## Breadcrumb 1. [Home](/index%2Ephp/) 2. [News and Stories](/index%2Ephp/news) 3. [Announcing Yana Rzayeva as the recipient of the 2026 DesignTO Exhibition Stantec Window Gallery Career Launchers!](/index%2Ephp/markdownify/node/3819) October 10, 2025 # Announcing Yana Rzayeva as the recipient of the 2026 DesignTO Exhibition Stantec Window Gallery Career Launchers! ![Stantec Window Gallery displaying work by Ernesto Cabral de Luna.](/sites/default/files/styles/1_5_1_large/public/2025-07/2026DesignTOxStantec%20CL%20Banner.png.webp?itok=ereOqIrw) Ernesto Cabral de Luna Snapshot: Foto de Familia, (2024). Photo credit: Aman Deshmukh amandeshmukh.com rgb(255,255,255) OCAD University’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers is excited to announce **Yana Rzayeva** as the recipient of the **2026 DesignTO Exhibition Stantec Window Gallery** Career Launchers! Her work will be on display at Stantec Window Gallery from December 20, 2025 - March 18, 2026 as part of the 2026 DesignTO. Through this Career Launchers opportunity, Yana has also received the [2026 DesignTO Best Window Installation Award](https://designto.org/awards/2026-designto-awards/) for her work "[Remnants for the Future](https://designto.org/event/remnants-for-the-future/)". ![Headshot of 2026 DesignTO x Stantec Window Gallery Career Launchers recipient, Yana Rzayeva.](/sites/default/files/2025-10/CL%20Recipient-DesignTOxStantec2025%28square%29.png) - [**Yana Rzayeva**](https://yanarayva.com) is an Azerbaijani Canadian interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans textiles, painting, and installation. She holds a BFA in Drawing and Painting and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art, Media, and Design from OCAD University. Her practice explores diasporic identity, cultural hybridity, and ancestral knowledge. Drawing from her personal diasporic experience and traditional Azerbaijani craft practices, she weaves together inherited memory with contemporary concerns around displacement, fragmentation, and belonging. Her work is grounded in sustainable materials and techniques passed down through generations. Each piece is a site of layered meaning—where memory, rupture, and resilience are entangled. Weaving, for Yana, is both a literal and metaphorical act of repair: a way to process inherited histories while reimagining connections between place, identity, and time. Through materiality and repetition, she challenges distinctions between art and craft, seeking to honor ancestral knowledge while responding to the cultural dislocation that marks the diasporic experience. [Website ](https://yanarayva.com) [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/yana_rayva/) --- [Click here to learn more about our Career Launchers!](https://careerlaunchers.format.com/) ## Other Recent News [### 2027 Critical Distance Centre for Curators Projections Program Call for Artists OCAD University’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers (CEAD) and Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC) have partnered to co-create CDCC Projections Program Career Launcher. Four (4) to five (5) selected emerging artists will receive $690 to exhibit work in a single channel, projection-based screening program that will be displayed at the CDCC in March 2027. October 30, 2026 ](/news/2027-critical-distance-centre-curators-projections-program-call-artists) [### Call for Vendors: BAM! Holiday Art Market 2026 OCAD University's RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers (CEAD) is excited to partner again with Wychwood Barns to offer a curated group of OCAD U students and recent alumni the opportunity to share a vendor table at the BAM! Holiday Art Market. October 26, 2026 ](/news/call-vendors-bam-holiday-art-market-2026) [### OCAD U’s Global Centre for Climate Action and EU bring large-scale art to Toronto’s Canada Malting Silos "The Light" and "Melting Temporalities" transformed the waterfront into a canvas for climate reflection. October 6, 2026 ](/news/ocad-us-global-centre-climate-action-and-eu-bring-large-scale-art-torontos-canada-malting) Related Stories ## Related Stories [### 2027 Critical Distance Centre for Curators Projections Program Call for Artists OCAD University’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers (CEAD) and Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC) have partnered to co-create CDCC Projections Program Career Launcher. Four (4) to five (5) selected emerging artists will receive $690 to exhibit work in a single channel, projection-based screening program that will be displayed at the CDCC in March 2027. October 30, 2026 ](/news/2027-critical-distance-centre-curators-projections-program-call-artists) [### Call for Vendors: BAM! Holiday Art Market 2026 OCAD University's RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers (CEAD) is excited to partner again with Wychwood Barns to offer a curated group of OCAD U students and recent alumni the opportunity to share a vendor table at the BAM! Holiday Art Market. October 26, 2026 ](/news/call-vendors-bam-holiday-art-market-2026) [### 2027 Critical Distance Centre for Curators Projections Program Call for Curators OCAD University’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers (CEAD) and Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC) have partnered to co-create the CDCC Projections Program Career Launcher. One (1) emerging Curator will receive $1,700 to curate a single channel, projection-based screening program of work from the OCAD U community. The Projections Program will be displayed at the CDCC for six-weeks in March 2027. September 27, 2026 ](/news/2027-critical-distance-centre-curators-projections-program-call-curators)