Luis Jacob is a Peruvian-born Toronto-based artist and curator whose work destabilizes conventions of viewing and invites a collision of meanings. He studied semiotics and philosophy at the University of Toronto. Since his participation as an exhibiting artist in Documenta12 in 2007, he has achieved an international reputation — with exhibitions at La Biennale de Montréal (2016); Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2015); Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College, Pennsylvania, and Limerick City Gallery of Art (2014); Centro Párraga, Murcia (2013); Witte de With, Rotterdam, and Taipei Biennial (2012); Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art, Toronto, and Generali Foundation, Vienna (2011); Kunsthalle Bern, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, and Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2009); Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, and Hamburger Kunstverein, Hamburg (2008); and Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2007). His curatorial work includes Form Follows Fiction: Art and Artists in Toronto (2016) at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. In 2015, he co-curated the conference "This is Paradise: Art and Artists in Toronto" with Barbara Fischer in collaboration with Kitty Scott.

Gareth Long is an artist whose diverse artistic practice unifies around a range of recurring motifs: repetition, seriality, amateurism, translation, collaboration, pedagogy, knowledge transmission and the retelling of narratives. These various themes are mobilized in his work towards a larger project that dismantles notions of authorship and articulates a deep suspicion of originality and a clear investment in the domain of things already said, already written. Often, this has seen him working across the converging roles of artist, curator, archivist, editor, educator and student, as he has sought to further complicate notions of artistic creation and production. These themes are both a central thematic concern and a method in the production of the work.

Many of Long’s projects have often adopted a discursive mode of practice, engaging others in truly interdisciplinary, collaborative and pedagogically focused projects that include installations in the public realm, written texts, book-works, performances and discussions on the topics of cultural production, artistic labour, amateurism, copying and post-studio practice. Long is currently the Director of the Visual Studies program at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, where he is also an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream. Long has previously taught at numerous universities in North America and Europe. 

Long’s solo exhibitions have been staged at venues including Kunsthalle Wien, Austria; the Blaffer Museum, USA; the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; Oakville Galleries, Oakville; Kate Werble Gallery, New York; Michael Benevento, Los Angeles; TORRI, Paris; SpazioA, Pistoia; Galerie Bernhard, Zurich; Super Dakota, Brussels; and Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto. His work has been shown at galleries and institutions such as MoMA PS1, Long Island City; Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver; The Power Plant, Toronto; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal; Artists Space, New York; Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York; Flat Time House, London; Drawing Room, London; Spike Island, Bristol; Wiels, Brussels; Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; and Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly Witte de With), Rotterdam.

He holds an Honours BA in Visual Studies and Classical Civilizations (2003) from the University of Toronto, and a MFA in Sculpture (2007) from Yale University.

Jean-Paul Kelly is an artist whose activities across various media, presented in exhibition and screening contexts, pose questions about the limits of representation by examining complex associations in the production, reception, and circulation of nonfiction material. His work has been presented in solo exhibitions at VOX Centre de l’image contemporaine (Montréal, 2019), Plug In ICA (Winnipeg, 2019), Delfina Foundation (London, 2016), Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, 2014), Scrap Metal Gallery (Toronto, 2013), and Gallery TPW (Toronto, 2008). 

Kelly’s work has been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Toronto (GTA24: The Greater Toronto Art Triennial, 2024), Badischer Kunstverein (Karlsruhe, 2021), Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides (Saint-Jérôme, 2016), Southwark Park Galleries (London, 2016), Oakville Galleries (2015), Mercer Union (Toronto, 2010 and 2014) and The Power Plant (Toronto, 2011). His videos have screened at Anthology Film Archives, The Brakhage Center Symposium, Canada House (London), Courtisane Festival, The Flaherty Film Seminar, Film at Lincoln Center, International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and TIFF Cinematheque. Kelly received the 2014 Kazuko Trust Award from Film at Lincoln Center and the 2015 Images Festival Award. 

He is an Assistant Professor and previous Program Director of Visual Studies, the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. A graduate of the Master of Visual Studies program at the Daniels Faculty (MVS, Studio Art, 2005), he has taught studio and seminar courses in the Visual Studies program as well as at the School of Image Arts, Toronto Metropolitan University and OCAD University. 

From 2009 to 2012, Kelly was Artistic Director of Trinity Square Video (Toronto) where he curated exhibitions including artists Abbas Akhavan, Jennifer Chan, Harry Dodge, Alison Kobayashi, Alex Morrison, Lisa Oppenheim, Andrew James Paterson, Paulette Phillips, Steve Reinke, James Richards, Ming Wong, and Jin-Me Yoon.

Mitchell Akiyama is a Toronto-based scholar, composer, and artist. His eclectic body of work includes writings about plants, animals, cities, and sound art; scores for film and dance; and objects and installations that trouble received ideas about history, perception, and sensory experience. Akiyama’s output has appeared in commensurately miscellaneous sources such as Leonardo Music Journal, ISEA, Sonar Music Festival (Barcelona), Raster-Noton Records (Berlin), Gendai Gallery (Toronto), and in many other exhibitions, publications, and festivals. He holds a PhD in communications from McGill University, an MFA from Concordia University, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto.

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Charles Stankievech is an artist redefining “fieldwork” at the convergence of geopolitics, deep ecologies and sonic resonances. From the Arctic’s northernmost settlement to the depths of the Pacific Ocean, Stankievech’s practice uncovers the paradoxes of our existence on the planet by engaging with the imperceptible. His diverse body of work has been shown internationally at institutions including the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; MASS MoCA; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; and the Venice and SITE Santa Fe Biennales, among others. 

