ARTISTS

Edie & Jacquelyn Assinewe
Assinewe Jewelry specializes in beadwork and clay jewelry that incorporates traditional Ojibwe styles and techniques into contemporary fashionable designs. Edie and Jacquelyn Assinewe are twin sisters who were born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. They are members of Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation. Both are full-time students studying business and fashion. They are bringing their passion to life with the creation of Assinewe Jewelry!

Nicole Helena

Alkarim Jadavji
Alkarim Jadavji (he/him) is a self-taught creator who specializes in photography and motion graphics. As a creator, Jadavji regularly experiments with new mediums, aiming to explore the varying aspects of the fine art world. With his extensive experience as a designer, Jadavji has been aiming to expand and go beyond the boundaries of his past work. His photography practice initially was that outlet for freedom, and creating and collaboration became an extension of his exploration on empathy and storytelling.

Rose Marie Morales
Rose Marie Morales started her wearable art journey five years ago while splitting her time between her hometown of Magog, Quebec and Toronto. Using crochet, embroidery and beading, as well as a lot of imagination and experimentation, Morales creates one-of-a-kind jewellery, headwear and handbags. Her creative process is fueled by nature, Art Nouveau and Victorian needlework as well as the textile artistry of women worldwide. She uses simple, recycled and un-precious materials, making her practice very sustainable as well as separating her creations from their consumer counterparts and their association with status, class and ownership.
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Morales developed her love for textile arts at an early age, being taught needlework both at home and in school in her native Chile. In Canada, her formal training and work experience were related to sewing and dressmaking, although she always had more creative needlework projects on the side. For many years, she was also able to use the therapeutic benefits of textile art in her work to tackle mental health.
Morales’ practice has allowed her to recuperate a voice that was often silenced or invalidated by a patriarchal upbringing. She aims to create pieces that reflect beauty, hope and harmony, which can enhance the beholder’s and wearer’s wellbeing as the process of making them does for her.

Chiedza Pasipanodya
I am an artist, curator and educator. I enjoy long walks on the beach, working with clay and researching pan-African-centred visual culture. I began making ceramics in March 2020. As the world slowed down, a new embodied expression emerged through my hands. Since this time, each vessel made has been an encounter with slowness, creativity, connection, and home.

Tazeen Qayyum
Tazeen Qayyum (she/her) is a Pakistani-Canadian, multidisciplinary artist. Trained as a miniature painter of South Asian and Persian traditions, Qayyum continues to explore new materials and processes through drawing, installation, sculpture, video and performance. Drawing from complex issues of belonging and displacement within a socio-political context, her art is a way for her to navigate identity and beliefs living in the diaspora. Qayyum’s work has been exhibited across the world and is included in the collections of the TD Canada Trust Permanent Collection, Toronto; The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa; Welt Museum, Vienna; Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pengzhou, China; Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto; National Gallery of Amman, Jordan; and National Art Gallery, Nepal. Qayyum received her BFA in Visual Arts from the National College of Arts Lahore, Pakistan, 1996 and currently lives and works in Oakville, Canada.

Jenny Santos
Mt. Prospect Studio by Jenny Santos, is a clay-based exploration of everyday objects. Jenny is a second generation Filipino-Canadian artist from Windsor, Ontario and currently based in the Niagara Region. Her background as a visual artist and curiosity for materials evolved into starting a new design practice called Mt. Prospect Studio in 2020. She earned her BFA at OCAD University and MFA at School of Visual Arts in New York City. After primarily focusing on sculpture and installation projects, she fell in love with the transformative properties of clay. Often led by a desire to create unexpected moments in the familiar, she intuitively hand-builds clay forms into subtle, changing curves and textures with reference to growth processes in nature. Her work also seeks to strike a balance between functionality and the intangible experience that arises from seeing, using, and holding an object in one’s own hands.

Gillian Toliver
Gillian Toliver is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto. As an artist of mixed Scottish and Caribbean descent, her work often explores spaces existing in an inbetween, a world caught in a moment of creation. Resisting the systematic confinement and censuring of women’s bodies and identity, her work is a reaction to the absurdity, multiplicity and fluidity of being. Utilizing practices of labour, repetition and ritual, she navigates the condition of body and mind by creating new forms in which to explore personal mythologies.
Toliver has exhibited in both Canada and Italy. Her thesis work Paper Skin Makes Me Waver in the Breeze was awarded the Medal for Drawing and Painting and Nora E. Vaughan Award at OCAD University in 2019.
