Abubaker Bukulu

Abubaker Bukulu is a Toronto-based photographer, visual storyteller and media artist whose work focuses on documenting Black, newcomer, refugee and community experiences. Originally from Uganda, he uses photography to explore identity, culture, migration, belonging and the everyday stories that shape people’s lives.​

He is the Founder of Bantu Media Hub, a Black youth-led creative social enterprise specializing in photography, videography, and digital storytelling. His photography practice includes event, documentary, portrait and community-based work, with a strong interest in capturing authentic moments, cultural expression and stories that are often underrepresented in mainstream media. Through his work, Abubaker aims to create powerful visual narratives that celebrate communities, preserve memories and help people tell their own stories.​

Ali Rashidifar

Ali Rashidifar is an Iranian filmmaker and visual artist based in Toronto, with more than 15years of experience in filmmaking, cinematography, photography, and visual storytelling. He holds a BA in Filmmaking, specializing in Cinematography, and an MA in Theatre and Dramatic Literature. His professional experience includes directing and cinematography for documentary, fiction, experimental theatre, film, and commercial projects, as well as teaching cinematography, photography, and experimental filmmaking at the university level.​

His artistic practice is particularly focused on documentary and observational filmmaking, with a strong interest in nature, wildlife, environmental issues, and the relationship between people and their surroundings. His work often combines cinematic observation with photography and time-based visual approaches to explore place, memory, and environmental themes.​

Since moving to Toronto, Ali has been exploring ways to develop his artistic practice, establish himself within the local arts community, and find new opportunities to collaborate with artists, organizations, and cultural institutions. Through his participation in ArtWorksTO Newcomer Program, he hopes to expand his professional network, deepen his understanding of the Canadian arts sector, and continue developing his practice and career as a filmmaker in Toronto.​

Amina Tahir

Amina Tahir is a creative visual designer and entrepreneur from Pakistan, where she started her career in advertising and went on to work with global brands including Samsung and Coca-Cola. She was part of the team behind the creative content direction of Season 12 of Coke Studio, an international music franchise featuring studio-recorded performances by established and emerging artists – and easily Pakistan’s largest cultural identity platform. She also founded the country’s first acne-positive brand, Poof, which continues to gain national recognition.​

Now based in Toronto, she brings over 15 years of creative design and direction experience to an independent practice that sits somewhere between strategy and visual expression. Her work is inspired by culture and lifestyle through visuals that feel approachable, sometimes playful, even imperfect. She strives to find ways to make good design feel a little less serious and is forever looking to achieve the ‘human’ in design. A self-proclaimed design snob, she never lets good copy go by unnoticed, either.​

Amina currently works as a creative consultant for Kulfi, an NYC-based makeup brand celebrating South Asian beauty.​

Ana Pizarro Ruíz

Ana Pizarro Ruiz is a multidisciplinary visual artist, with more than 15 years of international experience creating visual narratives across media arts, publishing, photography, branding, and cultural programming.​

Before relocating to Canada, Ana co-founded and led Altair Professional Media in Argentina, serving as Art Director and Graphic Designer for over a decade. Her extensive editorial experience includes contributing to 96 editions of América XXI. Within the cultural sector, she developed visual campaigns for international film events, including the Shnit Worldwide Short film festival and the International Colombian Film Festival in Buenos Aires.​

As a photographer, Ana’s work has received international recognition through participation in exhibitions in Europe and Latin America, her work has also been featured in the “Female Focus”, and Médecins du Monde’s “Miradas conVoz” Exhibition in Barcelona and El Salvador, where she received the Body Autonomy Special Award.​

Alongside her professional practice, Ana has volunteered by leading creative workshops for Aldeas Infantiles (SOS Children’s Villages) in Argentina and for children affected by the armed conflict in Colombia.​

Today, through her illustration project Egungun Print, Ana creates large-scale artworks, wearable designs, and mixed-media pieces inspired by nature, identity and diversity. Combining traditional and digital techniques.​

