First Self-Portrait DRPT Student Group Exhibition
The First Self-Portrait DRPT Student Group Exhibition showcases the impressive variety, talent, and insight of OCAD U's first-year Drawing and Painting students.
Current students, faculty, and staff
THIRDSPACE: Emerging Artist Summer Intensive Program 2025
OCAD U announces new month-long residency designed for interdisciplinary emerging artists guided by OCAD U alum and Summer Artist & Mentor-in-Residence, Van Maltese. This immersive program offers a unique opportunity to develop new work, experiment with techniques, expand artistic practices, and showcase final projects.
The 2025 residency theme, “Hypothesizing How We See,” invites artists to explore conflicts of perception as a means of reshaping understanding. Through play, experimentation, critical inquiry, and collaboration, participants will examine how ambiguity and fluidity can open new ways of thinking, seeing, and engaging with the world.
Residency Highlights:
Key dates:
2025 Summer Artist & Mentor-in-Residence: Van Maltese
Van Maltese is an interdisciplinary artist whose work employs trickery, illusion, and associative play to deconstruct the experience of perception. Fascinated by pattern recognition, brain plasticity, and the fluidity of sight and sound, Maltese explores how perceptual conflicts can reshape thinking. Based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Maltese is an OCAD University alum (Class of 2010) and has received major recognitions, including the 2012 RBC Canadian Painting Competition national prize and the 2018 Glenfiddich Artist-in-Residence Canadian prize. Most recently, they served as the 2023 International Randall Chair in Painting at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University.
This summer, they will bring their expertise, curiosity, and mentorship to THIRDSPACE, guiding emerging artists through this immersive one-month residency and mentorship program.