On Display/For Review
On Display/For Review (OD/FR) is a digital residency/think tank culminating in a series of commissioned digital projects that interrogate, intervene, and are tangential to social media, its limits, and boundless possibilities.
Artists in Residence
Mishiikenh Kwe (Turtle Woman, Autumn Smith) is an Anishinaabe woodland painter from the caribou clan, and a member of Magnetawan First Nation.
Born in 1997 in Parry Sound, Ontario, Autumn spent the several first years of her life living on-reserve in her small community where she spent a lot of time with her cousins and her grandmother, who was a language speaker, teacher and a storyteller.
As a result of her mother being part of the sixties scoop, she spent the next several years after that living away from her community in Chatham, Ontario, where she learned to speak French, went to church every Sunday, and had very little access/exposure to the culture and language of her community. This is when Autumn began to use artwork as a way to express herself, to tell stories and to remember where she came from.
Upon returning home to her community in 2012, with the encouragement of her auntie, Autumn began to focus on learning more and participating more in the Anishinaabe culture. She was re-named Mishiikenh Kwe in a cedar bath ceremony. Her previous name was given in 2009 during her Berry Fast initiation.
In 2016, thanks to the suggestion of a childhood friend, Autumn began painting in the Anishinaabe woodland style to support herself while in college for Child and Youth Care at Collège Boréal in Sudbury. Upon graduation in 2018 she once again returned to her community, and decided to focus her time on painting rather than looking for work as a Child and Youth Worker. Autumn still lives in Magnetawan First Nation with her young son, Jiibik, where she continues to paint, learn and tell stories through her paintings.
Mishiikenh Kwe hopes to honour her relatives and ancestors through her work, especially her grandmother Eminowaangozidkwe-ba (Yvonne Marjory Smith, born Peltier) of Wikwemikong First Nation, who shared many Anishinaabe words and stories with all of her grandchildren.
B Wijshijer (they/them), a.k.a shrimpychip, is an artist and arts facilitator currently based in Tkaronto, Canada. Wijshijer makes silly sneaky videos, performances, installations, digital images and digital props. Interested in magic, love and transcendence inside late capitalism, their work jests within the contrast of unity, bliss and the commodity.
Lingxiang Wu is a Chinese queer visual artist, researcher, graphic designer, and educator currently based in Toronto. Wu completed his BA degree double major in Studio Art - Photography and Media Studies at the University at Buffalo in 2015 and an MFA degree in Interdisciplinary Master's of Arts, Media, and Design at OCAD University in 2019. Wu experiments with various mediums such as photographic collage, video, animation, and installation to investigate contemporary image culture. Wu is interested in topics of accumulation, smoothness, and hyperactivity/hypervisibility in contrast with the collective exhaustion under the influence of the attention economy. Creating contemplative visual experiences to counter the ever more aggressive digital environment. His artwork has been exhibited in CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, Art Mur in Montreal, and various galleries in Toronto, including Xpace, SAVAC, and Whippersnapper Gallery.
Saysah is an interdisciplinary mover and maker rooted in the Black Radical Tradition and community-building. They live and create on the stolen land of Turtle Island on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ, Wendake-Nionwentsïo, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Yas stands in solidarity with land defenders, water protectors, and Black freedom fighters. For them, their practice is an experimental reclamation of both personal and community nurturing through an embodied somatic exploration of ancestral teachings and knowledge. Saysah uses multisensorial mediums as a way to tell stories that centre a disruptive practice rooted in love-ethic.
Based in London, UK, artist Tennessee Jones-Phillips (b. 1999, Toronto, Canada) intuitively employs painting, scanography, sound, and assemblage to animate her self-taught practice.
Jones-Phillips is taking a theological approach to configuring an esoteric realm to heal past traumas through xirs current practice. Informed by culturally significant folklore, catholic 'gnostic truths,' and her own spiritual beliefs, Jones creates works exploring and expanding their understanding of liminal and hidden worlds, juxtaposing our collective physical existence. The prophetic lore of Jones' world and the presence of its inhabitants seek to challenge secular tellings of history and current events, retelling them through the lens of xe's nameless world. Through conceptualization and creation, xe affirms what would be considered intangible to the outside world. Throughout the artist's body of work, they visit moments of harmony, conflict, and metamorphosis, using xemselves and her peers as the objective subject of the work.
Tee Kundu is an interdisciplinary artist, illustrator & designer. They mostly draw things. In addition, they often work in social practice, performance, zines, facilitation, etc. They want to be a storyteller, and they want to be helpful. A DIY dabbler, you can find them on instagram @lukitstee or email them at teekundu@gmail.com.
Writers in Residence
Fan Wu is a nymph of quietude who, if not properly grounded, grazes infinitely upon the chaos in his brain. His current work examines Bataille and Zhuangzi and how their deeply compatible and ultimately dissonant cosmologies can offer us a new ethics of life. Send him letters of love or collaboration at fanwu4u@gmail.com.
Sarah Sarofim is a visual artist, editor and writer based between Cairo and Toronto. She holds a BA in Art History and Visual Studies from the University of Toronto and was the 2020 fall editorial resident at Canadian Art. Sarofim's projects often begin with sociolinguistics and draw from archival images and public space to investigate notions of performance and erasure. Sarofim’s work has been exhibited in Cairo, Toronto, Houston and New York and published in Canadian Art Magazine, Qumra Journal, Femme Art Review (forthcoming), Photo ED Magazine and other publications.
Emerging Web Designers in Residence
Kianna Mkhonza
Omar Musleh
Web Design & Development Mentor
Nael Abu-Jazar
Guest Curator
nashwa lina khan (she/her) is a community educator, facilitator, and researcher. She is also a writer and poet and occasionally dabbles in installation and archive that uses narrative methodologies. She holds a Masters of Environmental Studies from York University with areas of concentration focused on narrative methodologies, community and public health, refugee, and forced migration studies. She is currently a PhD student in the faculty of Environment and Urban Change and curating/supporting the On Display/For Review artist residency at Whippersnapper. nashwa is currently working on a chapbook project, with the BIPOC advisory committee at telefilm Canada and a researcher with Proclaiming Our Roots, the University of Alberta and Rainbow Faith and Freedom. you can find her cultural commentary on the podcast Habibti Please and on twitter where you can find her tweeting too little or too much.
You can email her nashwa@whippersnapper.ca
Thank you to our funders!
On Display/For Review is made possible through the support of EQ Bank and Canada Arts Council: Explore and Create, Concept to Realization grant.
EQ Bank is the digital banking platform launched in 2016 by Equitable Bank, Canada’s Challenger Bank. As a future-ready financial institution, fostering innovation is at the heart of everything we do, including our support for the arts. Through initiatives such as the Emerging Digital Artists Award, we are proud to celebrate the next generation of artists working critically and creatively with digital media.
