minute animated work that focuses on a global perspective of deteriorating rights for the LGBTQ community. This resulted in the full length version as well as four shorter edits of the film released independently and titled: =, Outcognito, HOPE and OUT. #### 1975 **Type:** Grant Production and post-production of an hour-long animated film based on one year in the artists' life. Several other shorter edits were released individually including the following titles: summer 1975, 1975 (kiss), 1975 (crash). #### 1975 **Type:** Grant Grant to support the costs to mount an installation titled 1975 at PayneShurvell Gallery in London, UK. #### winter's end **Type:** Grant Production and post-production of a 12 minute short animated film titled winter's end. #### toybox **Type:** Grant Production and production grant for a 12 minute short animated film about masculinity. The film premiered at the Montréal World Film Festival. #### toybox **Type:** Grant Production and production grant for a 12 minute short animated film about masculinity. The film premiered at the Montréal World Film Festival. #### toybox **Type:** Grant Production and production grant for a 12 minute short animated film about masculinity. The film premiered at the Montréal World Film Festival. ### Distinctions #### Jury Award Ann Arbor Film Festival #### Director's Choice Award The Black Maria Film Festival #### Jury Award Ann Arbor Film Festival #### Director's Choice Award The Black Maria Film Festival #### Hot & Spicy Award Ann Arbor Film Festival #### Best Sound Design Ann Arbor Film Festival