Coussonnet is interested in how visual cultures address political, social and spiritual issues in different, or complementary, ways to other disciplines. She has curated exhibitions at Bildmuseet (Sweden), Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati (USA), Le Cube (Morocco) and MeetFactory (Czech Republic).

Lacey Jane Wilburn is a contemporary painter most notable for her cinematic renderings of domestic space that undulate between gesture and realism on canvas. Originally from the Treaty 6 territory of Edmonton, Alberta, Wilburn studied Fine Art at the University of Grant MacEwan in Edmonton in 2009, received her Bachelors of Fine Art from Concordia University in Montreal in 2016 after studying abroad at the l’Ecole d'Enseignement Supérieur d'art de Bordeaux, France, Most recently she obtained her Masters of Fine Art from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2022. She has participated in over 40 exhibitions since 2009, was the recipient of the University Women’s Club of Vancouver Scholarship in 2022 and 2021, the Yves Gaucher Prize in Studio Arts in 2016, the D. L. Stevenson Colour Scholarship for Academic Excellence in 2014, the Francis Henderson Klingle Scholarship for Fine Art, The Barbara and John Poole Family Endowed Fund for the Arts in 2009, and the Jason Lang Scholarship for Excellence in 2007. In 2010, she formed the urban art duo LALA [Lacey And Layla Art] who have developed over 140 public mural interventions across Canada, France, Honduras, Uganda and Iceland, and have received over $150,000 in grants from federal and municipal funding. Now living in Vancouver, BC on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, Wilburn gratefully dedicates her time to painting, teaching and scuba diving.

James Harry was born of Squamish Nation and Namgis descent in 1989. James began carving in early childhood with his father, Xwalacktun. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, in 2014 and completed an internship in the United Kingdom in 2011 where he learned metal casting and taught Coast Salish sculpture, painting and drawing in Scottish communities. Harry’s diverse portfolio includes cedar carvings, metal carvings, light installations and murals.

Kyla Gilbert is a visual artist based out of Vancouver BC on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She graduated with a BFA in performance from Concordia University in 2017 and spent the two subsequent years touring as a puppeteer with DJ Kid Koala. During her time as a puppeteer, she became interested in the inherent animacy of objects.

A Collaboration with the Queer Arts Festival & SUM gallery

Natis is a conceptual painter who lives and works in Berlin. His art materialises itself through multiple parallel and distinct research-based practices. He creates, embodies, and instrumentalists different performative artist personae for each of these practices that challenge the social understanding and the role of the artist as a (post-)modern subject. These alter-egos deal with various fields like; personal or communal memory and forgetting, speculative storytelling (non-)linear temporality, gender, post-colonialism, and new materialism. Besides his art practice, he works towards completing his doctorate at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) Hamburg on art-historical and contemporary use of visual artist alter egos, researching why these mental and physical alternations or mutations take place in artists’ lives.

Aileen Bahmanipour is an Iranian-Canadian visual artist and currently is living and working on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) people. She has received her BFA in Painting from the Art University of Tehran and MFA in Visual arts from the University of British Columbia. Bahmanipour has exhibited her work in a body of solo and group exhibitions internationally as well as in Canada, including her solo and group exhibitions at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Vancouver’s grunt gallery, and Two Rivers Gallery.

Bill Burns, like Trylowsky, has created a project that prompts an examination of parallel economies. Burns’ ongoing research includes The Goat, the Salt, the Oil, a performance series that positions global trade as an art practice; at Griffin’s residency from December 8 to February 28, 2022, titled Three short films and several songs about Donkeys, Cowboys, Truckers and Container Ships, he will research a further speculative iteration of this project, activating the site of the Vancouver Harbour and producing a series of short films, this time proposing the trade of red snapper for goat’s milk, yogurt for honey, organizing a shipment of Nepalese salt for olives or other foodstuffs in Vancouver.

Esteban Pérez (b. 1992 in Quito, Ecuador) graduated from Emily Carr University of Arts + Design with an MFA degree in 2021. His work has been part of exhibitions such as: ‘Radical Reworlding’ (AHVA Gallery UBC, 2021), ‘Triplete’ (No Lugar, 2018), and Premio Brasil (Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, 2017), and, in 2019 he had his first solo show Transitory (Más Arte, 2019). In 2020, he was the recipient of The Audain Travel Award in Vancouver. In the same year, he won the 2nd Place Award in RAW, an MFA online exhibition, organized by the University of Montana, USA. He was selected for the Premio Brasil –Arte Emergente (CAC), an award funded by the Brazilian embassy in Quito for the promotion of Emerging Artist. He was a resident at the Satellite Residency program at the Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship in 2021.