His writing has been published by Sternberg, e-flux, Verso, MIT, and Princeton Architectural Press, and he lectured at dOCUMENTA (13) and the 8th Berlin Biennale. He has participated in such residencies as The Banff Centre, Fogo Island, Marfa Fieldwork, Atlantic Centre for the Arts, Museumsquartier Vienna and the Canadian Department of Defence. His comprehensively researched curatorial projects include Magnetic Norths and CounterIntelligence—both critically acclaimed as the top Canadian exhibitions of 2010 and 2014 respectively. In 2015 he won the OAAG award for best solo exhibition Monument as Ruin and was shortlisted twice for the Sobey Art Prize in 2011 (Westcoast) and 2016 (Ontario). Since 2015, he is an editor of the peer-reviewed Afterall Journal (U. of Chicago Press) and was the co-founder/director of K. Verlag Press, Berlin. In 2007 he was a founding faculty member of the Yukon School of Visual Arts in Dawson City, Canada (under joint governance by the Indigenous sovereign nation of Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in). 

From 2015 to 2021, Stankievech was the Director of Visual Studies at the the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, where he is currently an Associate Professor. In 2022-23, he was also a visiting research professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo.

Barbara Fischer is the Executive Director/Chief Curator of the Art Museum at the University of Toronto (comprised of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and the University of Toronto Art Centre) as well as an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream in the Master of Visual Studies program in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

Fischer has curated award-winning exhibitions in the area of contemporary art and its histories, including solo exhibitions of Stan Douglas, Rebecca Belmore, Will Kwan, John Greyson, Wendy Coburn, Deanna Bowen, and Kent Monkman’s Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience (touring across Canada from 2017 to 2021), among many others. She curated the internationally circulating retrospective exhibition General Idea Editions 1967-1995 (Kunstverein Munich, Kunsthalle Zurich, Kunst-Werke ICA Berlin, CAAC Seville, Henry Art Gallery Seattle, and the Andy Warhol Museum Pittsburgh, among others), and Projections (2007), the first major survey (and touring exhibition) on projection-based works in the history of contemporary art in Canada. In 2010, she partnered with five curators from across Canada to produce the first survey of conceptual art in Canada (Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980) which toured across Canada and in reconfigured form to the Badischer Kunstverein (Germany) and the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris (2010 to 2014).

Barbara Fischer is the recipient of the 2008 Hnatyshyn Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art. She curated Mark Lewis’ project, and was part of the curatorial team for Isuma, presented at the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (in 2009 and 2019 respectively).

http://www.susanhobbs.com/artist/30059260-shirley-wiitasalo

Shirley Wiitasalo received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2011. The Canada Council for the Arts, which grants the Governor General’s Awards, commended her art, citing her "highly celebrated talent as a contemporary painter" that "has received critical and public attention throughout her career." Undaunted by the medium’s rich history, Wiitasalo creates work that is unpredictable, challenging, and new. From her evocative imagery to her recent explorations that employ a more reductive vocabulary, Wiitasalo is interested in unravelling the mystery of painting itself. Her paintings have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at The Power Plant in Toronto (2000), the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland (1993) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (1987). She has also participated in several important group exhibitions across Canada, including at the National Gallery of Canada (1989), and internationally at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld, Germany (1994), the Fodor Museum in Amsterdam (1984), 49th Parallel in New York (1982) and the National Museum of Art in Tokyo (1981). Wiitasalo received the Toronto Arts Award for Visual Art in 1993 and the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation 1998 Annual Prize. Her work is in many major national public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada.

http://www.steeleandtomczak.com

Kim Tomczak is a multidisciplinary artist primarily known for his work in performance, photography and video. Born in Victoria, B.C. in 1952, he graduated with honours from the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design) in 1975. His work has been shown extensively both nationally and internationally, including at the Paris Biennale, the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, the Video Biennale in Vienna (where he received first prize for a tape co-produced with Lisa Steele) as well as the Musee de Beaux Arts in Montreal, Documenta 8 in Kasel, Germany, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. His work is in many collections including: the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Oakville Galleries. He is a co-founder of Vtape, a Toronto media arts resource centre.

Since 1983, Tomczak has worked exclusively in collaboration with Lisa Steele, producing videotapes, performances and photo/text works. They have received numerous grants and awards including the Bell Canada prize for excellence in Video Art, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts; the Peter Herndorff award for Media Arts through the Toronto Arts Awards, and, in 2005, a Governor General’s Award for lifetime achievement in Visual & Media Arts.  They have been awarded two public art commissions, one for an outdoor screen at Dundas Square and Watertable, a light installation that marks the original shoreline of Lake Ontario. Steele and Tomczak were awarded Honourary Doctorates by the University of British Columbia (Okanagan) in 2009.

A major survey of their photo and video work opened at Wharf Centre d'art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie in January 2010.  Becoming…, a 4 channel installation work was in Montreal in September as part of Le Mois de la Photo a Montréal.  A travelling survey of their work from the past decade entitled The Long Time, and curated by Paul Wong, opened in Vancouver in September 2012, traveled to A Space Gallery in Toronto in December 2013, and will travel to Halifax in June 2014 and The Art Gallery of Windsor in September 2015.