Looking back at 2024 Creatives in Residence
In 2024, nine artists from across the province launched new works during the Ontario Culture Days festival. This collection of artists made up Ontario Culture Days’ fifth Creatives in Residence program cohort.
These featured artists brought audiences together for moments of joy, loss and reflection in varied communities and Ontarian landscapes. Through reclamation, research, gathering and interventions, these multidisciplinary artists drew from personal and collective experiences under the banner of Heartbeat.
Aaron Jones (Scugog & Toronto) – Sky Mirage
Aaron Jones is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist, curator, and entrepreneur whose lens-based work draws from his personal experiences and familial roots and confronts the multifaceted nature of Black identity, nationality, culture, belonging, and personal modus operandi.
His interactive art installation, Sky Mirage, featured a reflective form that offered viewers a space to see themselves and each other. Aaron’s mylar sculpture was his first work in a three-dimensional form. Displayed along the shores of Lake Scugog and at Toronto’s Bentway during Nuit Blanche, Sky Mirage invited viewers to explore themes of self-reflection and endless possibilities. The project was complemented by an artist talk at the University of Toronto Scarborough Library.
With thanks to producing partners Scugog Arts and The Bentway.
Reilly Knowles (London) – Magic Circle for Earth Communion
Reilly Knowles’ work explores supernatural stories and traditions from the settler cultures of Southern Ontario in order to reimagine settler relationships to the stolen Indigenous lands on which he lives.
For Knowles’ residency, he created a textile-based piece in response to a magic circle illustrated in The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses. The magic circles in this text serve as guides for rituals to command spirits, including spirits of the earth, water, air and fire. Knowles explored these folk magic and textile traditions in a “magical” sewing and patterning practice that sought to reformulate our relationship to land.
During the Ontario Culture Days festival, Knowles hosted an exhibition of the work at Museum London, followed by a workshop and artist talk.
With thanks to producing partner Museum London.
Don Kwan (Westmeath) – Heartbeat of the Valley
Don Kwan is a queer third-generation Chinese-Canadian multidisciplinary artist, whose work explores place, identity and intergenerational memory-making across time. Reflecting upon modernist depictions of landscape in Canada, Kwan explores legacies of inclusion and exclusion, rooted in land-based settler colonialism.
For Ontario Culture Days, Kwan launched a new community event in his adopted hometown of Westmeath in the Whitewater Region, part of the Greater Ottawa Area. The event celebrated diversity and spotlighted the visual and performative power of the arts within rural communities. Featured talent included: Success Dragon Lion Dance Troupe, China Doll, Zaneta Pernicova, Soul Meadows / No Borders Art Festival Drum Circle and Catherine Timm.
Lucia Laford (Waawaaskone Kwe) (Sault Ste. Marie) – Dibaajimo. She tells a story.
Lucia Laford (Waawaaskone Kwe) (she/her) is an Anishinaabe and Irish artist born in Baawaating, ON. She is a proud two-spirit Ojibwe Kwe.
Laford presented four Woodland-style paintings in response to significant cultural sites in Baawaating (Sault Ste. Marie), each included a word from Anishinaabemowin related to the site. At the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library, Laford chose “gikendamowin,” meaning knowledge; at the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre, “babaamaadizi” meaning travelling; at the Ermatinger Clergue National Historic Site, “debwewin” meaning truth; and at the Sault Ste. Marie Museum, “dibaajimowin” meaning storytelling. The paintings were reproduced, enlarged and hung on the facades of each building.
Lucia led attendees to each location of her installation on an artist tour, and hosted an artist talk and Gathering at the Art Gallery of Algoma to celebrate her work.
With thanks to producing partner Art Gallery of Algoma.
Vik Mudge and Skye Rogers (St. Catharines) – Composing Community
Vik Mudge uses techniques like improvisation and instant composition to tell raw and authentic stories that encourage critical dialogue. With roots in dance, theatre, and music, Skye Rogers’ artistic practice is devoted to cultivating creative communities who move together.
In collaboration, Mudge and Rogers presented an opportunity for community-building and creation in the City of St. Catharines. Over the course of the festival, the artists generated a movement-piece to create the idea of a Community Garden. Community members were invited to participate at every stage of the process, and attended workshops hosted by the artists. On the final day of the festival, local dancers, alongside Mudge and Rogers, presented their choreography in a final dance showcase at the Niagara Artists Centre.
With thanks to producing partners City of St. Catharines, FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, and Niagara Artists Centre.
Yasmeen Nematt Alla (Toronto) – A thread that tangles but doesn’t knot
Artist Yasmeen Nematt Alla is an Egyptian immigrant and settler living in Tkaronto, Turtle Island. As an artist worker, she supports art organizations in creating accessible and anti-racist modes of communications in their day-to-day operations.
Over the course of the festival, participants were invited to participate in drop-in workshops where they pieced together and designed a kite that spoke uniquely to them. In an open performance in Toronto on the final weekend of the festival, Nematt Alla invited the public to come together in a one-time kite flying event. She asked: “What does it mean to be a kite that never takes flight? What does it mean to materialize a kite that will never fly, despite an undeniable abundance of wanting, of reaching, of hoping?”
With thanks to producing partners East End Arts, Toronto Public Library, and 401 Richmond.
Camila Salcedo (Toronto) – UPCYCLED: Camila Salcedo & Iconography of the Venezuelan Diaspora
Camila Salcedo is a Venezuelan-born interdisciplinary artist working primarily in textiles, digital art, and community arts.
UPCYCLED featured large-scale self-portraits of Salcedo wearing upcycled wearable artworks that reflected their Venezuelan pop culture. Salcedo’s portraits were staged in various Toronto neighbourhood locations including bodegas, parks, and other establishments, and were presented at the Toronto Public Library – Bloor Gladstone Branch. Salcedo also hosted a series of upcycling workshops, where they encouraged attendees to bring their own clothing to transform or mend into a new wearable wardrobe.
With thanks to producing partners Toronto Public Library and Town of Oakville.
Jennifer Willet (Windsor) – Baroque Biology
Jennifer Willet is an artist and professor at the School of Creative Arts, University of Windsor, and a prominent figure in the bio-art community. Her practice explores the intersection of art and science, often blending laboratory environments—typically isolated spaces—with outdoor ecological contexts. For Ontario Culture Days, Willet continued this exploration at Point Pelee National Park, a unique nature reserve on the southernmost tip of mainland Canada, near Windsor.
During a one-day event titled Baroque Biology, Willet invited visitors to engage with Great Lakes ecology through hands-on experimentation, storytelling, sculpture, and a performative parade. Activities included an algae painting workshop, a scientific art exhibition, and interactive Great Lakes learning with Healthy Headwaters Lab.
At the Arts Council Windsor & Region’s ArtSpeak Gallery, Willet’s performative alter ego, the Gentleman Scientist, was showcased in a pop-up exhibition. This featured a 360° diorama populated with colonies of microorganisms, bacteria, yeast, and algae. The ACWR also organized an Art Tour, offering a round-trip excursion to Point Pelee, where visitors could participate in the Baroque Biology spectacle.
With thanks to producing partner Arts Council Windsor & Region, the University of Windsor, and collaborator Parks Canada.
Supporters
We acknowledge the support of the Government of Canada through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario), the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario (FedNor), Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of Ontario, and the Ontario Arts Council. Lucia Laford’s project was proudly supported by the City of Sault Ste. Marie’s Arts and Culture Assistance Program.