Visibility Speakers

Liz Johnson Artur

Artist

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.

Raymond Boisjoly

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.

Chris Boot

Executive Director, Aperture Foundation

Chris Boot became executive director of Aperture Foundation in 2010. Previously he was director of London’s Photo Co-op (since renamed Photofusion), an independent photography education center; director of Magnum Photos, first in London, and then in New York; and editorial director at Phaidon Press. His company Chris Boot Ltd., launched in 2001, published the award-winning photobooks Lodz Ghetto Album (2004) and Things as They Are: Photojournalism in Context Since 1955 (2005). He is the author and editor of Magnum Stories Phaidon, 2004).

Sandra Brewster

Artist

Sandra Brewster is a Canadian artist based in Toronto. Her work has been exhibited nationally and abroad and explores themes of identity, representation and memory. Recent exhibitions include UnIFixed Homelands, Aljira Contemporary Art Centre in New Jersey; New Found Lands, Eastern Edge Gallery in St. John's, Newfoundland and Performing Blackness I Performing Whiteness, Allegheny Art Galleries in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Brewster's most recent solo exhibition It's all a blur..., Georgia Scherman Projects, received the Gattuso Prize for outstanding featured exhibition in CONTACT Photography Festival 2017. In January 2018 she will be exhibiting in the upcoming group exhibition Here we are Here at the Royal Ontario Museum. This December 2018 she will be a resident fellow at Instituto Sacatar, Bahia, Brazil. Brewster holds a Masters of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto. She is represented by Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto.

Michèle Pearson Clarke

Artist

Michèle Pearson Clarke is a Trinidad-born artist who works in photography, film, video and installation. Using archival, performative and process-oriented strategies, her work explores the personal and political possibilities afforded by considering experiences of emotions related to longing and loss. Her work has been exhibited and screened across Canada, the United States, and Europe, including Ryerson Image Centre (Toronto), Studio XX (Montreal), Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa), Ann Arbor Film Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning (London, UK), International Film Festival Rotterdam and International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. She holds an MSW from the University of Toronto, and she received her MFA in Documentary Media Studies from Ryerson University in 2015, when she was awarded both the Ryerson University Board of Governors Leadership Award and Medal and the Ryerson Gold Medal for the Faculty of Communication + Design. This past year, she was artist-in-residence at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, and she was recently awarded the EDA Residency in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto Scarborough for the Winter term 2018. She is currently teaching in the Documentary Studies MFA program at Ryerson University.

Rhea Combs

Curator

Rhea L. Combs is Curator of Film and Photography at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. She also serves as the head of the museum’s Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts (CAAMA).Combs received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University, a Master of Arts degree from Cornell University, and a Doctorate from Emory University. Her writings have been featured in anthologies, academic journals and exhibition catalogues on range of topics including African American female filmmakers, black popular culture, visual aesthetics, filmmaking and photography. Combs’ current exhibitions and projects, respectively, at the National Museum of African American History and Culture include the museum’s inaugural photography show, Everyday Beauty: Selections from the Photography and Film Collection, Rising Up: Hale Woodruff’s Murals at Talladega College, Through the African American Lens: Selections from the Permanent Collection of NMAAHC, the photography books series, Double Exposure, which includes Through the African American Lens: A Survey of NMAAHC’s photography collection, Civil Rights and the Struggle for Equality, African American Women, Picturing Children, and Fighting for Freedom.

Julie Crooks

Curator

Julie Crooks, Assistant Curator, Photography at the AGO, received her PhD in the Department of History of Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where her research focused on historical photography in Sierra Leone, West Africa and the diaspora. She has curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions in Toronto since 2006, including No Justice, No Peace: From Ferguson to Toronto in February 2017, co-curated with Reese de Guzman (co-organized by the Ryerson Image Centre and BAND). She’s also the co-curator for the Royal Ontario Museum's Of Africa project, where she was a Rebanks Postdoctoral Fellow from 2014 to 2016.

Dayna Danger

Artist

Dayna Danger is a 2Spirit/Queer, Metis/Saulteaux/Polish visual artist raised in so called Winnipeg, MB. Using photography, sculpture, performance and video, Dayna Danger‘s practice questions the line between empowerment and objectification by claiming space with her larger than life scale work. Danger’s current use of BDSM and beading leather fetish masks explores the complicated dynamics of sexuality, gender, and power in a consensual and feminist manner. Danger is currently based in Tio'tia:ke. Danger holds a MFA in Photography from Concordia University. Danger has exhibited her work in Santa Fe, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, Peterborough, North Bay, Vancouver, Edmonton and Banff. Danger currently serves as a board member for the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective (ACC/CCA).

