2021 Award

Aljumaine Gayle

Twenty_Four_Seven / 365, 2019
Interactive Installation

Twenty_Four_Seven / 365 is an immersive interactive installation that illustrates the rising dangers of surveillance technology for communities of colour, including its ability to regulate behaviour in both subtle and overt ways. Pointing to specific technological advancements that have given police departments and governments increased capabilities to monitor, track, and punish specific groups, the work aims to provoke reflection on the nature of privacy and consent in public spaces in hopes of sparking an inclusive dialogue among audiences.

Aljumaine Gayle is a queer artist and creative technologist working at the intersections of tech, art, design, and data justice. Their artistic practice explores and subverts the othering of blackness in contemporary life. Aljumaine is a student in OCAD University’s Digital Futures program and a researcher with the University of Toronto’s Technoscience Research Unit. (Photo: Car Martin)

Erin Konsmo

Fish/Scale Cones, 2020
Image

Fish/Scale Cones takes fish scale art into the digital realm. The time-intensive artform includes catching whitefish, processing the scales, then dyeing and organizing them into careful compositions—a practice that is based on relationships with the water, local First Nations and Métis fishers, and the fish themselves. Konsmo plays with the idea of ‘scale’ using macro photography, layering physical fish scales over top of digital images of enlarged scales to create traditional floral forms, prompting close attention to the intricate details of this important material.

Erin Konsmo is a Métis Prairie queer who grew up in central Alberta and is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta. Their artistic practice currently focuses on fish scale art, an artform they were mentored into by Métis artist Jaime Morse. Erin is an advocate for the water, land and fish. (Photo: Melody McKiver)

Katelyn Hawley

Stuck, 2021
Game

Stuck is an exploratory game with the objective of guiding a small seedling on an introspective journey out into the world, where they must face their personified negative feelings in order to better understand themselves. Taking inspiration from anti-role-playing games such as Yume Nikki and Mother, Stuck’s character interactions range from comical to bleak to overwhelming. As the player traverses a series of mental planes and abstract landscapes, they come to empathize with the seedling’s mindset and join in the quest for self-acceptance.

Katelyn Hawley is a recent graduate from OCAD University’s Expanded Animation program, originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her game-based works explore how nonconventional characters move and interact with the world, blending fluid animation and surreal storytelling to leave a lasting impact on players.

Olivia Dreisinger

disabled!, 2017
Video, 41:04

disabled! is an experimental video documentary that examines the role of disability in fanfiction. Narrated through a fan-made avatar of River Tam from the television show Firefly—a non-visibly disabled character that serves as a stand-in for the artist’s own imperceptibly unwell body—viewers are taken on a tour of the many worlds of fanfiction. Paralleling the inherent inquisitiveness and ingenuity of the genre with the artist’s own quest for alternate ways of living, the work creates space to challenge and reimagine our understanding of disability.

Olivia Dreisinger is a disability scholar, filmmaker, and writer. Her own fluctuating abilities often dictates how she produces work—a process that regularly leads her to new and generative mediums to explore. She splits her time between Victoria and Vancouver, Canada.

Shonee

Field of Reeds, 2021
Video, 6:08

Field of Reeds is a 360-degree video that explores nature’s position within the urban landscape. Accessed through the sterility of a computer screen, a simulated virtual plant biome offers an escape from a future reality where all plants and animals have gone extinct. Physical movement is restricted within the vast digital ecosystem to ground the “user” in place as their perception slows to the pace of the surrounding flora, their attention drawn to the meditative stillness of plant life moving in cycles to reflect the environment’s slow moving circadian rhythm.

Shonee is a Canadian-Costa Rican digital media artist based in Montreal who uses the immersive potential of video and speculative fiction to create artificial life. In the virtual worlds she creates, surreal creatures embody humankind’s objective and narrow misunderstanding of the lives of plants and animals in this time of ecological crisis. (Photo: Minelly Kamemura)

Ashley Jane Lewis

Ashley Jane Lewis is a creative technologist, educator and new media artist with a focus on speculative design, bio art and social justice. Her artistic practice explores black cultures of the past, present and future through computational and analog mediums including coding, machine learning, data weaving, microorganisms and live performance. Listed in the top 100 Black Women to Watch in Canada, her award winning work has exhibited in both Canada and the US, most notably on the White House website during the Obama presidency.

Cat Bluemke

Cat Bluemke is an artist, educator, and curator of digital technologies. She works primarily with video games, performance, and virtual and augmented reality, through which she explores the dichotomy of work and play in contemporary culture. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions sucha s the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, Kunsternes Hus (Norway), and the New Museum (NY) through Rhizome. She currently lives and works in Treaty 4 Territory for the MacKenzie Art Gallery as their Digital Operations Coordinator.

Suzanne Morrissette

Suzanne Morrissette (she/her) is an artist, curator, and scholar who is currently based out of Toronto. She was born and raised in Winnipeg and is a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation. As an artistic researcher Suzanne works across a variety of media to investigate her interests in family and community knowledge, methods of translation, the telling of in-between histories, and practices of making that support and sustain life. Morrissette holds a PhD from York University in Social and Political Thought.

Khadija Aziz 

Khadija Aziz is an interdisciplinary textile artist and educator who investigates image-making in the digital sphere using a flatbed scanner, cloth, and thread. Her process-based practice bridges the gap between textile-making techniques and digital technologies, generating unique surface outcomes and images through chance, spontaneity, and experimentation. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Fibres & Material Practices at Concordia University, Montreal. Khadija is the recipient of the 2020 Shanks Memorial Award in Textiles from Craft Ontario and the 2020 Creative Promise Award from the Surface Design Association.