Free public reception
Wednesday, January 22 from 6 to 9 p.m.
Onsite Gallery
199 Richmond St. West
CodeX: playable & disruptive futurist eArt
January 22 to April 25, 2020
Jason Baerg
Tom Barker
Rob Elsworthy
Samantha Fickel
Dennis Kavelman
Nick Puckett
Six Trends Inc.
Jane Tingley, Cindy Poremba and Marius Kintel
Curated by Tom Barker
CodeX is an exhibition of playable and disruptive digital artworks that explore human-machine relationships, and how society is influenced by technology, innovation and design.
Since the 1950s, digital and technological art has evolved and diversified into a broad range of almost magical art forms with many labels, such as: video art, internet art, post-internet art, hacktivist art, cybernetic art, algorithmic art, and information visualization art. CodeX places its artworks under the collective term, “eArt”, which embraces all of these sub-categories.
In our rapidly evolving digital age, artists and designers continue to apply creative ideas using new technologies. CodeX brings together eight recent and engaging eArt pieces. The diverse technologies and interactions raise questions about the human condition, exploring our attitudes, differences and similarities with machines. The exhibition proposes three themes to codify eArt: Algorithms, Identity, and The Nature of Reality.
The art machines in CodeX offer spontaneous carnival-like excitement while prompting visitors to reflect on the nature of being human - through sometimes playful, other times uncomfortable interactions with the works.
All art is ultimately defined by its audience. In CodeX the artworks go a stage further: they are incomplete as creative pieces without you as a player or participant.
Onsite Gallery is the flagship professional gallery of OCAD U and an experimental curatorial platform for art, design and new media. Visit our website for upcoming public events. The gallery is located at 199 Richmond St. W, Toronto, ON, M5V 0H4. Telephone: 416-977-6000, ext. 265. Opening hours are: Wednesdays to Fridays from noon to 7 p.m.; Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. Free admission.
Onsite Gallery acknowledges that the new gallery construction project is funded in part by the Government of Canada's Canada Cultural Spaces Fund at Canadian Heritage, the City of Toronto through a Section 37 agreement and Aspen Ridge Homes; with gallery furniture by Nienkämper. Onsite Gallery logo by Dean Martin Design.
Image: Jane Tingley, Cindy Poremba and Marius Kintel, anyWare, 2018. Mixed media, 72" x 36" x 36”.
Onsite Gallery, OCAD University’s flagship professional and public gallery drew a record crowd of more than 8,000 visitors during Nuit Blanche 2019. Toronto’s nightlong celebration of art included nearly 90 art projects by more than 300 artists. Onsite Gallery’s latest exhibition, ᐊᕙᑖᓂᑦ ᑕᒪᐃᓐᓂᑦ ᓄᓇᑐᐃᓐᓇᓂᑦ Among All These Tundras, on now until December 7, 2019,
is an international group exhibition that features contemporary art by Indigenous artists from around the circumpolar world. The exhibition is curated by Heather Igloliorte, University Research Chair in Indigenous Circumpolar Arts at Concordia University, Amy Dickson, emerging curator and doctoral student in the Art History program at Concordia University and Charissa von Harringa, a PhD Researcher in Art History at Concordia University. A series of free public events are taking place during the duration of the exhibition including: Exhibition Tour with Ryan Rice, imagineNATIVE Art Crawl and The Fifth Region Film Screening and Conversation.
A capacity crowd gathered to attend the opening of Onsite Gallery’s latest exhibition, ᐊᕙᑖᓂᑦ ᑕᒪᐃᓐᓂᑦ ᓄᓇᑐᐃᓐᓇᓂᑦ / Among All These Tundras. The exhibition, on until December 7, 2019, features contemporary art by twelve Indigenous artists from around the circumpolar world.
The exhibition was curated by Heather Igloliorte, University Research Chair in Indigenous Circumpolar Arts at Concordia University, Amy Dickson, emerging curator and doctoral student in the Art History program at Concordia University and Charissa von Harringa, a PhD Researcher in Art History at Concordia University.
