Material Girls

About the Artists

Morehshin Allahyari is a new media artist, art activist, educator, and cultural curator. She was born and raised in Iran and moved to the United States in 2007. Her practice is grounded in questions of political and cultural contradictions that we face every day.  Allahyari has been part of numerous national and international exhibitions, festivals, and workshops in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Canada, North and South America. Her work has been featured in Rhizome, Hyperallergic, Animal New York, Huffington Post, NPR, Parkett Art Magazine, Art Actuel magazine, Neural Magazine, Global Voices Online, BBC Persia, among others.

Jaime Angelopoulos lives and works in Toronto, and received her MFA from York University in 2010 and her BFA from NSCAD University in 2005. She was awarded the Hazelton Sculpture Prize in 2013, and has participated in artist residencies at Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas, Texas, The Banff Centre for the Arts and Kulttuuri Kauppila Art Center in Finland. She has had solo exhibitions at Parisian Laundry in Montreal, YYZ Artist Outlet in Toronto, Cambridge Galleries in Cambridge Ontario, Stride Gallery in Calgary, and Galleria 5 in Oulu, Finland. Angelopoulos’ works can be found in private and corporate collection in Canada, New York and Los Angeles. She is represented by Parisan Laundry, Montreal.

Christi Belcourt is Métis artist whose work relays a variety of meanings, including concerns for the environment, biodiversity, spirituality, and Indigenous rights. Currently, she is leading the Walking With Our Sisters project, to honour the lives of murdered or missing Indigenous women. Her work is found within the public and permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada and the Centre for Traditional Knowledge & Museum of Nature in Ottawa, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the the Nature Conservancy of Canada in Toronto, the Gabriel Dumont Institute in Saskatoon, the Indian and Inuit Art Collection in Hull, Quebec, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa/Hull. Most recently, her work commemorating Residential School Survivors and communities was rendered in stained glass and installed at Centre Block on Parliament Hill. In 2014, she was named the Aboriginal Arts Laureate by the Ontario Arts Council.

Katherine Boyer is a graduate of the University of Regina with a BFA in Sculpture and an emphasis on Printmaking. As an emerging artist, Boyer's work is a crossover between traditional and non-traditional printmaking, sculptural, and installation work. Boyer also works in the field of curation as the curator and caretaker of the First Nations University of Canada Art Gallery. Boyer is also honing her skills in the field of art preparation and preservation as the caretaker of the First Nations University of Canada's permanent art collection.

Karin Bubaš lives and works in Vancouver, BC. Since studying at Emily Carr, her works has been exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally including venues such as the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Charles H. Scott Gallery in Vancouver, and the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris. Her works are held in numerous private and public collections including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, and corporate collections including The Royal Bank of Canada. She has been published in Adbusters, Canadian Art, Border Crossings, C Magazine, The National Post, the Globe and Mail, Photo Nouvelles, US Weekly, and numerous other publications. She is represented by Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver.

Andrea Carlson received an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2005 and maintains an active artistic practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was awarded a 2007-2008 McKnight/MCAD artist fellowship and her work has received wide attention with reviews in The Star Tribune, Newsweek and Art Papers. Carlson has exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, October Gallery in London, England, The Power Plant in Toronto, and Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art in Winnipeg. Carlson’s VORE works have exhibited at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, the Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian at the George Gustav Heye Center in New York, and for the Venice Biennale at the University of Ca' Foscari, Venice. Carlson's work has been collected by institutions including the British Museum, the Tweed Art Museum and the National Gallery of Canada.

Ying-Yueh Chuang was born and raised in Taiwan, and came to Canada in the 1990s. She received a diploma from Langara College in 1997, a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute in 1999, and an MFA in Ceramics from NSCAD University in 2001. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the 2006 Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, Hungary, Taiwan, Korea, China and Australia and is in collections including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Government of Ontario Art Collection, MacKenzie Art Gallery, the Burlington Art Centre, and the WOCEK Icheon World Ceramic Centre in Korea.  Chuang has been featured in Art in America, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramic Review and Ceramics Art & Perception. Chuang currently teaches Ceramics at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Abigail DeVille was born and raised in New York City. She received her BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2007. She received the Camille Hanks Cosby fellowship to participate in the Skowhegan Residency Program in 2007 and received an MFA from Yale University in 2011. She has exhibited site-specific installations and sculptures across the United States and Europe and has been awarded the Radcliffe Institute fellowship, the International Studio & Curatorial Program, in Brooklyn, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. She is represented by Michel Rein Paris.

Raphaëlle de Groot was born in Montreal, and has worked actively in Canada and abroad since 1997, engaging in a polymorphous and interdisciplinary art practice that encompasses drawing, performance, video, installation and curatorial undertakings. Major projects include 8x5x363+1 with the Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, Italy, En exercice with the Galerie de l'UQAM in Montréal, and The Burden of Objectswith Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge. De Groot received an MA from the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2007.  She was awarded the Pierre-Ayot prize in 2006, the Prix Graff in 2011 and the Sobey Art Award in 2012.  She is represented by Galerie Graff in Montréal and Z2O Galleria - Sara Zanin in Rome.