Armin Rahimi

Armin Rahimi is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist and composer with over a decade of experience across film, advertising, and video game industries. Before moving to Toronto, he exhibited paintings, designed key art for feature films, and produced storyboards and illustrations for a wide range of projects. Expanding into interactive media, he has worked as a Concept Artist and Art Director on indie games. For the game Unhinged, he also produced the reveal trailer from concept to completion and scored its sound track, earning a Top 10 placement out of over 1,000 entries in BlueOcean Games’ Rising Tide Challenge. Across all mediums, Armin explores the impermanence of our existence within a vast, ever-changing world, embracing fragility as part of what makes human experience meaningful.​

Electra Pappa

Electra Pappa is a Toronto-based set designer, originally from Greece. Her work spans theatre, film and television and she has worked both in Canada and internationally, in the UK, Germany and Japan. She is also an award-winning miniature artist.​

Elroy Pinto

Elroy Pinto is a filmmaker, writer, researcher, and curator who works in documentary, fiction, and experimental film. His work transforms performative, musical, and visual lineages derived from pre-colonial South Asian art forms into contemporary adaptations. Born in India and based in Toronto, his work has been included in exhibitions and screenings at Chatterjee and Lal (India), Oaxaca X (Mexico), SiGns film festival (India),Mediterranean Film Festival of Cannes (France), South Asian Film Festival of Montreal (Canada), Indian Documentary Film Festival Bhubaneswar (India)and the Independent Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (India).​

His writing on film has appeared in the Mumbai University Philosophy Journal, Doctoral Horizons (UNATC Press), and a new chapter on the epic structure of Fareeda Mehta’s Kali Salwaar in Urban Imaginaries (Rupkatha Books). His writing on culture has appeared in Public Parking (Canada) and Maidaanam (USA). He curates films at Nirmik, Mumbai’s only Dalit Ambedkarite artist-led cultural center.​

In 2025, Elroy was awarded a Professional Development Flaherty Fellowship(USA). His latest film is a documentary-fiction film funded by the India Foundation for the Arts, titled, “Governor and Koli”. Elroy holds a Master’s in Global Cinemas from SOAS, University of London (United Kingdom).​

Felipe Requena

Felipe Requena is a multidisciplinary artist, sound designer, and audiovisual creator originally from Chile, now based in Toronto. His practice moves across live audiovisual performance, interactive installation, film, and documentary, combining electroacoustic composition, spatial audio, and real time generative systems to shape every sonic layer with precision and depth. With 14 years of experience, Felipe has worked between two worlds, the technical and the creative, directing and producing short films and visual installations while building his career. His work has been presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where he performed original audiovisual shows inside one of Toronto’s most important cultural spaces. He has also been recognized internationally. Felipe’s art stays deeply connected to where he comes from, its landscapes, history, and music, especially the folk traditions of the Andes, run through his work, even when the format is digital or experimental. He is drawn to the tension between old and new, analog textures inside digital spaces, ancestral stories told through contemporary technology.​

Hrant Yeritskinyan

Hrant Yeritskinyan is a director, producer and founder of The Wingman, a creative studio based in Toronto. With over ten years of experience across film, documentary, broadcast and archival media, his work has been produced and screened in Armenia, Canada, Russia, the United States and Europe.​

A full-cycle producer, he works across every stage of production — from concept and script development to camera, edit, design and distribution.​

His practice centers on cultural memory, identity.​

Lea Toro

Lea Toro is a Toronto-based paper artist and visual creative with Latin American roots. Drawing on a decade as a creative project manager for global brands like Adobe Latam and Netflix, her work bridges the physical and digital worlds through paper sculpture. Inspired by a vivid palette, her art interprets the distance, the textures of memory, and the essence of everyday life through precise geometry. For Lea, color acts as an emotional anchor, reflecting how we each see the world and honoring the truth that our memories and emotions deserve to be felt in full, vibrant contrast.​

Nahom Assefa

Nahom Assefa is an Ethiopian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist, curator, and writer based in Toronto. His work explores belonging and identity, draws on anthropology, design, and curatorial research to make work that is honest and culturally specific.​