Dr. Sara Diamond congratulated the artists and the curators, and welcomed special guests, curator Heather Igloliorte and Michèle THeriault, Director, Leonard and Bina Ellen Art gallery, Concordia University, who spoke at the opening.
The enthusiastic crowds were particularly mesmerized by the live performance of artist Allison Akootchook Warden.
Among All these Tundras was produced and circulated by: Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, with patron sponsorship by: Birch Hill Equity Partners
and supported by: Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage), Initiative for Indigenous Futures and Nexus Investments.
After an extensive search of candidates internationally,OCAD University has selected Berlin-based curator and biotechnologist Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, PhD, as the first curator of its International Curators Residency (ICR) program. The ambitious new program, supported with a grant from Partners in Art, will be the largest of its kind in Canada. The program will stimulate curatorial research and excellence through an original exhibition at OCAD U’s flagship professional gallery, Onsite Gallery. Curated by Dr. Ndikung, the exhibition will then travel internationally to promote Canadian creators abroad. The ICR program will also create educational opportunities for the OCAD U community and the public, introducing innovative curatorial methods while advancing cultural dialogue on contemporary curatorial practice.
“We are delighted to announce the selection of Dr. Ndikung as OCAD U’s first curator of our exciting, new International Curatorial Residency,” said Dr. Sara Diamond, President and Vice-Chancellor, OCAD University. “The opportunity to interact closely with innovative international curators will enhance the learning experience for OCAD U students and our community, while heightening international awareness of Toronto as a vibrant contemporary art community. It will build opportunities abroad for Toronto artists. We must take our talent out to the world.”
Born in Yaoundé, Cameroon, Dr. Ndikung is an independent curator, author and biotechnologist, and is the founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary Berlin. He was curator-at-large for Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, and guest curator of the 2018 Dak'Art Biennale in Senegal. Together with the Miracle Workers Collective, he is curator of the Finland Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019. Dr. Ndikung is currently guest professor in curatorial studies and sound art at the Städelschule in Frankfurt; artistic director of the 12th Rencontres de Bamako, a biennale for African photography, 2019; as well as artistic director of Sonsbeek 2020, a quadrennial contemporary art exhibition in Arnhem, the Netherlands.
Dr. Ndikung was selected from a shortlist of five international curators by OCAD U’s Curatorial Advisory Committee to develop his project titled, “The Cochlea: Sonic by Nature,” which explores sonority and auditory phenomena in a world saturated with images.
The three-phase program will begin in January 2020, with the arrival of Dr. Ndikung for his extended residency at OCAD U. The second phase will be the presentation of an original exhibition at Onsite Gallery in early 2022, curated by Dr. Ndikung. In the third phase, the exhibition will tour internationally to a venue that will be announced at the opening of the exhibition in Toronto.
Partners in Art will support OCAD U on phases one and three. “We are thrilled to be supporting OCAD U in its first cultural residency program. Dr. Ndikung’s international experience and vision will be an incredible asset for Toronto’s multicultural landscape and will also help promote the work of Canadian artists globally,” said Antonella Vergati, Co-President of Partners in Art.
While in Toronto, Dr. Ndikung will participate in multiple engagements that will include visits with OCAD U classes, local studios, artists and designers, as well as public talks and dialogue with multiple cultural leaders. The program will also include symposia, workshops and publications in order to support and extend scholarly knowledge on contemporary curatorial practices in art, design and new media.
About OCAD University
OCAD University (www.ocadu.ca)is Canada’s university of the imagination. Founded in 1876, the university is dedicated to art, design and digital media education, practice and research, and to knowledge and invention across a wide range of disciplines.
About Partners in Art
Partners in Art (PIA) is a volunteer-led charitable organization that funds contemporary art projects across Canada and around the world. Since 2002, the Toronto-based PIA has raised over $4.7 million and supported 80 projects. PIA collaborates with Canadian curators, arts organizations and museums to fund projects featuring contemporary artists with challenging works and thoughtful perspectives. For more information visit www.partnersinart.ca.
This online event feature OCAD U BIPOC faculty members delivering pre-recorded, fast-paced presentations about their work and research, followed by a live Q & A. Presented by Onsite Gallery in partnership with the OCAD U Office of Research & Innovation.
