Arahmaiani
Arahmaiani (Arahmayani Feisal) is an Indonesian artist born in Bandung and based in Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia. Arahmaiani is considered by many to be one of the most respected and iconic contemporary artists, specifically in pioneering performance art in Southeast Asia. Arahmaiani frequently uses art as a means of critical commentary on social, religion, and cultural issues.
Kemi Craig
Kemi Craig is a contemporary analogue artist living and working in the traditional Lekwungen Territories known as Victoria, BC. An American of African descent born outside of Washington DC and raised in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, her work centers on futures for raced and gendered bodies. Working through Super 8, 16mm film, and cellphone video Craig couples performance with devices of looking to interrogate the simultaneous experiences of past, present and future. Craig received academic training, completing her Master of Applied Art through Emily Carr University of Art and Design however; she is primarily a self taught filmmaker through workshops, community activism and working at artist-run centers. She has been able to study dance and film under the tutelage of Daniel Conrad, Dana Claxton, Monique Salez, Peg Campbell and Trudi L. Smith.
Ayumi Goto
Ayumi Goto, born in Surrey, BC ; lives in Toronto, ON, is a performance apprentice, based in Toronto, traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron Wendat, Anishinaabe, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nations. As diasporic Japanese, she at times draws upon her cultural heritage and language to creatively reconsider sentiments surrounding national culturalism, migrations, activist strategies, and land-human relations. Ayumi has made performative interventions in London, Berlin, Kyoto, and across this land presently called Canada.
https://torontobiennial.org/artist contributor/ayumi-goto/
Sharon Day
Sharon Day is enrolled in the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe. She is a founder of the Indigenous Peoples Task Force. She is the founder of Nibi Walk, indigenous-led walks to raise awareness of our Earth's fresh water. In 1990 Sharon developed and led the first Native youth acting troupe. Since then, Sharon has worked with countless Native youth guiding them to grow as actors. Ms. Day has acted with Pangea World Theater, Illusion Theater, and the American History Theater. In addition, she has directed many youth performances. She is an editor of the anthology, Sing! Whisper! Shout! Pray! Feminist Visions for a Just World; Edgework Books, 2000. She has written several plays for Ikidowin Acting Ensemble and Pangea World Theater. Some of her music is recorded on the CD Nibi Walk River Songs.
Soleil Launière
Soleil Launière is Innu from Mashteuiatsh on the shores of Lake Pekuakami. She lives and works in Tiöhtià: ke (Montreal). Multidisciplinary artist combining singing, movement and theatre while passing through performance art, she has participated in many creations. Her work intertwines the presence of the bi-spiritual body and the experimental audiovisual while being inspired by the cosmogony and the sacred spirit of the animals of the Innu world. Soleil expresses in action a reflection on the silences and languages which contribute to the development of performance art, not only from an Indigenous perspective but in a universal way.
Syrus Marcus Ware
Syrus Marcus Ware is a Vanier Scholar, a visual artist, community activist, researcher, youth-advocate and educator. For 12 years, he was the Coordinator of the Art Gallery of Ontario Youth Program. Syrus is currently a facilitator/designer for the Cultural Leaders Lab (Toronto Arts Council & The Banff Centre). He is the inaugural artist-in-residence for Daniels Spectrum (2016/2017). Syrus is also a core-team member of Black Lives Matter Toronto. As a visual artist, Syrus works within the mediums of painting, installation and performance to challenge systemic oppression. Syrus’ work explores the spaces between and around identities; acting as provocations to our understandings of gender, sexuality and race. His work has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Windsor, the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), Gladstone Hotel, ASpace Gallery, Harbourfront Centre, SPIN Gallery and other galleries across Canada.
Peter Morin
Peter Morin is a grandson of Tahltan Ancestor Artists. Morin’s artistic offerings can be organized around four themes: articulating Land/Knowing, articulating Indigenous Grief/Loss, articulating Community Knowing, and understanding the Creative Agency/Power of the Indigenous body. The work takes place in galleries, in community, in collaboration, and on the land. All of the work is informed by dreams, Ancestors, Family members, and performance art as a research methodology. Initially trained in lithography, Morin’s 20 years of artistic practice moves from printmaking to poetry to button blanket making to installation drum making to bead work to performance art. Peter is the son of Janelle Creyke (Crow Clan, Tahltan Nation) and Pierre Morin (French Canadian). Throughout his exhibition and making history, Morin has focused upon his matrilineal inheritances in homage to the matriarchal structuring of the Tahltan Nation, and prioritizes Cross-Ancestral collaborations as a strategy for dismantling colonialism. Morin was longlisted for the Brink and Sobey Awards, in 2013 and 2014, respectively. In 2016, Morin received the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Canadian Mid-Career Artist. Peter Morin currently holds a tenured appointment in the Faculty of Arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto, and is the Graduate Program Director of the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design program at OCADU.
Meagan Musseau
Meagan Musseau is L’nu from Elmastukwek, Ktaqmkuk territory (Bay of Islands, western Newfoundland). She nourishes an interdisciplinary arts practice by working with customary art forms and new media, such as basketry, beadwork, land-based performance, video and installation. She focuses on creating artwork, dancing, learning Mi’kmaw language, and facilitating workshops as a way to actively participate in survivance. Meagan is the recipient of numerous awards including the Sobey Art Award, longlist (2021); the Atlantic Canadian Emerging Artist, Hnatyshyn Foundation (2018); Emerging Artist Award, VANL-CARFAC (2018); Aboriginal Arts Development Award, First Peoples’ Cultural Council (2016). Her work exhibits nationally and internationally.
Natalie Robertson
Natalie Robertson (Ngāti Porou, Clann Dhònnchaidh) is a photographer, moving image artist, writer, and Associate Professor at AUT University, Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), Aotearoa. Centring Waiapu—the ancestral river of Ngāti Porou—world-famous for its erosion — much of Natalie’s research is based in Te Tai Rāwhiti, her East Coast Ngāti Porou homelands, to advance Māori counter-narratives to settler-colonialism. In 2022, Natalie graduated with a Ph.D. for her doctoral thesis Tātara e maru ana: Renewing ancestral connections with the sacred rain cape of Waiapu Kōkā Hūhua through the University of Auckland. Her accompanying photographs Tātara e maru ana — The sacred rain cape of Waiapu have been exhibited at three galleries in 2020, 2021, and 2022. She contributed extensively to the multi-authored book Hei Taonga Mā Uri Whakatipu – Treasures for the rising generation: The Dominion Museum Ethnological Expeditions 1919-1923 published (November 2021) by Te Papa Press.
Tania Willard
Tania Willard, Secwepemc Nation, works within the shifting ideas of contemporary and traditional as it relates to cultural arts and production. Often working with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Willard has worked as a curator in residence with grunt gallery and Kamloops Art Gallery. As assistant professor in Creative Studies at UBCO (Kelowna BC) currently her research focuses on Secwepemc aesthetics/language/land and interrelated Indigenous art practices. Willard’s projects include BUSH gallery, a conceptual space for land based art and action led by Indigenous artists.
https:// www.taniawillard.ca
