Meet our jurors for the Annual Studio Art Student Exhibition 2024
Charlene K. Lau is an art historian, critic and Curator of Public Art at Evergreen Brick Works. She has held fellowships at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; Parsons School of Design, The New School; and Performa Biennial. Charlene has also held teaching positions at Parsons School of Design, OCAD University, Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Toronto Scarborough, Western University and York University. Her writing has been published in Art in America, Artforum, TheAtlantic.com, The Brooklyn Rail, C Magazine, Canadian Art, frieze, Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, Fashion Theory and Journal of Curatorial Studies, among others.
Photo credit: Don Lee
Ella Gonzales is a Filipina-Canadian artist working between painting and Computer-Aided Design programs, as led by her interest in space making. She has recently exhibited at The Power Plant, Toronto; Unit 17, Vancouver; Stewart Hall Art Gallery, Pointe-Claire; Christie Contemporary, Toronto; Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; AXENEO7, Gatineau; Hunt Gallery, Toronto; Galerie Nicolas Robert, Toronto; The plumb, Toronto; and Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Kingston. Gonzales holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Western University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Guelph.
Tanya Mars is a feminist performance artist who has been actively involved in the Canadian art scene since 1973 doing many different things. She has lived and worked in Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia.
Since the 70s Mars’ work has focused on creating spectacular feminist imagery that places women at the centre of the narrative. Since the mid-90s her performances have included endurance, durational and site-specific strategies. Her work is political, satirical and humorous. She has worked both independently and collaboratively to create both large-scale as well as intimate performances in Canada and internationally.
Ironic to Iconic: The Performance Works of Tanya Mars, was published in 2008 by FADO, edited by Paul Couillard. She has edited two volumes of Canadian women performance artists with Johanna Householder: Caught in the Act and More Caught in the Act. She is the recipient of a 2008 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Recently retired from teaching at the University of Toronto Scarborough for 25 years, Mars lives off-grid in Nova Scotia. She has one daughter and 3 grandsons.
Photo credit: Louise Liliefeldt
Meet our jurors for the Annual Studio Art Student Exhibition 2023
 | Luis Jacob is a Toronto based artist whose work destabilizes conventions of viewing, and invites collisions of meaning. Jacob has achieved an international reputation, with his work exhibited at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, and the Toronto Biennial of Art (2019); Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2018); Museion, Bolzano, Italy (2017); La Biennale de Montréal (2016); Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2015); Taipei Biennial 2012; Generali Foundation, Vienna (2011); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); Hamburg Kunstverein and the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (both 2008); and Documenta12, Kassel (2007). In 2016 he curated the exhibition “Form Follows Fiction: Art and Artists in Toronto” at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, with a catalogue co-published with Black Dog Press in 2020. |
 | Johanna Householder works at the intersection of popular and unpopular culture, making performance art, video and audio works. Her interest in how ideas move through and shape bodies has led her often collaborative practice. Her recent collaborations include working with performance artist, Judith Price and six sound artists to produce Diptychs, a series of zoom-recorded video pieces exhibited at the Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina (2022) and upcoming at the Contact Photography Festival in Toronto in May. She is one of the founders of the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art biennial, and with Tanya Mars she has co-edited two books: Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian women (2004), and More Caught in the Act (2016). She is professor emerita in the Faculty of Art and Graduate Studies at OCADU. Her current work concerns the vexations of the anthropocene. |
 | Xuan Ye 叶轩 is an artist, musician, engineer and educator who works across and beyond these contexts. Their work coheres around the errata and the untranslatable. They make software, e.g. bots and interactive websites as digital poetry; editions, e.g. edibles and AR sculptures as durational performances; and other multi-sensory networked experiences synthesizing language, code, sound, body, image, data, light, and time. Their artwork has appeared at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Shanghai), MOCA Toronto, Venice Architecture Biennale, Darling Foundry (Montreal), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Goethe-Institut (Beijing & Montreal), ArtAsiaPacific (Issue. 111), KUNSTFORUM (Bd. 257), among others. They are an artist-in-residence awarded by the Swiss Arts Council in 2023, a finalist of EQ Bank digital artist awards in 2018 and a recipient of the SSHRC scholarship. As a musician, their live performances and releases have received critical accolades from Bandcamp, Musicworks and Exclaim! |
Meet our jurors for the Annual Studio Art Student Exhibition 2022
 | Esery Mondesir is a Haitian-born Canadian video artist and filmmaker. He was a high school teacher and a labour organizer before receiving an MFA in cinema production from York University (Toronto) in 2017. Mondesir’s work draws from personal and collective memory, official archives and vernacular records, the Everyday, to generate a reading of our societies from the margins. Made in collaboration with fellow members of the Haitian diaspora in Havana, Cuba and Tijuana, Mexico, his latest films have been exhibited internationally. Mondesir currently lives and teaches in Toronto, Canada. |
 | Multi-disciplinary artist Golboo Amani is best known for her performance and social practice works. Amani often relies on familiar social engagements as a point of entry into her practice. Critical of systemic social patterns, the artist views social situations as ready-made sites for aesthetic intervention. Amani’s work often addresses the conditions of knowledge production that render epistemic violence as invisible, insignificant and benign. By expanding sites of pedagogy to include the streets, backyards, homes, public transit, Amani intends to produce non-hierarchical pedagogical experiences that speak to collective agency and egalitarian epistemology. Amani’s work has been shown nationally and internationally in venues including the Toronto Biennial of Art, Creative Time Summit, Art Gallery of Ontario, Articule, XPACE Artist-Run Centre, Hemispheric Institute, Union Gallery, Blackwood Gallery, Rats9 Gallery, Rhubarb Festival, FADO Emerging Artist Series, TRANSMUTED International Festival of Performance Art (Mexico City), 221A Artist-Run Centre, and the LIVE Biennial of Performance Art. |
 | Yael Brotman has a multi-faceted practice based in printmaking, print-based sculpture, and installation. She incorporates imagery suggesting human-made constructions, exploring themes of control, instability, and mystery. Brotman has participated in solo exhibitions across Canada, and in international group exhibitions including in Poland, Spain, New York, Japan and Egypt. Her work is represented in the Art Bank, Department of Foreign Affairs, and university and corporate collections. Brotman has been awarded grants by Canada, Ontario and Toronto Arts Councils, and residencies including in China, Ireland, Haida Gwaii. Brotman also sat on several boards of arts organizations and was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. |