Colleen Brown (Canadian, b. 1965) is an artist, writer, educator and cultural worker who lives and works in Vancouver. Known primarily as a sculptor, Brown explores the relationships of objects and materials as a means of thinking through abstraction and social encounters. Brown holds a BFA from Emily Carr University and an MFA from Bard College. She is currently artist-in-residence with the City of Maple Ridge, and has participated in exhibitions and events at Cooper Cole, Toronto; Vancouver Art Gallery, Burrard Art Foundation and The Apartment, Vancouver; Western Gallery, Bellingham; and Hedreen Gallery, Seattle. Brown is the recipient of a 2016 Portfolio Prize. Brown’s book If you lie down in a field, she will find you there was released in 2023 by Radiant Press.

Azza El Siddique (Sudanese, b. 1984) lives and works in New Haven, CT. Known for her large-scale sculptural environments, El Siddique combines steel and ceramic sculptures with ephemeral matter to explore ritual, mortality and memorialization. El Siddique holds an MFA from Yale University School of Art and a BFA from Ontario College of Art and Design University. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at MIT List Visual Arts Centre, Cambridge; Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal; Helena Anrather, New York; and Cooper Cole, Toronto. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at MOCA, Toronto; Gardiner Museum, Toronto; Oakville Galleries, Toronto; Shin Gallery, New York; and Green Hall Gallery, New Haven. She was a Skowhegan resident in 2019 and was a 2022 finalist for the Sobey Art Award.

Dani Gal (Jerusalem, b. 1975) lives and works in Berlin. His work takes the form of films, sound-works and installations to focus on the production of ideology through the representation of specific historical narratives. Using archival documents, Gal explores the relationship between image, sound and text to illuminate the processes of shaping collective memory. Gal studied at Bezalel Academy for Art and Design in Jerusalem, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Stäadelschule in Frankfurt and Cooper Union in New York. His films and installations have been shown at the 54th Venice Biennale; Istanbul Biennale; New Museum, New York; Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Switzerland; The Jewish Museum, New York; Berlinale Forum Expanded; Kunsthaus Zurich; Kunsthalle Wien; Documenta 14; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Club TransMediale Festival Berlin; and Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver (forthcoming in 2024). In 2019, Gal was artist-in-residence with Blood Mountain Projects and research fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute, and in 2024 Gal will be a fellow inHerit in the Centre for Advanced Studies-Heritage in Transformation, Humboldt University, Berlin.

Katie Kozak (Canadian, b. 1985) is a queer artist of Métis and Ukrainian settler descent. She grew up in Denare Beach, SK, and her ancestral roots are in the Métis communities of St. François Xavier and Boggy Creek, MB. Kozak’s visual art practice is centered around connectivity to land, relationship, ritual and traces. She holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Recent exhibitions of her work include those at Gordon Smith Gallery, North Vancouver; Vancouver Art Gallery; and the Vancouver Public Art Program. She has collaborated with Lucien Durey since 2012.

Lucien Durey (Canadian, b. 1984) is an artist, writer and singer based in Vancouver. His mixed media and performance-based practice engages with found objects, photographs, sounds and place. Durey holds a BFA from Emily Carr University and an MFA from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Recent exhibitions include those at Gordon Smith Gallery, North Vancouver; School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg; Neutral Ground Contemporary Art Forum, Regina; with performances at Burnaby Art Gallery; Art in the Open, Charlottetown. He has collaborated with Katie Kozak since 2012.

Mark Lewis (Canadian, b. 1958) is an artist based in London, UK. Known for his investigation of the cinematic image and its representation of modernity, Lewis is interested in exploring how the pictorial tradition “can continue through film and if so, how that tradition itself has been transformed by film.” Lewis trained at Harrow College of Art and Polytechnic of Central London. He worked in Vancouver and Toronto before moving to the UK, where he is Professor of Fine Art at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London. He is co-founder and co-editor of Afterall – A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry and editor of Afterall Books. His works have been exhibited extensively in North America and internationally in solo exhibitions such as at The Power Plant, Toronto and the Musée du Louvre, Paris. In 2007, Lewis received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize and the Brit Art Doc Foundation Award and in 2009, Lewis represented Canada at the Venice Biennale.

Jenine Marsh (Canadian, b. 1984) is an artist based in Toronto who uses sculpture and installation to explore themes of agency, mortality and value. She uses coins as well as other paraphernalia of exchange through serialized processes of destruction and transformation to cultivate illicit and intimate responses to the shared conditions of end-stage capitalism. Marsh received a BFA from the Alberta University of the Arts, and an MFA from the University of Guelph. Marsh’s work has been exhibited at Cooper Cole, Toronto; Franz Kaka, Toronto; Centre Clark, Montreal; Vie d’ange, Montreal; Griffin Art Projects, Vancouver; Gianni Manhattan, Vienna; Union Pacific, London; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Essex Flowers, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; OSL Contemporary, Oslo; Entrée Gallery; and Lulu, Mexico City. She has been artist in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts; AiR Bergen at USF Verftet, Bergen; La Datcha, Berlin; Rupert, Vilnius; and Vermont Studio Center, Johnson.

Jalal Toufic (Lebanese, b. 1962) is a thinker, writer and artist. He was born in 1962 in Beirut or Baghdad and died before dying in 1989 in Evanston, Illinois. He is a professor of film studies at the American University in Cairo. He has made essay films and conceptual films and is the author of What Was I Thinking? (e-flux journal, Sternberg Press, 2017); The Dancer’s Two Bodies (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2015); Forthcoming (2^nd ed., e-flux journal, Sternberg Press, 2014); and What Were You Thinking? (Berliner Künstlerprogramm/DAAD, 2011). His work has been included in Sharjah Biennials 6, 10, and 11; 9th Shanghai Biennale; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Centre Pompidou, Paris; MoMA PS1, Brooklyn; and MAXXI, Rome. He was a guest of the Artists-in-Berlin Program of the DAAD in 2011, and Director of the School of Visual Arts at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, Alba 2015-2018.

Elizabeth Zvonar (Canadian, b. 1972) is an artist based in Vancouver. She makes objects and pictures that think through metaphor and the metaphysical, often using humour and referencing art history. Zvonar graduated from Emily Carr University after having studied at the Aichi Gakusen University in Toyota City, Japan and the Hokkaido University of Art and Design in Sapporo, Japan. She has had solo exhibitions at SFU Audain Gallery, Vancouver; Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver; and Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto. Her work has been exhibited at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; Vancouver Art Gallery; Musee d’Art de Joliette, Quebec; and Aga Khan Museum, Toronto. Zvonar has held residencies at Malaspina Printmakers, the Banff Centre, and was a City of Vancouver Artist in Residence 2012-15. She has received awards and recognition including the 2015 Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation VIVA Award and was a finalist for the AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize in 2016. Her work was included in the 2021 Gestalten publication The Art of Protest, Political Art + Activism as well as the 2023 Phaidon publication Vitamin C+ Collage in Contemporary Art.