Board of Directors

Esmond Lee, Director

Esmond Lee 李春錦 (he/him) is an artist, researcher, and architect based in Scarborough. Lee explores long term and intergenerational experiences of migration in peripheral spaces. He holds a Master of  Architecture and is pursuing a Doctorate in Critical Human Geography. Lee draws from these  seemingly diverging backgrounds to examine identity, belonging, and nuanced cultural and  political borders in the built environment. Recent public artworks include a 250-foot long  installation for Nuit Blanche Toronto, developed during his time as the Doris McCarthy Artist-in Residence, and a 30-foot tall installation at Malvern Town Centre for CONTACT Photography  Festival. Lee’s current projects include two photobooks: Below the City, recognized by the  Burtynsky Grant, and community-driven book for Woodside Square Library as the TPL Artist-in Residence. His work is in the permanent collection of The Centre for Addiction and Mental  Health (CAMH) and Doris McCarthy Gallery (DMG) at University of Toronto Scarborough  (UTSC). Lee is supported by the Toronto, Ontario, and Canada Art Councils.

Jaclyn Quaresma, Director

Jaclyn Quaresma is a curator whose work considers the tension between the survival of the environment as we know it and our survival in the mediated environments we create for ourselves, both culturally and ecologically. Central to her curatorial praxis is an interest in non-dominant, anti-oppressive, multigenerational structures of gathering, learning, and sharing.

Jaclyn is the current Programming Director for the Images Festival, and previously held the position of Executive Director and Curator at Durham Art Gallery where she initiated the Rural Reading Riot Press and the accompanying Festival. She was recently the Curator in Residence at the University of Guelph's Ontario Agricultural College (2019-2021). Jaclyn is a graduate of the Masters of Visual Studies: Curatorial Program at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto. She has worked with the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film, Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Doris McCarthy Gallery at University of Toronto Scarborough, Peter MacKendrick Gallery, 47, ScotiaBank Nuit Blanche, Blackwood Gallery and Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. Jaclyn was once the co-director of the exhibition space 47 in Parkdale, Tkaron:to.

Ahlam Hassan, Director

Ahlam Hassan (she/her) is a writer, director and producer for the screen and stage. She earned a degree in architecture design and performance from the University of Toronto, where she wrote an undergraduate thesis titled Locating + Naming African-Canadian Performance History, in response to the absence and presence of Blackness in Toronto’s theoretical and practical performance post-secondary education courses. Her thesis culminated in the creation of a new post-secondary syllabus. In 2021, Ahlam received the Jackman Humanities Scholar in Residence Award for her contributions to Professor Maria Assif’s research project New Voices, New Vistas: Contemporary Arab Women Writers Database.

Staff

Marina Fathalla Director of Programming

Marina Fathalla (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, programmer and access worker. She grew up in the suburbs alongside the Credit River on the unceded ancestral territories of the Haudenosaunee, Attiwonderonk, Anishinaabeg and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. A process of piecing together archives, colonial legacies of place as seen in architecture(s), flowers, plants and mental health filter through all aspects of her work. She centers collaboration and art education that supports youth, community and artists working at the margins of institutions. She’s on the board of the Coptic Museum, is a collective member of MICE Magazine, and has worked with Regent Park Film Festival on the Home Made Visible project (2019). Her work has shown at Hearth Garage, Trinity Square Video, the City of Mississauga, Xpace Cultural Centre and Whippersnapper Gallery.  

raven Lam
Executive Director

raven Lam (she/they) is a curious creature working in the arts exploring aliveness, deadness and dreaming in Toronto, Canada. She is a psychotherapist in training at the Centre for Training in Psychotherapy. She holds two leadership positions as the general manager at VIBE Arts, a youth arts education charity, and the executive director at Whippersnapper Gallery, an experimental artist run space for emerging creators and thinkers.

nashwa lina khan
Special Projects 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.