Soheila K. Esfahani grew up in Tehran, Iran, and moved to Canada in 1992. She received her MFA from the University of Western Ontario and her BA in Fine Arts from the University of Waterloo. She is a recipient of grants from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund. Her work has been exhibited at the Red Head Gallery and Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, Rodman Hall Arts Centre in St. Catharines , Kitchener-waterloo Art Gallery, and Buffalo Arts Studio. Esfahani’s work is represented in public and private collections including the Canada Council’s Art Bank. She works from her studio at Kitchener’s artist–run centre, Globe Studios.

Ran Hwang was born in the Republic of Korea and lives and works in Seoul and New York City. She studied Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and attended the Graduate School of Fine Arts at Chung-Ang University in Seoul. Hwang has exhibited internationally, at the Queens Museum of Art, The Hudson Valley Center for the Arts, and the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, The Seoul Arts Center Museum, and The Jeju Museum of Art, in Jeju Island, Republic of Korea. Her work is in numerous private and public collections including The Brooklyn Museum, The Des Moines Center for the Arts, The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, and The Hammond Museum in North Salem, New York.  Hwang has completed residency at MASS MoCA and received a Full Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center Residency Program.

Sarah Anne Johnson is a Winnipeg-based artist who was trained as a photographer, but uses a variety of media, including painting, sculpture and performance. Her subject matter varies from environmental to personal concerns. Johnson completed her Masters at The Yale School of Art. Her work has been exhibited extensively in North America and internationally. 2015 marks the year of her first survey, held at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto and Julie Saul Gallery, New York.

Felice Koenig graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio with an MFA in 2003. Her work is a meditation on obsessive gesture. Each piece is made from more than a hundred layers of paint, producing seductive, tactile surfaces that despite their artificial nature achieve a sense of organic growth.  Her painting practice is inherently peaceful and invites the viewer to see a record of a person working in quiet, sitting with their mind, exploring possibility. Her work has been shown widely in the USA and internationally in Germany, China, and Canada, and held in private and public collections, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. She is currently an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at Daemen College.

Deirdre Logue has focused on the self as subject for the past 20 years. Using 'performance for the camera' as a primary mode of production, her compelling self-portraits investigate what it means to be a queer body in the age of anxiety. Diving deep into the unconscious, Logue's recorded performances are a tangle of fragmentation, doubt, perversion and psychic unrest. Uniquely located on the golden mean between comfort and trauma, excess and deficiency, self-liberation and self-annihilation, her works are at once unruly and uncanny.She has produced upwards of 60 short films and videos as well as some of this country's most celebrated video art installations.  Her award winning film and video work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions and festivals throughout Canada and internationally. Logue directs the FAG Feminist Art Gallery with her partner and collaborator, Allyson Mitchell.

Rachel Ludlow creates fantastical paintings and collages based on photographs of herself and images sourced from fashion magazines. Her work is focused on themes of femininity, fantasy, glamour and spectacle as they exist within contemporary consumer culture. She is interested in the performance of gender and identity, specifically in relation to notions of a culturally idealized femininity, which is supposedly attainable via consumerist means. Rachel Ludlow holds a BFA from the University of Regina and an MFA from York University. She lives and works in Toronto, Ontario.

Jodie Mack is an experimental animator who received her MFA in film, video, and new media from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007 and currently teaches animation at Dartmouth College. Mack's 16mm films have screened at a variety of venues including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival. She has presented solo programs of her work at venues such as the Anthology Film Archives, Los Angeles Filmforum, REDCAT, and the BFI London. She has also worked as a curator and administrator for several film festivals and organizations across the USA. She was a featured artist at the 2011 Flaherty Seminar, and was the 2013 recipient of the Images Festival’s Marion McMahan Award.

Amy Malbeuf lives and works in Kelowna, BC. Malbeuf is working towards a MFA from University of British Columbia Okanagan and has graduated with a Native Cultural Arts Certificate from Portage College in 2012 and a BFA from Alberta College of Art and Design in 2010. Malbeuf has had solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton and Stride Gallery, Calgary with selected group exhibitions at Contemporary Calgary; Kings ARI, Melbourne; Forest City Gallery, London; Toronto Free Gallery and has participated in many residencies including at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Labrador Research Institute, and The Banff Centre.

Sanaz Mazinani is an artist, curator, and educator, born in Tehran, Iran and currently based in San Francisco and Toronto. She holds an undergraduate degree from Ontario College of Art & Design University, and her Masters in Fine Arts from Stanford University. Mazinani’s work explores the relationship between perception and representation by drawing on concepts such as censorship, scale, and the body as a site of action or violence, working primarily in photography and large-scale photo-based installations. Her projects have been exhibited in venues such as Museum Bärengasse, Zurich, Art & Architecture Library at Stanford University, University of Toronto Art Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Sarai, New Delhi, di Rosa Museum, Napa, ASU Museum, Arizona, Gallery 44 Center for Contemporary Photography, Toronto, and Emirates Financial Towers, Dubai. In 2013 she was shortlisted for the 2013 Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize, granted the Kala Art Institute Fellowship, and was awarded the San Francisco Arts Commission Art on Market Street public art installation.