Awol Erizku

Artist

Awol Erizku received his B.A. from Cooper Union in 2010, his M.F.A from Yale in 2014 and has exhibited recently at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Only Way is Up at Hasted Kraeutler, New York; and has lectured in conjunction with Carrie Mae Weems at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include New Flower | Images of the reclining Venus at The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, and Bad II the Bonepresented at nomadic exhibition venue, Duchamp Detox Clinic, by Night Gallery. Erizku lives and works in Los Angeles.

Jason Evans

Photographer

This is a biography of the Welsh photographer Jason Evans, written in November 2017 when he was 49 years old. There is a likelihood that it will differ from previous and future biographies. It is not useful to try and pin his work down to any one genre or aesthetic, as he has benefitted from time in the editorial, art and music industries alongside periods where his focus was teaching or curation. He has  a keen eye for colour,  but is equally comfortable working in monochrome. His works on the page are complimented by long term online presences. His photographic exhibits usually feature sculptural elements. Needless to say he is a restless soul, easily distracted by his willingness to learn from the people and places he finds along the way and if we had to use one adjective to describe Evans it would have to be curious.

Michael Famighetti

Editor, Aperture magazine

Michael Famighetti is editor of Aperture magazine. He has edited numerous photography books, including volumes by William Christenberry, Robert Adams, John Divola, Jonas Bendiksen, and a series based on the website Tiny Vices. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Bookforum, Aperture, and OjodePez, among other publications. Famighetti has degrees from Bard College and Columbia University, where he has also taught. He has served as a judge for the American Society of Magazine Editors National Magazine Awards and has been a guest reviewer and speaker at many international photography festivals and institutions, including the Bamako Biennial, Mali; Krakow PhotoMonth, Poland; GuatePhoto, Guatemala; Rhubarb Rhubarb, Birmingham, U.K.; Festival de la Luz, Buenos Aires; Museet for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark; and Fotografiska, Stockholm.

Sunil Gupta

Artist

Sunil Gupta (b. 1953, India/UK) is a Canadian photographer, artist, educator and curator currently enrolled in a doctoral programme at the University of Westminster. Educated at the Royal College of Art he has been involved with independent photography as a critical practice for many years focusing on race, migration and queer issues. His latest book, “Delhi: Communities of Belonging" was published by The New Press, New York 2016. His latest show, a collaboration with Charan Singh, “Dissent and Desire” will be at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Jan-Apr 2018. His work has been seen at major museums including the Pompidou Centre, Paris 2011, Tate, Liverpool 2014 and Tate, Britain 2017. He is Visiting Professor at UCA, Farnham, and Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London and National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. He is Lead Curator for the Houston Fotofest 2018. His work is many private and public collections including; George Eastman House (Rochester, USA), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Royal Ontario Museum, Tate Britain, Harvard University and the Museum of Modern Art.

Sophie Hackett

Curator

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.

Lyle Ashton Harris

Artist

For more than two decades Lyle Ashton Harris (born 1965, New York) has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation and performance. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic. Known for his self-portraits and use of pop culture icons (such as Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson), Harris teases the viewers’ perceptions and expectations, resignifying cultural cursors and recalibrating the familiar with the extraordinary. Harris has exhibited work widely, including at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York) and The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) among many others, as well as at international biennials (São Paulo, 2016; Busan, 2008; Venice, 2007; Seville, 2006; Gwangju, 2000). His work is represented in the permanent collections of major museums, most recently The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2014 Harris joined the Board of Trustees of the American Academy in Rome and was recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize by the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.). In 2016 he was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and was appointed a trustee of the Tiffany Foundation. Having studied at Wesleyan University, the California Institute of the Arts, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, Harris is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Art Education at New York University.

David Hartt

Artist

David Hartt (b. 1967, Montréal) lives and works in Philadelphia where he is Assistant Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. His work is in the public collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Hartt is the recipient of a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant. In 2012 he was named a United States Artists Cruz Fellow and in 2011 he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Hartt is represented by Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago; David Nolan Gallery, New York; and Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin.

Taisuke Koyama

Artist

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.

Zun Lee

Artist

Zun Lee is a Canadian lens-based visual artist and educator whose work encourages alternate ways of thinking about community and belonging. He was born and raised in Germany and has also lived in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Chicago. Intersubjectivity and trust dynamics are an important component of Zun’s work as he embeds himself in his subjects’ daily lives to uncover stories of identity and connection.

Zun is best known for his immersive social practice of Black family life that often subvert and disrupt mainstream representations of Blackness and Black bodies. His exploration of quotidian life foregrounds how these often ephemeral moments generate and codify meaning around concepts of Black identity and self-representation, but also how that meaning may shift as images circulate as contested sites in the realm of cultural production, commodification, and appropriation.