Click here to register. Zoom link will be sent to all registered viewers prior to the event.
Fable for Tomorrow: A Survey of Works by Wendy Coburn
February 16 to May 14, 2022 at Onsite Gallery
Curated by Andrea Fatona and Caroline Seck Langill with video programming by b.h. Yael and Rebecca Garrett
Core exhibition of the CONTACT Photography Festival
Wendy Coburn had significant impact on the Canadian art community as an artist, educator and activist who has exhibited internationally. Fable for Tomorrow presents the first survey of Wendy Coburn’s artwork. The exhibition provides an opportunity to bring together four decades of sculpture, installation, photography and video that reveals her ability to sense the pulse of a deep present while asking us to pay attention to other futures. Coburn’s work explores representations of gender, sexualities, everyday objects, material culture, and human/animal relations. Click here for full exhibition information.
The Estate of Wendy Coburn is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto.
Wendy Coburn’s video works are represented by Vtape; please contact distribution@vtape.org for exhibitions, rentals and purchase.
Onsite Gallery is the flagship professional gallery of OCAD U and an experimental curatorial platform for art, design and new media. The gallery is located at 199 Richmond St. W, Toronto, ON, M5V 0H4. Telephone: 416-977-6000, ext. 265. Opening hours are: Wednesdays to Fridays from noon to 7 p.m.; Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. Free admission. Proof of vaccination is required for entry.
Onsite Gallery acknowledges that the new gallery construction project is funded in part by the Government of Canada's Canada Cultural Spaces Fund at Canadian Heritage, the City of Toronto through a Section 37 agreement and Aspen Ridge Homes; with gallery furniture by Nienkämper. Onsite Gallery logo by Dean Martin Design.
This online event will feature OCAD U BIPOC faculty members delivering pre-recorded, fast-paced presentations about their work and research, followed by a live Q & A. Presented by Onsite Gallery in partnership with the OCAD U Office of Research & Innovation.
Our guest panelists Ian Carr-Harris, Barbara Fischer and Liz Magor, with moderator Caroline Seck Langill, will discuss Wendy Coburn’s facility as a maker and her uncanny ability to imbue her works with the principles by which she lived.
Watch the Panel Discussion on Wendy Coburn’s Commitments as an Artist, featuring guest panelists Ian Carr-Harris, Barbara Fischer and Liz Magor, moderated by Caroline Seck Langill here:
About the panelists:
Ian Carr-Harris has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1971, including the Venice Biennale and Documenta, as well as solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario and The Power Plant. Professor Emeritus at OCAD University, he was a founding Board member of A Space and of The Power Plant in Toronto. He is represented by the Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto, and in 2012 was named a recipient of the Governor-General's Awards in the Visual and Media Arts. He has published reviews and articles on art since the early 1970's, and an anthology of his writings is soon to be published by Concordia University Press.
Barbara Fischer is the Executive Director/Chief Curator of the Art Museum at the University of Toronto as well as an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream and the Director of the Master of Visual Studies program in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.
Fischer has curated award-winning solo and group exhibitions in the area of contemporary art and its histories, including the internationally circulating retrospective exhibition General Idea Editions 1967-1995 (Kunstverein Munich, Kunsthalle Zurich, Kunst-Werke ICA Berlin, CAAC Seville, Henry Art Gallery Seattle, and the Andy Warhol Museum Pittsburgh, among others), and Projections (2007), the first major survey (and touring exhibition) on projection-based works in the history of contemporary art in Canada. Most recently, she partnered with five curators from across Canada to produce the first survey of conceptual art in Canada (Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980) which premiered at the University of Toronto Galleries in the fall of 2010 and toured across the country through 2013. In a new configuration, Continental Drift: Conceptual art in Canada in the 1960s and 70s was presented at the Badischer Kunstverein (Germany) — the most comprehensive exhibition of its kind to travel to Europe. It moves in revised form to the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris in 2014.
Barbara Fischer is the recipient of the 2008 Hnatyshyn Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art, and was appointed commissioner and curator of Mark Lewis’ project of the Canadian Pavilion for the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009).
