respectfulchild is an interdisciplinary artist born, raised, and living as an uninvited guest on Treaty 6 Territory. Their debut album 在找::searching:: was released in the summer of 2017 on Coax Records and they have toured across Canada and Europe with artists such as Rae Spoon, A Tribe Called Red, and Jeremy Dutcher. The name respectfulchild is the literal translation of their Mandarin name 敬兒[jìng er]. This name was given to them by their grandmother when they were born, a name and a culture they’ve been estranged from having lived their whole life in the predominantly white world of the Canadian Prairies. respectfulchild is their space to seek meaning in 敬兒 again.
Léuli Eshrāghi, born in Yuwi Country and active across Sāmoa, Australia and Canada of Sāmoan/Persian/Cantonese ancestry, works across forms of creativity. They intervene in display territories to center global Indigenous and Asian diasporic visuality, sensual and spoken languages, and ceremonial-political practices. They are Curatorial Researcher in Residence at University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, and Curator of the forthcoming 9th TarraWarra Biennial at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville.
Jessica Karuhanga is a first-generation Canadian artist of British-Ugandan heritage whose work addresses issues of cultural politics of identity and Black diasporic concerns through lens-based technologies, writing, drawing and performances. Through her practice she explores individual and collective concerns of Black subjectivity: illness, rage, grief, desire and longing within the context of Black embodiment. She was the 2020 - 2021 recipient of Concordia University's SpokenWeb Artist/Curator In Residence Fellowship. Karuhanga has presented her work at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (2021), SummerWorks Lab (Toronto, 2020), The Bentway (Toronto, 2019), Nuit Blanche (Toronto, 2018), Onsite Gallery (Toronto, 2018) and Goldsmiths University (London, UK, 2017). Karuhanga's writing has been published by C Magazine, BlackFlash, Susan Hobbs Gallery and Fonderie Darling. She has been featured in AGO's Artist Spotlight, i-D, DAZED, Visual Aids, Border Crossings, Exclaim!, Toronto Star, CBC Arts, esse, filthy dreams, Globe and Mail and Canadian Art. She earned her BFA from Western University and MFA from University of Victoria. She is an Assistant Professor at Western University.
Christina Hajjar is a queer femme first-generation Lebanese artist, curator, and editor based in Winnipeg, MB on Treaty 1 Territory. Her practice considers intergenerational inheritance, domesticity, and place through diaspora, body archives, and cultural iconography. Hajjar is both a filmmaker and film programmer. She received the Jury Award and Audience Choice Award at the 2021 Gimli Film Festival, an honourable mention for the 2021 Emerging Digital Artists Award, and won the 2020 PLATFORM Photography Award. Hajjar curates the SWANA Film Festival and co-edits qumra journal, both focused on South West Asian and North African moving images. Her writing has appeared in BlackFlash Magazine, C Magazine, The Uniter, and CV2.