Visual and Digital Arts

Carolyne Topdjian is an interdisciplinary writer and educator whose work explores existential issues of aesthetics, consciousness, and identity. With a background in visual art theory and practice, she received her PhD in Social and Political Thought from York University and has since published numerous scholarly essays and stories. Her latest novel, The Hitman’s Daughter, is forthcoming from Agora Books in January 2022. You can find her at carolynetopdjian.com.

Cole Swanson (BA Studio Art, MA Art History) is an artist and educator based in Toronto, Canada. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and throughout international venues in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. He is a two-time national fellowship winner through the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute for his research on miniature painting, fresco, and natural pigment production in Jaipur, India. His current artistic practice includes a multidisciplinary study of the complex relationships shared between humans and other organisms. Working in painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and sound art, Swanson has created exhibitions in partnerships with scientists, ecologists, community groups, and social activists in order to confront critical questions in art, nature, and society today.

Swanson has performed many professional roles within the arts and has held positions in curatorial work, museum and gallery administration, and post-secondary education. As full-time professor and program co-ordinator for the Art Foundation and Visual & Digital Arts programs at Humber College, Swanson has developed and taught courses in painting, material methods, art history, collaborative and experimental art, and professional practice. Alongside Professor Anne Zbitnew, Swanson is a founding member of Art in Access, a research initiative that seeks to expand opportunities for community members faced with physical, social, and cultural barriers to art education. Swanson also held sessional teaching positions in the Faculty of Art, Ontario College of Art and Design University in painting, colour theory, and material processes.

Swanson has appeared as author and subject of numerous publications and catalogues, and has guest lectured at academic and arts institutions throughout Canada and abroad. He has been featured in print, video, and academic publications, and his recent work on Toronto's double-crested cormorant colony was profiled on The Nature of Things with David Suzuki (2020).

Swanson has received financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, the Musagetes Foundation, and the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute. His work appears in private and public collections throughout Canada.

Marc Colangelo is a visual artist specializing in representational works of portraiture, figurative compositions and dream imagery. Areas of instruction and expertise are figure drawing and painting, artistic anatomy, and composition.

Noni Kaur is an award-winning international contemporary artist and educator based in Toronto, Canada. As a Singaporean woman of Punjabi descent, her identity is by its own nature intersectional. The works she creates explore her cultural history and how particular materials are adapted or transformed through use in different spaces/environments. Her installations are immersive, multi-sensory experiences that bridge the gaps between gender, culture, the body, and the non-human world.

Steve Cober is a multidisciplinary designer and technologist. With a background in media arts, his experience spans product, experience, environmental and game design for clients such as Kellogg's, Visa, Nintendo and Disney. Steve co-founded Magic Pony, a creative hybrid synthesizing the signature elements of a retail store, exhibition space, and design studio to create a cultural hub and creative incubator in Toronto. In partnership with artists, corporations and cultural institutions, Magic Pony collaborated on over 100 art exhibitions, culminating with This Is Not a Toy, a retrospective of designer toy culture co-curated by Pharrell Williams. Most recently, he joined Secret Location as creative director for Waking Wonderland, a large-scale immersive entertainment project based on the works of Lewis Carroll.

His research explores the intersection of emergent narrative, participatory art and innovations in digital-physical technologies. He lectures in entrepreneurship, illustration, interactive design, using prototyping and ideation as the catalyst for learning and collaboration.

Tobias Williams is an artist and educator based in Toronto, Canada. He holds an MFA from York University. He recently completed an educational residency with the Toronto Public Library as part of the Innovator-in-Residence program and worked with STYLY VR as the head lecturer of the 2022 NEWVIEW SCHOOL in Toronto. Currently Tobias works as an instructor at OCAD U and Humber College. His work has been shown both locally and internationally including exhibitions at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin as part of Transmediale, Material Art Fair in Mexico City, The Brandscape in Toronto and the AGM in Mississauga.

Tobias’s art and research practice uses XR, 3D rendering and animation to explore the relationship between art, society and technology. Recent projects of his have focused on topics such as the history of Blockchain, the influence of platform based algorithms on contemporary visual culture and the ontology of virtual art spaces.