Traces by DesignTO

DesignTO is a charitable arts organization celebrating 16 years of designing a sustainable, just and joyful future. From January 23 to February 1, 2026, the DesignTO Festival features 100+ free events and exhibitions across Toronto, showcasing hundreds of artists and designers. As Canada’s largest annual design festival, DesignTO has welcomed over 1 million attendees, reached 2.6 billion people through media, supported 7,000+ artists and designers and generated $159 million in tourism impact since 2011.

Hangama Amiri works predominantly in textiles to examine notions of home and how gender, social norms and broader geopolitical conflict shape the daily lives of women, both in Afghanistan and in the diaspora. Continuing to use textiles as the medium, Amiri seeks to define, explore and question these spaces. The figurative tendency in her work stems from her interest in the power of representation, especially of objects that are ordinary in our everyday life, such as a passport, a vase or celebrity postcards.

Sonny Assu is an interdisciplinary artist whose diverse practice is informed by Kwakwaka’wakw and Western principles of art making. His work is often autobiographical and explores his family’s history to shed light on Canada’s treatment of First Peoples.  Assu received his BFA from the Emily Carr University in 2002 and his MFA from Concordia University in 2017. His work has been accepted into the National Gallery of Canada, the Seattle Art Museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery and various other public and private collections across Canada, the United States and the UK. He currently resides in unceded Ligwiłda’xw territory (Campbell River, BC) and is a member of the Wei Wai Kum First Nation.

Meena Chowdhury is an architectural designer from Saskatchewan whose work explores the intersections of materiality, form and cultural memory. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the University of 1Toronto and a Master of Architecture from the University of British Columbia. Her academic research has been recognized with the Rogatnick Book Prize and Honours for her thesis work. In 2023, she participated in the Venice Biennale as part of a summer abroad studio, expanding her interest in global architectural dialogues. In 2024, Chowdhury served as a Designer in Residence at Emily Carr University, where she deepened her exploration of textile practices within architectural design. Her work has been published in The Funambulist and Site Magazine, and she continues to challenge conventional disciplinary boundaries, creating spaces that invite new conversations across design, craft and cultural histories.

Nilojan Jegatheeswaran (he/him) is an emerging Tamil-Canadian artist and researcher based in Tkaronto/Toronto. His work is situated at the intersection of traditional storytelling, cultural memory and belonging, where he utilizes textual, archival and visual forms to question the boundaries of home.

Dennis Lin is a Taiwanese-Canadian sculptor living and working between Toronto and Kimberley, Ontario. His work spans sculptural forms, mainly working in suspended, standing and relief sculpture. Lin engages themes of pattern, material nostalgia and belonging, often salvaging materials from a fate of obscurity or decay. Through meticulous conservation techniques, Lin examines the emotional weight of hoarding — gathering, preserving and tending to what would otherwise be lost.

Jenn Kitagawa is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist who grew up in the prairies and cities of Alberta, Canada. She is of Japanese descent and is 4th generation, or Yonsei. Graduating from MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, and the AUArts (formerly Alberta College of Art & Design) in Calgary, Alberta, she studied graphic design, illustration and printmaking. Shortly after receiving her Bachelor’s of Design, Kitagawa moved to New York, where she interned for illustrator and artist Mike Perry and Nylon. She has exhibited in Canada and internationally at the Murmurs Festival in Berlin, Germany; the Long Winter Festival in Toronto, Ontario and Creative Type at the Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto, Ontario. Currently, she lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Québec and will be pursuing her Master’s at Concordia in the MFA Studio Arts program in 2025.

Rose Nordin is a British Malay artist and graphic designer from London. Her practice explores publication and other instigators of knowledge production through installation, print, metalwork and emerging olfactory forms. She is interested in material languages of governance and devotion and considers ritual and ceremony central to meaning-making and planetary consciousness.

Anahita Norouzi is a multidisciplinary artist, originally from Tehran, and has been active in Montréal since 2018. Her practice is research-driven, informed by marginalized histories and focuses on themes of resource extraction, colonialism and the relationship between humans and land.

Waard Ward is a contemporary arts collective based in Toronto that collaborates in floristry, decolonial research and newcomer community support. Waard Ward is collectively led by Syrian florist Abd Al-Mounim, community organizers/Syrian newcomers Hanen Nanaa and Shoruk Alsakni, educator Laura Ritacca, curator/educator Patricia Ritacca and artist Petrina Ng. We create floral arrangements, build community gardens, support mutual aid networks and teach floristry to newcomers (in and out of classrooms), all to embody generous and fruitful futures. Ward’s name suggests a diasporic flower district; “waard” is a romanization of the Arabic word for “flower.”

Abhishek Wagle (he/him) wants to use art and sculpture to connect people and urge individuals to question their own perspectives and biases. He was born in Mumbai (1996) but grew up in Canada, where he became a performance artist, sculptor and designer. His work explores decolonial theory, the immigrant experience, and the influence of policy, laws, and culture across the UK, Canada and India. Wagle is interested in tackling themes of belonging, storytelling and public perception in his work. He is currently interested in uncovering the relationships among indigenous, settler and immigrant cultures in Canada and in using objects and events to build new networks.