The Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers is excited to announce that Kaya Joan is the recipient of the Akin Collective Career Launcher for Drawing & Painting, Indigenous Visual Culture and Material Art & Design students in their graduating term. Kaya Joan will be awarded $ 2,450 in credits to go towards a studio space at Akin’s inspiring shared workspaces in 2020-2021!
Kaya Joan is a multi-disciplinary Afro Caribbean (Jamaican/ Vincentian)-Indigenous (Kanien’kehá:ka) artist living in T’karonto (Dish with One Spoon treaty territory). Kaya’s work focuses on healing, transcending ancestral knowledge and creating dreamscapes rooted in spiritualism from the lands of their ancestors (Turtle Island and the Caribbean). Afro and Indigenous futurity and pedagogy are also centred in Kaya’s practice-working through buried truths to explore how creation can heal 7 generations into the past and future. Kaya has been working in community arts for 5 years as a facilitator and artist. They are a core member of Weave and Mend, an Indigenous femme/non binary collective. Kaya completed a BFA through the Indigenous Visual Culture program at OCAD in 2020.