Description
Jon Sasaki is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist with a keen interest in the Canadian landscape genre, its history, and its role in contemporary art practice. While formally training as a landscape painter (BFA Mount Allison University, 1996) he began his investigation into the mythologization of the Group of Seven, and the trope of the Romantic individual confronting nature. Today he continues this inquiry in video, photography, sculpture, performance, and installation, exploring ways the landscape genre dovetails with broader questions around our national identity. Sasaki’s work has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (Toronto, ON) and numerous permanent public art commissions. Jon is represented by Clint Roenisch Gallery in Toronto.
Aylan Couchie (she/her) is a Nishnaabekwe interdisciplinary artist, curator and writer hailing from Nipissing First Nation. She is a Georgian College and NSCAD University alumna achieving a BFA in sculpture and installation. She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design at OCAD University where she focused her thesis on reconciliation and its relationship to monument and public art. She’s currently in her final year of study at Queen’s University where she’s working on her PhD in the Cultural Studies program researching areas of land+language+Indigenous placemaking through mapping, naming and public art. She’s been the recipient of several awards including an “Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture” award through the International Sculpture Centre and a Premier’s Award through Ontario Colleges. She was chosen by Queen’s University as their nominee for the 2023 SSHRC Talent Award. She is a Committee Member of Nipissing First Nation’s Language & Culture Committee and a Board Member for Native Women in the Arts where she served as Board Chair from 2018 to 2020. She splits her time living and working between her home community of Nipissing First Nation in Northern Ontario and Tsi Tkarón: to where she is employed as Assistant Professor of Indigenous Digital Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto.
