ARTISTS
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Heidi Cho is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Toronto, Canada. Through the use of illustration and storytelling, Cho is interested in exploring racialized experiences of mental health and queerness, in relationship to family tensions, diasporic labour and intergenerational trauma. Her visual work has been showcased at OCAD University, Buddies in Bad Times, Art Gallery of Ontario and Doris McCarthy Gallery UTSC, as well as appeared in C Magazine, Shameless Magazine, GUTS Magazine and Peak Magazine. In 2017, she collaborated on a large-scale illustration, "#silenceisviolence" with artists, Allyson Mitchelle, Deirdre Logue and Morgan Sea illustrating North American movements against sexual violence. She is currently accomplishing a year long creative residency with the Office of Sexual Violence and Education Support at Ryerson University.
www.heidicho.tumblr.com Meera Sethi is a Canadian visual artist whose interdisciplinary practice poses questions about the relationship between migration, diaspora, belonging and hybridity. Often invoking humour and irony, Meera undercuts our political and cultural assumptions and asks us to look again. Her work foregrounds contemporary histories on the edges of representation, especially queer, diasporic and post-colonial moments. Clothing and the politics of dress is a persistent theme. Recent work include: Begum, a series of mixed media paintings that explores the notion of "excess" in Queer fashion; Upping the Aunty, a multidimensional project comprised of street fashion photography, a colouring book for adults and a series of painting on canvas that place the figure of the “Aunty” at the centre of fashionability thus calling into question our unexamined notions about style; and #Unstitched, an ongoing, multi-year project investigating the possibilities and tensions of creating community using a single garment – a sari – across multiple diasporic sites. www.meerasethi.com Manny Trinh was born in Saigon City, Vietnam and is now based in Toronto, Ontario Canada. He works out of his studio in the Junction neighbourhood of Toronto. His vivid memories of the human landscape of his homeland — dense yet sprawling, chaotic with an underlying order, decaying but full of life and growth — have become major influences on his work. After immigrating to Canada he became passionate about skateboarding, which provided another important influence. The culture of skateboarding was more than an outlet for physical creativity. Being outdoors allowed Manny to interact with human structures and inspired a fascination with the textures of different surfaces that permeates his work. Manny's art has since expanded to focus on the entanglement of fantasy and reality by encapsulating a recognizable human core within surreal technology and splintered mechanical landscapes. www.mannytrinh.com |
Michael Vincent Veneracion is a Filipino-Canadian, Toronto-based painter and recent graduate from OCAD University's Drawing and Painting program (2015). His re-working of Spanish Baroque/Renaissance painting seek to reclaim intergenerational Filipinx narratives specific to his sub/urban upbringing and proximity to street culture.
Through mark-making explorations of the human figure and sub/urban landscape, Veneracion explores these contingent intersections, seeking to learn more about place-making among the contemporary dynamics of racism, classism, rapid gentrification. Xiaojing Yan is a Chinese-Canadian artist working and living in Toronto area, ON. She received her M.F.A on Sculpture from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA and B.F.A from Nanjing Arts Institution, China. As an artist migrating from China to North America, both her identity and her work pass through the complex filters of different countries, languages, and cultural expectations. Yan’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. Yan has exhibited at The Latcham Gallery, Stouffville; Mississauga Art Gallery, Mississauga; Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto; TRUCK Contemporary Art, Calgary; Plug In Contemporary, Winnipeg; Surrey Art Gallery,Surrey; Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant, Brantford; Artspace, Peterborough; and many more. Her work was featured at Art Toronto twice in 2012 and 2014. Most recently, her work was showcased in three major solo exhibitions in Canada and China: at the Varley Art Gallery, Zhangjiagang Museum, and Suzhou Museum. www.yanxiaojing.com Shellie Zhang (b. 1991, Beijing, China) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Canada. She has exhibited at venues including WORKJAM (Beijing), Scope Art Fair (Switzerland) and Public House of Art (Netherlands). She is a recipient of grants such as the RBC Museum Emerging Professional Grant, the Toronto Arts Council’s Visual Projects grant, and the Canada Council’s Project Grant to Visual Artists. Recent projects include a residency at the Art Gallery of Ontario with EMILIA-AMALIA, the 2017 Creative Time Summit, and an ongoing year long peer mentorship program with Whippersnapper Gallery. By uniting both past and present iconography with the techniques of mass communication, language and sign, Zhang’s work deconstructs notions of tradition, gender, identity, the diaspora, and popular culture while calling attention to these subjects in the context and construction of a multicultural society. She is interested in exploring how integration, diversity and assimilation is implemented and negotiated, how this relates to lived experiences, and how culture is learned and relearned. www.shelliezhang.com |
