Current students, faculty, and staff
OCAD University’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers is excited to announce the recipient of the 2025 Toronto Outdoor Art Fair Call for Artists & Makers Career Launchers!
Congratulations to Alex Hall, Supriya James, Jenelle Smith, Raahim Tariq, Grace Darakjian, Erica Gibbs, Haley Meyer, Kiran Senthilnathan, Miriam Altamira and MinSeo(May) Whee! They will be participating in this year's Toronto Outdoor Art Fair from July 11-13 at Nathan Phillips Square.
Since 1961, TOAF has been instrumental in launching artists’ careers and bringing art into people’s everyday lives. TOAF is passionate about supporting artists and exceptional talents through awards, special programs and opportunities. With 150,000 annual visitors to Nathan Phillips Square, 100,000 website visitors, and 1 million annual page views, TOAF’s loyal community of art lovers continues to grow.
Alex Hall is a lens-based Chinese Canadian artist working in Toronto, Canada. She specializes in photography, alternative processes, and mixed media art. She is currently majoring photography at the Ontario Collage of Art and Design University (OCAD U) and was a former dancer with the National Ballet of Canada.
Working with themes of the unknown, irony, and the past, Alex is drawn to material driven explorations. She thinks about how the presentation of her work is heightened by the experimental materiality. Wanting the viewer to leave her work with more questions and curiosity about the world around us.
Supriya James is a Toronto-based landscape artist of Indo-Guyanese heritage. After a rewarding, over 25-year-career as a Communications Consultant, she has furthered her proclivity for expression by undertaking a second undergraduate degree at OCAD University, Toronto, Ontario (Drawing & Painting Program, 2021-2025 - BFA Hon). She is a recipient of the 2025 Dean’s Scholarship for the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design (IAMD) MFA program which she will be commencing at OCAD University in September, 2025. Her body of work comprises paintings of Canadian and Guyanese landscapes which are embedded with political and metaphysical explorations of identity, ancestral history, and temporality that form her core consciousness.
Jenelle Smith (b. 2001,Mississauga, Ontario) is a first generation Jamaican-Canadian visual artist based in Toronto, Ontario. Jenelle is an emerging artist delving into the intricate concepts of the mind through her dreamlike work. Working in digital and analog image-based media, Jenelle aims to speak upon thought provoking topics such as, mental health, technology, race, and family.
Jenelle is currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in Photography at OCAD University. Jenelle strives to challenge conventional perceptions and spark conversations through her work.
Raahim Tariq is a Lahore-born, Toronto-based artist in his final year of Experimental Animation. Specializing in 2D animation with elements of stop-motion, his work blends humor, fantastical storytelling, and South Asian cultural influences. With a background in fine arts, digital illustration, and graphic design, Raahim’s practice bridges traditional and digital media to explore identity and narrative through richly textured visuals.
Grace Darakjian is a multidisciplinary abstract artist attending OCAD University who is primarily creating hard-edge acrylic paintings, as well as intricate multimedia drawings. Grace utilizes the most basic principles of acrylic paint in order to create flat, artificial, and almost digital-looking fields of space, which showcase colour relationships, extremes in the universe, and the complexity of line.
Erica Gibbs is a multidisciplinary artist and illustrator based in Toronto and Mississauga. This summer, she will graduate from OCAD University with a BFA in Drawing and Painting with a Minor in Illustration. Her hybrid practice traverses the digital and physical realms to produce paintings, illustrations, comics, sculptures, and installations. Erica’s recent thesis work explores how contemporary technology impacts intimacy and communication within everyday life.
Haley Meyer is an oil painter and intaglio printmaker based Toronto. Her work explores the connection between memory loss and transitional places, using fleeting images taken while in transit to reflect how memories slip, fade, and blur over time. The world seen from these spaces is impermanent and distorted, mirroring the way memory loss fractures and reshapes past experiences. Through painting and etching, she is able to organize, preserve, and remember fading experiences. Haley has exhibited her work across Ontario and is graduating from OCAD University’s Drawing & Painting program with a minor in Printmaking & Publications.
Kiran Senthilnathan is a 22-year-old multidisciplinary artist currently pursuing a degree in Experimental Animation at OCAD University in Toronto. Her practice is rooted in the exploration of the body and its narratives, often drawing from traditional Indian art techniques to foster cultural rediscovery and dialogue. Working across various mediums, she seeks to bridge historical aesthetics with contemporary expression. Senthilnathan has been recognized with a Silver Key from Scholastics and recently exhibited her work at the Illuminarium in downtown Toronto.
Hi, my name is Miriam Altamira. I am a designer and multidisciplinary artist, primarily working with textiles and ceramics. My work combines bold colours and organic shapes in playful and often unexpected ways. I aim to create pieces that feel friendly, joyful, and humorous. I am graduating from the Textile Design program at OCAD University. My goal is to represent joy and nostalgia through the use of colour and illustrations in everyday objects for the home. I believe that translating creativity and art into functional items is a vital part of my practice. I focus on designing objects that are not only practical but also imbued with personal meaning and intention.
MinSeo(May) Whee is a jewellery artist in her final year of the Material Art and Design program at OCAD University. Her work explores narrative-based design, drawing on treasured memories and emotional connections. Combining fine art elements with traditional techniques and 3D scanned objects, she creates visually rich, meaningful pieces that explore color, texture, and line.
Learn more about our Career Launchers at: https://careerlaunchers.format.com