Lee has shown his work in solo and group exhibits in Washington DC, Toronto, Paris, Perpignan, Orlando, Charlotte and Los Angeles. He has spoken publicly at New York University, Nathan Cummings Foundation, University of Chicago, University of Toronto, Annenberg Space for Photography, International Center of Photography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia University, and Rebuild Foundation.

Selected honors and awards include: Magnum Foundation Fellow (2015), Photo District News Photo Annual Winner (2015), Paris Photo/Aperture Photobook Awards Shortlist (2014), Photo District News’ 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch (2014).

Ken Lum

Artist

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.

Annie MacDonell

Artist

Annie MacDonell is a visual artist working across mediums. Her practice begins from the photographic impulse to frame and capture, but her output extends beyond photography. In recent years her work has included films, installations, sculpture, performance and writing. Her work questions the constitution, function, and circulation of images in the 21st century.

She received a BFA from Ryerson University in 2000, followed by graduate studies at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, in France. Recent performances have been presented at le Centre Pompidou, in Paris, and the Toronto International Film Festival. Recent solo shows have been held at Mulherin New York, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Windsor and Mercer Union Gallery, in Toronto. She has participated in recent group exhibitions at la Bibliothèque National in Paris, The Power Plant, Toronto, MOCA Cleveland, the Daegu Photo Biennale in South Korea and Le Grand Palais, Paris. In 2012 and 2015, she was long-listed for the Sobey Art Award. In 2012 she was short-listed for the AGO AMIA prize for photography. In May of 2016 she'll present a newly commissioned work at the Ryerson Image Centre, for CONTACT 2016. She lives with her family in Toronto and teaches in the photography program at Ryerson University.

Nelson Morales

Artist

Nelson Morales focuses on sexual diversity in different cultures—mainly the community of muxe, a third gender—on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, part of the state of Oaxaca. Morales was a student of three leaders of contemporary photography in Mexico: Antoine D’Agata, Juan Antonio Molina and Javier Ramírez Limón. Morales earned a BA in communication at Universidad José Vasconcelos. His work has been exhibited in the U. S., Mexico, Malaysia, Spain and The Netherlands, and is in the collections of Televisa Foundation, Nail Hollis and Foam. Morales is a recipient of the 2015–16 Young Creators Fellowship of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA). He recently completed a residency at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation and his first book of photography will be published in 2018.

Wanda Nanibush

Curator

Wanda Nanibush is the inaugural Curator, Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Nanibush is an Anishinaabe-kwe curator, image and word warrior, and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation. Her curatorial credits include the exhibitions Rita Letendre: Fire & Light (AGO), Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries, 1971-1989 (AGO), Sovereign Acts II (Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery), and the award winning KWE: The work of Rebecca Belmore (Justina M. Barnicke Gallery) among many others.

Chino Otsuka

Artist

Chino Otsuka was born in Tokyo, Japan and came to UK to be educated at Summerhill School, the progressive co-educational boarding school, at the age of 10. She studied photography at University of Westminster and received MA in Fine Art Photography at Royal College of Art. She has exhibited widely in UK, Europe and Asia. Recently she had a major solo show at Huis Marseille Museum for Photography, Amsterdam. Group shows include Helsinki Photogrphy Festival, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Victoria & Albert Museum, UK, LACMA, US, Dong Gang Museum of Photography, South Korea and Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, India. She has also published four books in Japan as a writer and published her first autobiographical book at the age of 15 to much acclaim. Her works are found in public collections including National Media Museum, UK, Wilson Centre for Photography, UK, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Huis Marseille Museum for Photography and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. The series Imagine Finding Me has become her most exhibited work showing over 14 countries.

Adrian Stimson

Artist

Adrian Stimson is a member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation. He has a BFA with distinction from the Alberta College of Art and Design and MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. He is as an interdisciplinary artist, working in painting, performance, installation, photography and sculpture.

His performance art looks at identity construction, specifically the hybridization of the Indian, the cowboy, the shaman and Two Spirit being. Buffalo Boy, The Shaman Exterminator are two reoccurring personas. Stimson’s installation work primarily examines the residential school experience; he attended three residential schools in his life. He has used the material culture from Old Sun Residential School on his Nation to create works that speak to genocide, loss and resilience. His photography includes collodion wet plate portraits, performance dioramas and war depictions.His sculpture work has been primarily collaborative; he has worked with relatives of Murdered and Missing Women to create Bison Sentinels and with the Whitecap Dakota Nation in creating Sprit of Alliance a monument to the War of 1812. Stimson was a participant in the Canadian Forces Artist Program in Afghanistan. He was awarded the Blackfoot Visual Arts Award in 2009, the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003, the Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005 and the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Award.