His work has been exhibited in Canada and internationally, including curating an exhibition “In Relation: Black Material Life and Memory on Mi’kma’ki” at NSCAD Treaty Space Gallery, creating short animations like “Funky Barcelona Panot Tiles” at OFFF Festival 2026 in Barcelona, and “Landed to Takeoff” at Nocturne Festival’s 2025 NOISE makers, screened during the festival and at Emerging Lens Cultural Film Festival. Created an illustration for Halifax Public Libraries’ 40th anniversary African Heritage Month and has shown work at Dalhousie Art Gallery and Nova Scotia Community College.​

As Founder of Cultured Creative Studio, he has worked with Lululemon, Latispanica Cultural Association, Atlantic Flamenco, and the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion. Beyond the studio, Nahom interned as a curator at Dalhousie Art Gallery under Director Pamela Edmonds and sits on the board of the Creative Community Impact Association. He is the recipient of the 2025 NSCC Immigrant and International Student Experience IMPACT Award and served as a 2025 Atlantic International Film Festival Ambassador.​

Rahat Rahman

Rahat Rahman is a Bangladeshi-born film and TV commercial director, editor and cinematographer. He made a feature film, a six-episode comedy series, seven short films and more than a hundred commercials in Bangladesh. His film ‘Sincerely Yours, Dhaka’ is available on Netflix; the film was Bangladesh’s official submission for the 93rd Oscars.​

He attended Asian Film Academy in Busan, South Korea in 2016and Kyoto Filmmakers Lab in Kyoto, Japan in 2017. He came to Canada in 2019 to study film production at Confederation College in Thunder Bay where his thesis film ‘Madness of Madeline’ got him nominated at the Canadian Society of Cinematographers(CSC) Awards in 2022; a first time in the college’s 50 years history.​

He is currently working as an editor and cinematographer in Toronto.​

Wilfredo Echeverry Espinosa

Wilfredo Espinosa is a Toronto-based 3D artist and visual creator with a background in architectural visualization and animation. His work explores the creation of digital environments, moving images, and visual experiences, combining technical precision with a strong interest in visual storytelling. Through Media Arts, he is expanding his practice into new forms of digital and interactive experiences, exploring how visual environments can communicate ideas and engage audiences.​

Afsaneh Akhoondi

Afsaneh Akhoondi is a Toronto-based visual artist and arts educator originally from Iran. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Painting, an MFA in Painting, and a Certificate in Arts Management.​

She has taught visual arts—including drawing, painting, and printmaking—at several art institutes in Tehran, Iran. Since moving to Canada, she has continued to adapt her experience to the Canadian arts context by facilitating volunteer workshops for children, youth, adults, seniors, and newcomer communities. Her workshops have been offered in collaboration with nonprofit organizations and at the Toronto Public Library, the Toronto District School Board, and a community centre.​

Afsaneh’s studio practice and teaching are closely connected. She creates inclusive learning environments where participants can explore creativity, identity, and self-expression through art.​

Her artistic practice explores diverse techniques and materials, including mixed-media painting, plexiglass, textiles, and portraiture. Through her work, she reflects on lived experience, cultural memory, and identity. Her artwork has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Iran, Europe, and Canada.​

Daniela Galaviz

Daniela Galaviz is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist and facilitator. Her main art form is drama, and she loves to work outdoors with street performances and immersive storytelling, usually using clowning, puppetry and/or acting. In the last years, she has been nurturing her visual artist side through watercolor and cardboard creations, which sometimes become part of the performances themselves. She has over nine years of experience in the arts and education, including three years in community arts and newcomer integration. She has facilitated art-based programs in schools, cultural centres, and community spaces across Canada and Mexico, and has coordinated creative projects.​

Dani is the co-founder of Maxei Arts Collective, a collective of Latin American artists based in Tkaronto. Dani’s work focuses heavily on finding joy, having participants at the centre and building connections through art making.​

Dani holds a Bachelor’s degree in Performing Arts, a Master’s degree in Educational Technology, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Arts Education and Community Engagement.​

Dario Dvon

Dario Dvon is a Toronto-based Caribbean soul artist, vocalist, songwriter, arts educator, and community facilitator from Barbados. Blending R&B, soul, and Caribbean influences, his work explores self-love, freedom, identity, and connection through music and storytelling.​

