Thirza Jean Cuthand was born in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1978. Since 1995 she’s made experimental narrative videos and performances which have exhibited in festivals and galleries internationally, including Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, Mix Brasil Festival of Sexual Diversity in Sao Paolo, Oberhausen International Kurzfilmtage in Germany, the National Gallery in Ottawa, and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She completed a BFA in Film and Video at ECUAD, and an MA in Media Production at Ryerson University. She is currently developing a feature film and a video game. She is Plains Cree and Scots, and resides in Toronto.
Raven Davis is an Indigenous, multidisciplinary artist, curator, performer, human rights speaker and community educator from the Anishinaabek Nation in Manitoba. Born and raised in Tkaronto (Toronto) and currently splitting time working between K’jipuktuk (Halifax) and Tkaronto. Raven blends narratives of colonization, race, gender, erotica, their 2-Spirit identity and the Anishinaabemowin language and culture into a variety of contemporary art forms. Raven is also a proud parent to 3 sons. Highlighted in Canadian Art, Must Sees, Raven has been interviewed by No More Potlucks the CBC and the Huffington Post, and has been published in Canadian Art Magazine, Black Girl Dangerous, Plentitude Magazine and The Coast News Paper. Raven was a nominee for the Sobey Art Award in 2016.
Vanessa Dion Fletcher employs porcupine quills, Wampum belts, and menstrual blood to reveal the complexities of what defines a body physically and culturally. She links these ideas to personal experiences with language, fluency, and understanding. All of these themes are brought together in the context of her Potawatomi and Lenape ancestry, and her learning disability caused by a lack of short-term memory. Her work is held in the Indigenous Art Center Collection in Gatineau, Quebec, and Seneca College. In 2016, Dion Fletcher graduated from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago with an M.F.A in performance. She is the recipient of the 2017 Textile Museum of Canada Melissa Levin Emerging Artist Award.
Dana Michel (b. Ottawa, Canada) is a choreographer and live artist based in Montreal. In 2005, she graduated from the BFA program in Contemporary Dance at Concordia University in her late twenties. Prior to this, she was a marketing executive, competitive runner and football player. She is a 2011 danceWEB scholar (Vienna, Austria) and is currently an artist-in-residence at Usine C (Montreal, Canada) and at the National Art Center of Ottawa. Her first extended-length solo performance piece, Yellow Towel, was featured on the "Top Five" and the "Top Ten" 2013 dance moments in the Voir newspaper (Montreal) and Dance Current Magazine (Canada) respectively. In 2014, she was awarded the newly created ImPulstanz Award (Vienna) in recognition for outstanding artistic accomplishments and was highlighted amongst notable female choreographers of the year by the New York Times. That same year concluded with Yellow Towel appearing on the Time Out New York Magazine "Top Ten Performances" list. Her most recent and critically acclaimed solo, Mercurial George, was premiered at Festival TransAmériques (Montreal) in June 2016. Both pieces are currently on tour. In June 2017, Dana Michel was awarded the Silver Lion for Innovation in Dance by the Venice Biennale (Italy). Always in 2017 she joined Par B.L.eux, a company founded and directed by Benoît Lachambre as associate artist.
Harold Offeh was born in Accra, Ghana in 1977 and grew up in London, UK. He is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of history. His work encompasses performance, social practice, video and photography, often using humour as a means to confront the viewer with aspects of contemporary culture and history. He studied at the University of Brighton and the Royal College of Art, London. Recently Offeh has approached the themes of service and Afro hair culture through collective live engagements with other artists, performers and community participation. He has shown widely both in the UK and abroad. He lives in Cambridge and works in London and Leeds where he is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University.
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 considers himself as an interdisciplinary artist; he exhibits nationally and internationally. 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. He is also known for putting his body under stress, in White Shame Re-worked, he pierced his chest 7 times, recreating a performance originally done by Ahasiw-Muskegon Iskew, crawled across the desert in 110 degree heat for What about the Red Man? For Burning Man’s The Green Man and recently dug a TRENCH in a five-day durational performance sunrise to sunset. In 2018 Adrian was awarded the Governor General Award in Visual and Media Arts. 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 REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award –Hnatyshyn Foundation in 2017.
Nabil is a Chicago-based Bengali artist working with new media, photography, socially engaged art and performance. Their most notable projects include “Visiting Thahab” (ongoing), a rich exploration of the contemporary presence and experience of the Muslim femme. Vega creates immersive works that examine elements of our lived experiences as they intersect with identity, personal politics, and queerness. Since 2014 they have been organizing and curating performance and new media works in collaboration with organizations and artist run platforms such as MIX NYC and their own platform VIX: Virtual International Exchange. Vega is recipient of the prestigious Traveling Fellowship (2018) and Springborn Fellowship (2011) from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Their works have been exhibited nationally and internationally in museums, festivals and galleries; including a solo exhibition at the New Bedford Museum of Art (2018) and featured in publications such as Emergency Index Vol. 6, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post & The Aerogram.
John G. Hampton is a curator and artist currently living in Treaty 2 territory, Manitoba and is the Executive Director of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba and Adjunct Curator at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. John holds a Masters of Visual Studies – Curatorial Studies (2014) from the University of Toronto, and a BA in Visual Arts (2009) from the University of Regina and is the former Artistic Director of Trinity Square Video (2013-2016) and Curator at Neutral Ground Contemporary Art Forum (2010-2013). John is a citizen of Canada, the United States, and the Chickasaw Nation.