Liz Magor is a Vancouver-based artist who studied at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver; Parsons School of Design, New York; and the Vancouver School of Art. Since the early 1970s, Magor has produced sculptural and photographic works concerned with the latent, affective range of familiar materials, images and objects.
Her work has been exhibited in major international exhibitions such as Documenta VIII , Kassel; the 41st Venice Biennale, and the 4th Biennale of Sydney. In 2019 Magor presented an exhibition titled BLOWOUT at the Carpenter Center for Visual Art, Cambridge, Mass. The exhibition traveled to the Renaissance Society in Chicago accompanied by a publication.
She has had solo exhibitions at Le Credac, Ivry-sur Seine, France; Peephole, Milan, Italy; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and the Vancouver Art Gallery. In 2016 the Musee d’Art Contemporain de Montreal mounted a 40 year retrospective which travelled to the Migros fur Gegenwartskunst , Zurich; then on to the Kunstverein in Hamburg; and the MAMAC in Nice. The exhibition was accompanied by a publication from JRP/ Ringier, Zurich
Liz Magor received the Governor General’s Award in 2001, the Audain Prize in 2009, and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize in 2014. In 2017/18 she was a guest of the DAAD Kunstler in Berlin Program.
About the moderator:
Caroline Seck Langill is a writer and curator whose academic scholarship and curatorial work looks at the intersections between art and science, as well as the related fields of new media art history, criticism and preservation. Her interests in non-canonical art histories, gender studies and Indigenous epistemologies have led her to writing and exhibition-making that could be considered post-disciplinary. With Lizzie Muller, she has been looking at questions of liveliness in art and artifacts. This ongoing research resulted in the exhibition Lively Objects for ISEA: Disruption (2015) in which undisciplined objects were woven through traditional displays and historical tableau at the Museum of Vancouver. She resides in Peterborough and works at OCAD University where she is Vice-President Academic and Provost. With Andrea Fatona, she is the co-curator of Fable for Tomorrow: A Survey of Works by Wendy Coburn.
Fable for Tomorrow: A Survey of Works by Wendy Coburn
February 16 to May 14, 2022 at Onsite Gallery
Curated by Andrea Fatona and Caroline Seck Langill with video programming by b.h. Yael and Rebecca Garrett
Core exhibition of the CONTACT Photography Festival
Wendy Coburn had significant impact on the Canadian art community as an artist, educator and activist who has exhibited internationally. Fable for Tomorrow presents the first survey of Wendy Coburn’s artwork. The exhibition provides an opportunity to bring together four decades of sculpture, installation, photography and video that reveals her ability to sense the pulse of a deep present while asking us to pay attention to other futures. Coburn’s work explores representations of gender, sexualities, everyday objects, material culture, and human/animal relations. Click here for full exhibition information.
The Estate of Wendy Coburn is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto.
Wendy Coburn’s video works are represented by Vtape; please contact distribution@vtape.org for exhibitions, rentals and purchase.
Onsite Gallery is the flagship professional gallery of OCAD U and an experimental curatorial platform for art, design and new media. The gallery is located at 199 Richmond St. W, Toronto, ON, M5V 0H4. Telephone: 416-977-6000, ext. 265. Opening hours are: Wednesdays to Fridays from noon to 7 p.m.; Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. Free admission. Proof of vaccination is required for entry.
Onsite Gallery acknowledges that the new gallery construction project is funded in part by the Government of Canada's Canada Cultural Spaces Fund at Canadian Heritage, the City of Toronto through a Section 37 agreement and Aspen Ridge Homes; with gallery furniture by Nienkämper. Onsite Gallery logo by Dean Martin Design.
Guest panelists Ian Carr-Harris, Barbara Fischer, and Liz Magor, with moderator Caroline Seck Langill, will discuss Wendy Coburn’s facility as a maker and her uncanny ability to imbue her works with the principles by which she lived.
b.h. Yael is a filmmaker and installation artist. She is Professor of Integrated Media at OCAD University and past Chair of Senate. Yael’s work has exhibited nationally and internationally and has shown in various settings, from festivals to galleries to community and activist groups, as well as various educational venues. Her work has been purchased by many universities and she is a recipient of numerous arts grants including the Chalmers Fellowship award.