Beyond the stage, Dario is passionate about using creativity to bring people together. His work spans arts education, peer support, community programming, vocal coaching, and the development of accessible creative spaces where people are encouraged to express themselves and share their stories. He is the creator of Dreamerz, an evolving creative wellness initiative centered on music, reflection, connection, and encouraging people to pursue their dreams.​

Dario continues to develop his practice across music, education, and community arts, with a belief that creativity can be a powerful tool for connection, confidence, and positive change.​

Diana Galán

Diana Galán is a Visual Artist and Art Educator from Colombia. Recently relocated to Toronto, with over 18 years of teaching experience guiding and mentoring creative processes with children, teens and young adults with a focus on creative processes and artistic research within the classroom. She believes in the transforming power of art and the importance of art education in the cognitive development of children and teens.​

She believes in teaching practice as an essential part of the Art Educator creative process. Learning, experimenting, researching and making engaging questions are key when fostering art learning. Throughout her career she has found that students that effectively engage with this practice from a place of self-reflection and curiosity are rewarded with successful classroom and workshop processes that allow them to find their own aesthetic voices to communicate their interests, passions and concerns and ultimately acquire a valuable experience that will give them tools beyond the classroom. In her work, human connection is key.​

Dorothy Wong

Dorothy Wong is a Hong Kong-born, Toronto-based multidisciplinary BIPOC mother-artist, community arts educator, and arts worker. She has worked across museums, libraries, and community arts spaces, including Mabelle Arts, the Textile Museum of Canada, the Gardiner Museum, and the Centre for Social Innovation.​

Her artistic practice and teaching are rooted in accessibility, care, and storytelling. Through participatory and inclusive art experiences, she creates opportunities for connection, reflection, and belonging. Working across textiles, embroidery, visible mending, and textile collage, Dorothy is currently exploring the integration of textiles with other visual forms, including photography and clay, as part of her evolving inquiry into the theme of “care”.​

Khalil Rantissi

Khalil I. Rantissi is a Palestinian Canadian multidisciplinary artist, curator, settlement professional, and community-engaged practitioner based in Toronto. Born and raised in the Occupied Palestine, his creative practice is shaped by displacement, memory, identity, belonging, and the search for home across places, cultures, and innerl andscapes.​

Working across painting, mixed media, photography, storytelling, and music composition, Khalil uses art as both a personal language and a space for dialogue. His work moves between the intimate and the collective, transforming lived experience into visual and narrative forms that explore resilience, visibility, connection, and social change.​

Alongside his artistic practice, Khalil works in newcomer settlement and employment services, supporting immigrants and refugees as they navigate unfamiliar systems, rebuild networks, and create new pathways in Canada. This experience deeply informs his understanding of migration, belonging, community, and the human stories behind social systems. He also integrates arts-based approaches into community research, education, and participatory programming.​

His work has been presented through initiatives connected to the City of Toronto, Western University, University of Toronto, Birzeit University, and community arts organizations in Canada and Palestine.​

For Khalil, art is a way of remembering, questioning, connecting, healing, and transforming lived experience into shared meaning.​

Manuel Chaves

Manuel Chaves is a Toronto-based theatre artist, actor, and community facilitator originally from Bogotá, Colombia. He began training in theatre at age 8, and by 12 was already a working actor. His debut as Pablo in De Pies a Cabeza earned him Colombia’s India Catalina Award and TV y Novelas Award for Best New Actor. He went on to study Performing Arts at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and to build a screen and stage career in Colombia, including a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the India Catalina Awards for La Saga, a nomination from the Colombian Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences for La Luciérnaga. He has also produced theatre and worked with Teatro Nacional in productions of Pinter, Chekhov, and Miller. His life has been touched by the transformative power of theatre and the performing arts, and he wants to extend that opportunity to other kids and young people.​

In Canada, Manuel spent three seasons as Education and Community Engagement Manager at Canadian Stage. He continues to build his acting career while expanding his experience in education and cultural advocacy, developing programs and stages that bring Latino culture and community to Toronto audiences.​