Meryl McMaster is an Ontario-based artist and a BFA graduate from OCAD University. She is the recipient of various awards and scholarships including the Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists, the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, the Canon Canada Prize, the OCAD Medal, and the Doris McCarthy Scholarship. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions throughout Canada and the United States and has been acquired by various public collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Eiteljorg Museum, City of Ottawa Fine Art Collection and the Donovan Collection. She is represented by the Katzman Contemporary gallery in Toronto, ON.

Allyson Mitchell lives and works in Toronto. Mitchell is a maximalist artist working in sculpture, performance, installation, and film. Her ongoing aesthetic/political project, “Deep Lez” advocates a strategic return to the histories of lesbian feminism for queer world making potential. This platform has resulted in a coven of lesbian feminist sasquatches, a menstrual hut cinema and most recently Killjoy’s Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House. Her work has exhibited the Textile Museum of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Warhol Museum, Tate Modern and the British Film Institute. She is based in Toronto, where she is an Associate Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University and runs FAG, a feminist art gallery with Deirdre Logue. She is represented by Katherine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects.

Dominique Rey is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, video, painting, performance, and installation. The National Gallery of Canada, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Province of Manitoba, Wedge Collection, and international private collections have collected her work. She has exhibited across Canada and in the United States, Germany, and Slovakia, and was recently featured in the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA). Awards and grants include the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, the Winnipeg Arts Council, the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and La Fondation Ricard. Her work has been reviewed in the Globe & Mail, Border Crossings, Frieze, Canadian Art, Flare, and the Winnipeg Free Press, among others. She holds an MFA in Photography from Bard College (NY) and an MFA in New Media from the Transart Institute (Berlin).

Winnie Truong lives and works in Toronto, where she received a BFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design’s drawing and painting program. Truong is a recipient of the Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council visual arts grants and is the recipient of numerous awards, including W.O. Forsythe award, the 401 Richmond Career Launcher prize and the BMO 1st! Art Award for Ontario, through which she exhibited at the MOCCA. Winnie has exhibited internationally in galleries across Toronto, LA, and Copenhagen and in New York where she was featured at VOLTA, NY Art Fair. Her work has been published in numerous art publications, including the cover of Hi-Fructose, Juxtapoz, and Walk the Line: The Art of Drawing. Her work is in the collection of The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas, Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto, and Bank of Denmark.

Alex Cu Unjieng was born in Manila, Philippines, and lives and works in Vancouver, BC. She is finishing her BFA at the University of British Columbia and has been in multiple group shows in Vancouver, including at RedGate Gallery, Centre A, the Audain Gallery, and Hot Art Wet City. Her work is in multiple collections, including the UBC Print Archives, and multiple private collections in both the Philippines and Canada. Material Girls marks her first show outside of Vancouver.

Marie Watt is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Formally, her work draws from Seneca and Indigenous teachings, oral tradition, biography, and history. Watt uses materials that are conceptually attached to narrative; in particular, exploring the stories connected with commonplace woolen blankets, cedar, and iron. Her work belongs to numerous public and private collections, including the Seattle Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. In 2013 Watt participated in Sakahan, an Indigenous Quinquennial of New Indigenous Art, at the National Gallery of Canada and was an Artist in Resident at the Denver Art Museum. Watt holds an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art (1996), a BS in Communications and Art/Art History from Willamette University (1990) and an AA in Museum Studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts (1994). Watt is represented by PDX Contemporary Art in Portland, Oregon and Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, Washington.

About the Curators

Blair Fornwald is an interdisciplinary artist and curator living in Regina. She holds an MFA from the University of Western Ontario. Fornwald is Dunlop Art Gallery’s Assistant Curator, and has also curated exhibitions for Neutral Ground Contemporary Art Forum and Vtape.  She maintains an independent studio practice and is a member of the Canadian artist collective, Turner Prize*. Working both collaboratively and independently, she has presented work throughout Canada and the United States, as well as in Berlin, Germany. Fornwald’s writing has appeared in Boulderpavement and BlackFlash Magazine and in publications by the Organization for Saskatchewan Arts Councils and Neutral Ground.

Jennifer Matotek has held curatorial and administrative positions at a variety of institutions, including the Toronto International Film Festival, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. She has curated numerous exhibitions for galleries and artist-run centres across Canada and is a practicing video artist whose work has been shown internationally. Her writing has been published by YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Gallery 44, Vtape and Magenta, among other publications. She holds an MA in Art History from York University and a Diploma in Curatorial Studies. She completed an MBA from the Schulich School of Business, York University in 2011, with a specialization in Arts and Cultural Management. Matotek is the Director/Curator, Dunlop Art Gallery at Regina Public Library.

Wendy Peart is Dunlop Art Gallery’s Curator of Education and Community Outreach. She earned  a BFA in Visual Art and a BA in Art History from the University of Regina and a MFA in Visual Art from the University of Victoria. She has taught as a sessional lecturer at University of Regina’s Department of Visual Arts and with Learning Through the Arts.    As an artist, she works in the areas of sculpture and drawing, focusing on ideas surrounding domestic space, relational bonds, and the environment.