Yael's films and installations have dealt with the many intersections of identity and family (Fresh Blood) and have focused on activist initiatives in Palestine/Israel (Palestine Trilogy and other works), as well as apocalypse, geopolitical and environmental urgencies (Trading the Future). Yael has also worked collaboratively with Johanna Householder (Approximations) and in collectives such as Spontaneous Combustion, Hardpressed Collective and BlahBlahBlah’s Re(viewing) Quebec. Yael has programmed arts lectures and media screenings including Art Creates Change, and she occasionally writes, currently completing a family memoir.
Rebecca Garrett is a Toronto-based artist whose use of media is situation-specific. Since graduating from the Ontario College of Art in 1981, Garrett has been exhibiting film and video installations; photo-based wall pieces; mixed media and performative interventions; site-specific installations; and single channel videos, in numerous venues in Canada and abroad.
Garrett’s works explore experimental formal concerns and are committed to the evolution of an alternative and innovative image language. These concerns are located and challenged by the indexical nature of the sign and the documentary traditions and responsibilities of varied social and political contexts. Many of her works can be seen as investigations of the effects of structures of containment or control—such as architecture, colonialism or global media—on perception, psychic and cultural survival, and knowledge production.
Garrett has worked collaboratively and/or collectively with many groups and individuals in Canada, the USA, Zimbabwe, Kenya and the UK. Her work expresses a long commitment to naming economic, colonial and social injustices, and building relations of exchange and reciprocity.
Fable for Tomorrow: A Survey of Works by Wendy Coburn
Curated by Andrea Fatona and Caroline Seck Langill with video programming by b.h. Yael and Rebecca Garrett
Core exhibition of the CONTACT Photography Festival; originally planned for the annual Festival in May 2020, this exhibition has been rescheduled due to COVID-19.
Wendy Coburn had significant impact on the Canadian art community as an artist, educator and activist who has exhibited internationally. Fable for Tomorrow presents the first survey of Wendy Coburn’s artwork. The exhibition provides an opportunity to bring together four decades of sculpture, installation, photography and video that reveals her ability to sense the pulse of a deep present while asking us to pay attention to other futures. Coburn’s work explores representations of gender, sexualities, everyday objects, material culture, and human/animal relations. Click here for full exhibition information.
The Estate of Wendy Coburn is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto.
Wendy Coburn’s video works are represented by Vtape, please contact distribution@vtape.org for exhibitions, rentals and purchase.
Onsite Gallery is the flagship professional gallery of OCAD U and an experimental curatorial platform for art, design and new media. Visit our website for upcoming public events. The gallery is located at 199 Richmond St. W, Toronto, ON, M5V 0H4. Telephone: 416-977-6000, ext. 265. Opening hours are: Wednesdays to Fridays from noon to 7 p.m.; Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. Free admission. Proof of vaccination is required for entry.
Onsite Gallery acknowledges that the new gallery construction project is funded in part by the Government of Canada's Canada Cultural Spaces Fund at Canadian Heritage, the City of Toronto through a Section 37 agreement and Aspen Ridge Homes; with gallery furniture by Nienkämper. Onsite Gallery logo by Dean Martin Design.
Join curators Andrea Fatona and Caroline Seck Langill for an exhibition tour of Fable for Tomorrow: A Survey of Works by Wendy Coburn, as they share their perspective on Wendy Coburn’s multi-disciplinary practice and themes in the exhibition.
*Please note this is an in-person recorded event.*
Fable for Tomorrow: A Survey of Works by Wendy Coburn
Curated by Andrea Fatona and Caroline Seck Langill with video programming by b.h. Yael and Rebecca Garrett
Core exhibition of the CONTACT Photography Festival
Wendy Coburn had significant impact on the Canadian art community as an artist, educator and activist who has exhibited internationally. Fable for Tomorrow presents the first survey of Wendy Coburn’s artwork. The exhibition provides an opportunity to bring together four decades of sculpture, installation, photography and video that reveals her ability to sense the pulse of a deep present while asking us to pay attention to other futures. Coburn’s work explores representations of gender, sexualities, everyday objects, material culture, and human/animal relations. Click here for full exhibition information.
