sophia bartholomew works outwards from the ruins and runes of their own cultural inheritance to build material-spiritual constructions. They are descended from Norwegian immigrants on Treaty 3 territory in rural Northwestern Ontario, and English and Irish settlers in and around so-called Toronto. Spanning drawing, writing, sculpture- and installation-making, collaboration, and small, daily negotiations with found materials and household waste, their work borrows its poetics from rural knowledge systems, including craft patterns and junk piles, folk stories and sagas, improvised adaptations and decisions of necessity. Recent group exhibitions include grass taps at the plumb, Loose Parts at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and All Flourishing Is Mutual with Images Festival. Sophia has a BFA from UBC and an MFA from the University of Guelph.

Hazel Eckert
Hazel Eckert is a multidisciplinary artist and designer from Toronto, ON, based in St. John’s NL. She received a BFA in Printmaking from OCAD University (2008) and a diploma in Graphic Design from the College of the North Atlantic (2017). Her work has been presented in numerous group and solo exhibitions across Canada. Eckert is the creator of Nothing New Projects, an independent risograph print and publishing studio with a focus on producing artist-led projects and contemporary print-based works.

Deinma David Iyagba
Deinma David Iyagba is a Southern Nigerian-born artist working out of Winnipeg, Canada. His practice involves multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. Time, history, religion, migration (diaspora), identity, cosmology, and relational aesthetics are some of the themes he engages with in his practice. Iyagba is interested in finding the multi-dimensionality and fluidity of mediums, pushing, and reimagining mediums and art objects. “Painting is drawing, film and video are about the perfect still; the one second of captured moments, photography is about duration, layers, and movement……” these are his approaches to medium use.

Shalaka Jadhav
Shalaka spent their childhood between cities in India and Dubai, before moving to a neighbourhood spitting distance from Ontario’s largest mall/ They now join from Block 2 of the Haldimand Tract, splitting their time on Treaty 1 territory. Trained as an urban planner and practicing as a curator, Shalaka has worked across multiple roles, including audio journalism, in social innovation spaces, in urban planning departments, on rooftop gardens, and on farms. Across their work they strive to apply and ecosystem approach of thinking, dreaming, and sustaining.

Jackson Klie
My work utilizes an expanded approach towards photography through its incorporation of collage, sculpture, and alternative image-based processes. I often work with deconstructed and reclaimed photographic material —torn from reference texts, right-click-saved from online, purchased on eBay, stolen from archives, found in dumpsters, etc. I approach archives as spaces of creative potential, working with found images as a way to critically examine our understanding of photographic authority. As an artist-archivist, I move freely within systems of categorization as a gesture of queer resistance. Queerness, in its multitudes and expansiveness, functions in my practice as a way of seeing the world without fixed classifications. In my work, I use interdisciplinary approaches to working with found images in order to position photographs as queer objects.

Tyler Matheson
Tyler Matheson is a queer interdisciplinary research-based artist, educator, and culture worker residing in the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. Matheson received his BFA in Fine Art and Art History from York University and his MFA from the University of Waterloo. Currently, Matheson is the Marketing and Development Assistant at Oakville Galleries, resident artist and fellow at Mississauga’s Living Arts Centre, and serves on the Board of Directors at Hamilton Artists Inc. Matheson’s work has shown nationally and internationally independently, and as part of queer artist collaboration QueerSoftOrange. Matheson’s work has been published in Femme Art Review, Off Centre, Peripheral Review and dArt Magazine. Matheson’s practice has been supported by the Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts funding.

Christina Oyawale
Christina Oyawale (they/them) is a Black queer non-binary disabled lens-based artist and curator. They hold a BFA in Photography and minor in Music and Culture from Toronto Metropolitan University. Their artistic and curatorial practice is based in documenting the radical occupation of space, influenced by their interests in disability studies and aesthetics with a focus on video, performance, photography and installation. Recent curatorial projects include, As I Live & Breathe at Xpace Cultural Centre and Fixations: Thoughts on Time at Artspace TMU in conjunction with CONTACT Photography Festival 2022.They approach their practice as a means of exploring the ways identity and culture are both embodied in our society, and how they intersect with other social categories such as gender, race, and sexuality.

Kate Whiteway
Kate Whiteway is an independent curator based in Toronto. She was previously the Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She recently curated the first solo exhibition of Canadian artist John Devlin (John Devlin: Out of a Heart of Quiet, Erin Stump Projects, 2022) exploring the artist’s queer, cosmological worldview, and the category of “outsider art.” Whiteway studied Cultural Studies and Art History at McGill University before receiving a Master of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the recipient of the 2018 Reesa Greenberg Curatorial Studies Award and the 2020 C Magazine New Critics Award. Previous positions include Exhibition Coordinator at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and Head of Operations at Sugar Contemporary. She has recently published for Breathless (The Power Plant, 2019), C Magazine, Esse Magazine, and The Journal of Curatorial Studies. Her area of focus is on research-based art practices and contemporary exhibition histories.

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