Marc Nair

Marc Nair is a poet, photographer and educator who grew up in Singapore, in the acknowledged lands of the Orang Laut. As an artist-educator, his artistic career has spanned over two decades, exploring ethnicity, identity and faith. He has taught English, Literature and creative writing at the high school, undergraduate and IB level and runs workshops that engage with poetry and photography.​

Marc’s poetry roots span both the page and the stage. He has been a slam poet since 2004 and has represented Singapore at international slam competitions. He has published 12 collections of poetry and has had four solo photography and poetry exhibitions. His latest poetry collection is Undulations (2025, Delere Press), and his most recent exhibition is shades of blue at the Toronto Public Library in Albion(April, 2025). His work explores a hybridity of form, mapping an interdisciplinary approach onto the quotidian.​

Marc’s PhD dissertation from RMIT University (2022) in Melbourne, Australia interrogated a loss of faith through performance autoethnography. Using creative practice research, his approach blended the critical and the creative to build a polyphonic approach to unfaithjng the self. He is currently researching his Keralan heritage through an embodied and archival study of kalaripayattu.​

Mina Talaee

Mina Talaee is a Toronto-based visual artist, researcher, and educator whose practice spans sculpture, fiber, and installation. Her work explores memory, displacement, identity, and belonging through tactile processes including weaving, casting, sculpting, and repetitive handwork.​

Mina holds a PhD in Art Research and has more than a decade of experience in arts education, including university teaching and academic leadership. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Canada, France, Ireland, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Iran, while her research has been presented at academic institutions and conferences in Canada, the United States, and the UK. Her artistic training includes several years of sculpture study with renowned Iranian sculptor Parviz Tanavoli.​

Since establishing her practice in Toronto, she has participated in exhibitions and major public arts initiatives, while also contributing to community and cultural programming with institutions including the Aga Khan Museum. As an artist-educator, she is interested in bringing contemporary artistic practice, material exploration, and collaborative making into accessible learning environments.​

Verónica Santoyo García

Verónica Santoyo García is a Mexican visual artist and arts educator whose practice has been shaped by Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende, and Zacatecas. Rooted in Mexican art history and its rich visual traditions, her work explores art as a means of expression, connection, and belonging.​

Her journey as an educator began in San Miguel de Allende, working with children with hearing and physical disabilities. Her personal and family experiences of disability later deepened her interest inaccessibility and the different ways people communicate, learn, and create. In Zacatecas, she taught at university and developed community arts initiatives with children, youth, and vulnerable communities, including projects connected to crime prevention.​

Since moving to Canada, Verónica has continued exploring inclusive arts education through her work with disability communities. Drawing on her Mexican artistic heritage and experiences across both countries, she seeks to create spaces where art becomes a shared language—one through which people with different bodies, abilities, cultures, and ways of communicating can express themselves, participate, and belong.​

Vrunda Upadhyay

Vrunda Upadhyay is a Canadian-based Indian classical dancer, vocalist, educator, choreographer, and cultural arts leader, and the Founder and Artistic Director of Mudra Traditional Arts Academy. With a Master of Arts in Bharatanatyam and a Bachelor of Arts in Vocal Music, she brings together dance, music, education, and community engagement through her artistic practice.​

A trained Bharatanatyam artist, Hindustani classical vocalist, and harmonium musician, Vrunda has performed and taught across Canada. Her work explores the intersection of tradition, contemporary expression, identity, and cultural transmission, with a focus on making Indian classical arts accessible to diverse audiences.​

Vrunda has presented work at festivals, cultural events, and community platforms, including Toronto Fringe Festival, Desi Fest, Summer Skies Festival, Festival of South Asia, and Jamii’s Wayo Children’s Festival. She is also the founder of Her Voice Collective, celebrating iconic women’s voices in Bollywood music.​

Her artistic and community leadership has been recognized through opportunities including the City of Brampton Arts Acclaim Citizen Award and RBC Emerging Artist Grant. Through her work, Vrunda continues to create meaningful spaces for cultural expression, artistic collaboration, and the next generation of artists.​