About the curators:
Andrea Fatona is an independent curator and an associate professor at OCAD University. She is concerned with issues of equity within the sphere of the arts and the pedagogical possibilities of art works produced by “other” Canadians in articulating broader perspectives of Canadian identities. Her broader interest is in the ways in which art, “culture” and “education” can be employed to illuminate complex issues that pertain to social justice, citizenship, belonging and nationhood. She is the recipient of awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Fatona has published scholarly articles, catalogue essays and book chapters in a range of publications. Some examples of her curatorial projects include: Queer Collaborations (1993), Across Borders (1995/6), Cadboro Bay: Index to an Incomplete History (1999), The Attack of the Sandwich Men (2001), Reading the Image: Poetics of the Black Diaspora (2006-2008), Fibred Optics (2009-10), Will Work for Food (2011), Land Marks (2013-14) and Settling in Place (2018).
Caroline Seck Langill is a writer and curator whose academic scholarship and curatorial work looks at the intersections between art and science, as well as the related fields of new media art history, criticism and preservation. Her interests in non-canonical art histories, gender studies and Indigenous epistemologies have led her to writing and exhibition-making that could be considered post-disciplinary. With Lizzie Muller, she has been looking at questions of liveliness in art and artifacts. This ongoing research resulted in the exhibition Lively Objects for ISEA: Disruption (2015) in which undisciplined objects were woven through traditional displays and historical tableau at the Museum of Vancouver. Caroline Langill resides in Peterborough and works at OCAD University where she is Vice-President Academic and Provost.
Please note: Proof of full vaccination is required for entry. Please bring your Ontario proof of vaccination QR code (printed or displayed on smartphone) and an accompanying piece of government-issued ID.
Image: Wendy Coburn, Fable for Tomorrow, 2008, bisque-fired clay, 7” x 7” x 5.5” each. Courtesy of the Estate of Wendy Coburn and Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto.
The Estate of Wendy Coburn is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto.
Wendy Coburn’s video works are represented by Vtape; please contact distribution@vtape.org for exhibitions, rentals and purchase.
Onsite Gallery is the flagship professional gallery of OCAD U and an experimental curatorial platform for art, design and new media. Visit our website for upcoming public events. The gallery is located at 199 Richmond St. W, Toronto, ON, M5V 0H4. Telephone: 416-977-6000, ext. 265. Opening hours are: Wednesdays to Fridays from noon to 7 p.m.; Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. Free admission. Proof of vaccination is required for entry.
Onsite Gallery acknowledges that the new gallery construction project is funded in part by the Government of Canada's Canada Cultural Spaces Fund at Canadian Heritage, the City of Toronto through a Section 37 agreement and Aspen Ridge Homes; with gallery furniture by Nienkämper. Onsite Gallery logo by Dean Martin Design.
Accompanying Onsite Gallery's current exhibition, Survival Architecture and the Art of Resilience, this online panel moderated by Michael Piper of the University of Toronto's John H. Daniels Faculty will present and discuss practices of collaboration, creation, and community research that aim to address systemic issues of oppression, with speakers including artist Cindy Blažević (Toronto, ON); Jessica Kirk, Wildseed Centre for Art & Activism (Toronto, ON); Rowan Lynch, Hearth (Toronto, ON); and Derrick Meeking, Empowerment Plan (Detroit, MI). Presented in partnership with John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto.
Michael Piper is an Assistant Professor of urban design and architecture and director of the Master of Urban Design program at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. His research and teaching focus on the relationship between design, equity, and political-economic contexts with particular attention on the social and formal transformation of North American suburbs. He is a co-founder of tuf lab, a research group that brings together urban design and urban planning faculty at U of T. He is also a founding partner of dub studios, a design studio with offices in Toronto and Los Angeles where he manages urban design projects. Current projects and coursework focus creating multi-family housing in North American single-family suburbs and cultural spaces of citizens underrepresented in mainstream design and planning. He is a co-coordinator of Engage-Design-Build, a research and outreach program in partnership with the Toronto District School Board that connects with underrepresented youth about their communities and the design lead for Toronto Housing Works exhibition. Michael is from Atlanta and has also lived in Alaska, Abu Dhabi, New York, Los Angeles, Croatia, Paris, Columbus, OH, and Boston.
