Join artist Wolfgang Tillmans in conversation with University of Toronto Computer Science Professor Kyros Kutulakos and Astronomy Professor Suresh Sivanandam

Held in conjunction with the exhibition, Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear. 

Born in 1968 in Remscheid, Germany, Wolfgang Tillmans studied at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design in Bournemouth, England, from 1990 to 1992. Relentlessly pushing to find ways to make new pictures in our image-saturated world, Tillmans has, throughout his career, explored and integrated photography’s many genres, techniques and presentation strategies. In 2000, Tillmans was the first photographer and first non-British artist to receive the Turner Prize, an award given annually by Tate in London. In recent years, Tillmans has been more directly involved in political activism. In tandem with his ongoing Truth Study Center project (begun in 2005), he has created posters for the anti-Brexit campaign in Britain and in response to right-wing populism in Germany. Fragile, a major touring solo exhibition of the artist’s work, opened in 2018 at the Musée d’Art Contemporain et Multimédias in Kinshasa, with the final stop taking place at Art Twenty One and CCA, Lagos in 2022. 

Kyros Kutulakos received his BS degree in computer science from the University of Crete, in 1988 and a PhD in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in 1994. He is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. Kyros has been a pioneer in the area of computational light transport, developing theoretical tools and computational cameras to analyze light propagation in real-world environments. 

Suresh Sivanandam received his BSc in Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia in 2004, and his PhD in Astronomy and Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona in 2010. He is currently the interim director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics and an associate professor at the University of Toronto. Suresh has been at the forefront of efforts to enhance the imaging capabilities of large telescopes by pushing the boundaries of optical instrumentation, with a focus on advancements in adaptive optics. He uses these developments to study the distant universe and understand how galaxies formed and evolved over time.