Experimental Craft and Cathartic Possibility

Madeline Collins is a contemporary art writer, curator and artist currently based in Tkarón:to/Toronto, Ontario. As a Black queer scholar, her practices principally explore identity-making and world-building in queer-of-colour imaginaries, diasporic theory and the visioning of “worlds otherwise” amid crisis.

A recent MA graduate from OCAD University, her thesis research considered space and time as frameworks for the (un)making of Black diasporic identity. Collins publications include the podcast Unboxing the Canon and articles in Journal of Curatorial Studies, Senses & Society, Economía Creativa and RACAR. Curatorially, she is interested in unexpected installation techniques, centering marginalized perspectives and undoing high/low culture binaries – she is enticed by art that overwhelms, winks and shocks.

Collins currently works as a research assistant at the Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora.

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Théo Bignon is a French artist, curator and educator based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal, whose practice explores the intersections of desire, ornamentation and queer existence. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Centre Clark and Gallery Blouin Division (Quebec), Villa Noailles (France), Bunker Projects (Pennsylvania), Salon LB (Illinois) and Whatiftheworld Gallery (South Africa).

His past residencies includeBunker Projects (Illinois, 2019 & 2024) and Adélard(Quebec), and his research has been published in Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion and Catalyst: Casual Encounters and presented at the College Art Association.

Bignon is the founder of the Non-Resident Residency, an art residency program in Montreal for artists without permanent residency status, and a co-founder of Abstract Lunch, an artist-run curatorial project focused on experimentation, play and community engagement. Other curatorial projects include the group exhibition Floral Methods, which opened in the spring of 2025 at Bunker Projects. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Sciences Po Paris.

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Molly JF Caldwell is a Calgary-based artist, writer, and cultural worker whose practice is rooted in autoThéory, textiles, and material-based inquiry. A 2017 graduate of Alberta University of the Arts, she explores Japanese Canadian identity, feminist craft traditions and the politics of making through a multidisciplinary approach.

Caldwell’s work examines how textiles operate as both archives and sites of resistance, foregrounding slow-making methodologies and embodied knowledge. She was named on the 2025 Sobey Art Award longlist and has exhibited and published across the country, with recent projects at The Esker Foundation, The New Gallery and Neutral Ground. Caldwell has participated in residencies at the Banff Centre and Praxis Fibre Workshop, where she deepened her engagement with weaving and digital textile technologies. Her writing and curatorial projects critically explore the intersections of art, accessibility and community, with a focus on disability justice and inclusive cultural spaces. Caldwell is passionate about Marxist feminism, dogs and Mariah Carey.

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Lux Gow-Habrich is a queer, disabled, multidisciplinary visual artist, facilitator and support worker of mixed, second-generation Chinese and German heritage, practicing between Tkarón:to (Toronto, ON) and Kjipuktuk (Halifax, NS). These intersections and roles are immensely interconnected and play important parts in their practice. They grew up disabled, caring for a disabled parent, in a complex household that held multiple contradictory cosmological and cultural nuances. The nature of care, access, interdependence, rupture and repair, agency, identity and especially questions around embodiment, and the ways that disability, gender, race and visibility shape our internal and external social realities, have always been at the core of their research.

They have participated in a variety of residencies focused on process and experimentation, often collaborating with fibre and clay from the land to build deepened relationships with these animate materials. They have exhibited work across Turtle Island and have received numerous provincial and federal grants.

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Hea R. Kim is a South Korean-born, multidisciplinary artist whose immersive installations explore themes of cultural hybridity, memory and transformation. Drawing from her Korean heritage, childhood experiences and diasporic identity, she creates playful yet conceptually rich environments where myth, nostalgia and pop culture intertwine. Her work often combines fibre and ceramic techniques with mass-produced objects, challenging the boundaries between craft and contemporary art. Kim’s practice is grounded in both personal reflection and broader social narratives, offering poetic, humorous and subversive spaces for intercultural dialogue. She has exhibited across Canada and South Korea and continues to develop work that bridges tradition and reinvention through materially layered, emotionally resonant installations.