Bios and interviews

Click on the links below to learn more about the 2019 Toronto Arts Foundation Awards finalists

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  Blank Canvas 

  2019 Arts for Youth Award Finalist

  Blank Canvas is an art collective that continues to build a vibrant art community that drives culture forward and creates platforms for marginalized artists through events, panels, workshops and content creation. Blank Canvas seeks to reimagine spaces that allow emerging artists to explore their intersectional identities, where the ability to share narratives and raise awareness of culturally critical issues facing our communities is fostered. Using varying forms of artistic and cultural expression, Blank Canvas focuses on what’s best for our community, spreading positive energy, showcasing new artists, taking up space unapologetically and being a cultural conduit for creatives.

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  JAYU 

  2019 Arts for Youth Award Finalist

  JAYU is a registered charity committed to sharing human rights stories through the arts. Their year-round programming includes the Human Rights Film Festival, The Hum human rights podcast, and iAM, an arts and social-justice training program for underserved youth in Toronto which leads to exhibition opportunities, employment, peer-to-peer leadership and more.

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  Paprika Festival 

  2019 Arts for Youth Award Finalist

  Paprika Festival is a youth-led professional performing arts organization. Paprika provides year-round theatre training and mentorship programs that culminate in a festival of new work by young artists. The organization has served as an unparalleled professional launchpad for artists since 2001, providing free, personalized training and a direct bridge to the industry.

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  Nina Lee Aquino 

  2019 Margo Bindhart and Rita Davies Award Finalist

  Nina Lee Aquino is a leading Filipina-Canadian director and dramaturge based in Toronto. She was founding Artistic Director of fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre, Artistic Director of Cahoots, and is currently Artistic Director of Factory Theatre. She is recipient of the Ken McDougall Award (2004), the Canada Council John Hirsch Prize (2008), and two Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding Direction.

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  Emelie Chhangur 

  2019 Margo Bindhart and Rita Davies Award Finalist

  Emelie Chhangur (Interim Director/Curator, AGYU) is an award-winning curator, writer and artist. Employing a socially-engaged curatorial practice with Toronto as its subject, she creates new civic ceremonies as collaborative artworks. Questioning the contemporary art gallery’s civic role, her concept of “in-reach” has transformed institutional practice in the arts across Canada.

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  Ella Cooper 

  2019 Margo Bindhart and Rita Davies Award Finalist

  Ella Cooper, the founder of Black Women Film! Canada, is an award-winning multimedia artist, educator, facilitator, producer and community programmer who has been dedicated to the arts sector for over 19 years. Her transformational projects, programs and networks have created positive social change across our sector while impacting organizations, leaders and new creative communities of support for Black and diverse artists across the city.

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  Robert Aitken 

  2019 Muriel Sherrin Award Finalist

  World-renowned flutist, composer and conductor Robert Aitken has been artistic director of New Music Concerts, Toronto's senior contemporary music organization, since its inception in 1971. His many accolades include the Order of Canada, the National Flute Association's Lifetime Achievement Award and the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts.

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  Eve Egoyan 

  2019 Muriel Sherrin Award Finalist

  Eve Egoyan is an internationally acclaimed concert pianist based in Toronto. She has released a dozen discs and toured worldwide. Eve’s curiosity compels her to reinvent the piano for herself and her audiences, to curate exceptional programmes and to commission new works by like-minded artists and composers.

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  Vineet Vyas 

  2019 Muriel Sherrin Award Finalist

  Vineet Vyas is a disciple of the late legendary tabla maestro Pandit Kishan Maharaj and has performed across India, Europe and North America with some of India’s eminent classical artists such as Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Pandits Rajan and Sajan Mishra, and Ustad Shahid Parvez. In 2015, Vineet was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award and was a finalist for the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Muriel Sherrin Award.

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  Susanna Fournier 

  2019 Emerging Artist Award Finalist

  Susanna Fournier is a theatre-maker whose practice spans writing, producing, performing, directing and educating. She is the artistic producer of PARADIGM Productions. Her work is feminist, anti-imperial, experimental, rowdy and sometimes "impossible." In a culture of alienation, she's interested in performance that cultivates the intimate, the epic, the blasphemous and the sacred.

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  Brittany Exmiranda Manu 

  2019 Emerging Artist Award Finalist

  Brittany Exmiranda Manu, lyricist and spoken-word poet, has been turning heads with her unique sound, dynamic flow and ability to infuse various genres into her eclectic rap style. As an advocate for inclusion and diversity, she uses her artistic prowess to engage her community and inspire youth from vulnerable populations.

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  Joshua Vettivelu 

  2019 Emerging Artist Award Finalist

  Joshua Vettivelu is an artist, programmer and educator working within sculpture, video, installation and performance. Their works explore how larger frameworks of power manifest within intimate relationships. Recently their practice examines the tensions that emerge when personal experiences are mined for art production, and how this allows institutions to posture and position themselves as self-reflexive. Currently, Vettivelu teaches in the faculty of Art and Continuing Education at OCADU and is the previous Director of Programming of Whippersnapper Gallery.