Speakers:
Cindy Blažević is a visual artist whose research-based practice uses photography, performance and multimedia to investigate identity, belonging and systems of power and exclusion. Deeply invested in activism and social engagement, she has spent years exploring Canada’s penal system, immigration policies and constructions of citizenship, often through collaborative processes with diverse communities. Through both documentary and fiction, she critiques the systems within which she operates. Her work has been exhibited and awarded internationally. Blažević was the inaugural Artist in Residence at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto. She currently lives in Toronto with her three rambunctious kids and her partner, Pascal. You can see her work at cindyblazevic.com.
Jessica Kirk is a cultural worker, curator and community organizer based in Toronto. She is the Executive Director of Wildseed Centre for Art & Activism, a project of Black Lives Matter Canada that serves as fertile ground for Black creativity and organizing in the city. She holds an M.A. in Social Justice Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and her thesis was written on Black geographies and critical creative practice within and beyond the city.
Founded in 2019 as an artist-run space, Hearth seeks to provide a site to present projects within a context that values collaboration, experimentation, and community. As a structural element in the makeup of a house, and a tool providing warmth, light, and food; a hearth gathers us towards itself, and towards each other. Hearth is located on Ulster St. just east of Three Star Variety (621 Bathurst, Toronto, ON, M5S 2R2). See hearthgarage.com or @hearth.garage for information on past and present programming.
Derrick Meeking is native Detroiter with a professional background in nonprofit management, workforce development, local economic development, and social enterprise business models. His experience spans over 12 years which creates a unique professional profile rooted in a desire to improve the quality of life for historically disenfranchised people and marginalized communities through education, research, grassroots activism, and the promotion of innovative community economic development solutions. Derrick currently serves as the Director of Workforce and Programs at the Empowerment Plan, where their mission is to “End generational homelessness through employment”. He holds a Bachelor's of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan and is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Nonprofit Administration from Louisiana State University.
Join us for a conversation with Bonaventure Ndikung, OCAD U’s International Resident Curator and Liz Ikiriko, Nigerian Canadian artist and curator, presented by Onsite Gallery. Their conversation will explore multiple histories of photography, sonic production and the relations between—particularly for African and diasporic creators
Biographies:
Born in Yaoundé, Cameroon, Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is an independent curator, author and biotechnologist, and is the founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary Berlin. He was curator-at-large for Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, and guest curator of the 2018 Dak’Art Biennale in Senegal. Together with the Miracle Workers Collective, he was curator of the Finland Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019. Dr. Ndikung was artistic director of the 12th Rencontres de Bamako, a biennale for African photography, 2019 and is artistic director of Sonsbeek 20-24, a quadrennial contemporary art exhibition in Arnhem, the Netherlands. In January 2023 he will begin as the new director of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). He is currently a professor in the Spatial Strategies MA program at the Weissensee Academy of Art in Berlin. He is OCAD University’s first International Resident Curator and will create an exhibition for Onsite Gallery in Fall 2022.
Liz Ikiriko is a Tkaronto/Toronto-based, Nigerian Canadian artist and curator. Her role as an educator, maker, and mother informs her practice, which focuses on African and diasporic narratives. Ikiriko holds an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University (2019). Her work has been shown nationally, and is part of the permanent collection of the Dunlop Gallery(SK). Her writing appears in upcoming Aperture publication As We Rise, Public Journal, MICE Magazine, C Magazine, Blackflash, and Akimbo. Ikiriko's most recent curatorial projects include: Is Love a Synonym for Abolition? (Gallery 44, 2021), The Break, The Wake, The Hold, The Breath (Circuit Gallery/Prefix ICA, 2019), An Archive But Not An Atlas (Critical Distance Centre for Curators, 2019), and A Lineage of Transgression (ArtSpace Peterborough, 2019). She is a co-curator of Bamako Encounters the 13th African Photography Biennial and is the Curator of Collections and Contemporary Engagement at the Art Gallery of York University.
Zoom link will be sent to all registered attendees prior to the event.
