2017

Liz Johnson Artur (b. 1964) is a Russian-Ghanaian photographer based in London. For the last 28 years, Johnson Artur has been working on a photographic representation of people of African descent, capturing compelling nuances of blackness, highlighting family, love and friendships. Her monograph with Bierke Verlag was included in the 'Best Photo Books 2016' list of the New York Times. Johnson Artur works as a photojournalist and editorial photographer for various fashion magazines and record labels all over the world. She received her MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art in London and has taught at the London College of Communication.

Liz Johnson Artur, Untitled, 1986 to 2010. Black Balloon Archive. Courtesy of the artist

Raymond Boisjoly (b. 1981) is an Indigenous artist of Haida and Québécois descent who lives and works in Vancouver. He has exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions. Boisjoly investigates the ways images, objects, materials and language continue to define Indigenous art and artists, with particular attention to colonial contexts. In 2016 he was a recipient of the VIVA Award, presented by the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts, Vancouver and is one of the five artists shortlisted for the 2017 Sobey Art Award. Boisjoly is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio in the Department of Visual Art and Material Practice at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. He is represented by Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver.

Raymond Boisjoly, Station to Station (image detail, 1 of 5 prints), 2014
5 screen resolution LightJet prints mounted on dibond
Each 45.75 x 61 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver

Taisuke Koyama (b. 1978) is a Japanese artist, who explores the possibility of image making in the digital age. His abstract photographs and moving images employ experimental production methods to investigate the relationship between organic processes and phenomena and the technologies that facilitate their visual capture. He has exhibited extensively in Europe and Asia including Generated Images at the Daiwa Foundation Japan House Gallery, London, 2016 and at international art festivals: Aichi Trienniale (2016), Seotuchi Trienniale (2013), Daegu Photo Biennale (2012). In 2010, he was selected as part of the annual roster of Foam Talent for Foam Magazine. Monographs of his work include VESSEL – XYZXY (RRose Editions + taisuke koyama projects, 2017) and RAINBOW VARIATIONS (artbeat publishers + Kodoji Press, 2015). Koyama currently lives and works in Amsterdam and is represented by G/P Gallery, Tokyo, Metronom, Italy and Sunday Gallery, Switzerland.

Taisuke Koyama, UNTITLED (MELTING RAINBOWS 103) 2010.
Archival Pigment Print 111 x 74 cm / 60 x 40 cm Courtesy of the artist. From the series of MELTING RAINBOWS (Part of RAINBOW VARIATIONS)

Sophie Hackett is the Curator, Photography, at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and adjunct faculty in Ryerson University’s master’s program in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management. She continues to write for art magazines, international journals and artist monographs, including “Queer Looking: Joan E. Biren’s Slide Shows” in Aperture (spring 2015) and “Encounters in the Museum: The Experience of Photographic Objects” in the edited volume The “Public” Life of Photographs (Ryerson Image Centre and MIT Press, 2016). Hackett’s curatorial projects during her tenure at the AGO include Barbara Kruger: Untitled (It) (2010); Songs of the Future: Canadian Industrial Photographs, 1858 to Today (2011); Max Dean: Album, A Public Project (2012); What It Means To be Seen: Photography and Queer Visibility and Fan the Flames: Queer Positions in Photography (2014); Introducing Suzy Lake (2014); and Outsiders: American Photography and Film, 1950s–1980s (2016). In 2017, she was a Fellow with the Center for Curatorial Leadership. She is the lead juror for the 2017 AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize, a role she also held in 2014, 2010 and 2012.

Vancouver-born artist Ken Lum, is known worldwide for his conceptual and representational art in a number of media, including painting, sculpture and photography. A long-time professor, he currently is the Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design in Philadelphia. He has also taught at UBC in Vancouver where he was Head of Graduate Studio Fine Arts. A founding editor of the Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, he has published extensively, including an artist’s book project he co-conceived with philosopher Hubert Damisch. He has an active and long art exhibition record including Documenta 11, the Venice Biennale, Sao Paolo Bienal, Shanghai Biennale, Carnegie Triennial, Sydney Biennale, Liverpool Biennial, Gwangju Biennale among others. He has had solo exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Luzern, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, National Gallery of Canada and Vancouver Art Gallery. Lum has also been involved in co-conceiving and co-curating several large scale exhibitions including Shanghai Modern: 1919 – 1949, Sharjah Biennial 2007, and the NorthWest Annual. Since the mid 1990s, Lum has worked on numerous major permanent public art commissions including for the cities of Vienna, the Engadines (Switzerland), Rotterdam, St. Louis, Leiden, Utrecht, Toronto and Vancouver. He has also realized temporary public art commissions in Stockholm, Istanbul, Torun (Poland), Innsbruck and Kansas City. He is currently working on several public art projects including for Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto and Yaounde (Cameroon). He is currently working on a major city-wide public art and architecture exhibition titled Monument Lab for the city of Philadelphia.

Eva Respini is the Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. There, she has organized Liz Deschenes and Nalini Malani: In Search of Vanished Blood, as well as First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA, a major exhibition of the permanent collection marking the ICA/Boston's 10th year of collecting in the Diller Scofidio + Renfro building on Boston's waterfront. Respini previously served as Curator at The Museum of Modern Art, where she organized the critically acclaimed retrospectives Cindy Sherman, Robert Heinecken: Object Matter, and Walid Raad, as well as exhibitions with artists Klara Liden, Anne Collier, Leslie Hewitt, and Akram Zaatari. Over the course of her 15-year tenure at MoMA, Respini organized major retrospectives as well as important thematic exhibitions such as Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography and Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960. She is the author of Cindy Sherman (2012); Robert Heinecken: Object Matter (2014); Walid Raad (2015); Liz Deschenes (2016); and the thematic books Fashioning Fiction in Photography since 1990 (2004) and Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West (2008). Respini has held the position of Visiting Critic at both the School of Visual Arts at Columbia University and the School of Art at Yale University. In 2014, she was a Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York. Respini received a Master of Arts in Modern Art and Critical Theory from Columbia University.