FRANCISCO BERLANGA
Creative Director - Publications Lead - Founder
Francisco Berlanga (he/him) is a Vancouver based textile artist whose practice reflects on his relationship to his Mexican identity as a second-generation immigrant through the lens of Craft. He attempts to understand how one can inhabit a culture while being partially absent from it. He engages in discourse with his own identity through the creation of traditional Mexican “manualidades” or crafts. His practice engages with concepts of inaccessibility attempting to bridge the gaps between his personal and cultural identities by forcing connections between them and trying to understand the limitations that these identities impose upon each other. Histories of repetition often produce apparitions of motifs that haunt his works. His previous exhibitions include a solo show at Grunt Gallery and group shows at the Morris and Helen Belkin gallery, the AHVA gallery, This gallery, and the Audain gallery. Berlanga obtained his BFA at Simon Fraser University and his MFA at the University of British Columbia.
YIHK QU CHAN
Operations Coordinator - Workshops Lead - Founder
Natalie Chan is a contemporary artist based in Vancouver, Canada. She pursued her undergraduate studies at Simon Fraser University and obtained her BFA in Visual Arts. Her practice focuses on the emotional relationships that connect people & places, as well as the unpacking of inner turmoils & complexities of the human condition. Often engaged with topics of trauma, she aims to create and facilitate spaces of reflection, healing, and reconciliation, offering them as tangible possibilities in each encounter with her artwork. Her latest interests include learning how to tattoo, in understanding the intimate relation between artist and the livelihood of their canvas & significance in mark making as a form of storytelling.
THEO BADZIO
Publications Lead
Theo Badzio (he/they) is a film and multimedia artist working in Vancouver. Using a wide range of materials such as stop animation, textiles, collage, & video, he explores his Ukrainian heritage, the love behind manual crafts, and the hardships & soft magics of every day life. He also loves jam!
TORIEN CAFFERATA
Curatorial Lead
Torien C. Cafferata (they/he) is an AuDHD interdisciplinary artist originally from Treaty 4 and Treaty 6 territory where they trained as a performer, playwright, director, and dramaturge before coming to Simon Fraser University for their MFA. Their practice spans a host of forms: social practice, site-specific theatre & installation, lo-fi mixed-reality, game design, ludology, and mad arts. He is an avid trifler with digital platforms and cultures in performance, often using them in explorations of mad labour/play, interactivity/interpassivity, non-places, and hauntology. As co-Artistic Director of It’s Not A Box Theatre they have toured work to the Prague Quadrennial, SummerWorks, and across Fringe Festivals.
SASHA CERINO
Workshops Lead
Sasha (she/her) is an artist and settler based in the land of the xÊ·mÉ™θkÊ·É™yÌ“É™m (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sÉ™lilwÉ™taɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations, colonially known as Vancouver. Coming from a Filipino background and being a child of immigrants integrally informs her work from covert to ouvert ways. Similar to how tides cycle all throughout the vast ancestral source that is the ocean. The waves make their way to the shore in varying intensities, from gentle ripples to destructive tsunamis and everything in between. Sasha explores the relationships, dynamics, narratives, traumas, conflicts; the beauty and nuances that come with who she is, but also how the world views her. For the personal is interconnected and represents the collective. Using art as a means of self expression ever since she was the age of 3. Always having a curiosity and interest in making things, mirroring her experiences as a tool of processing and also reflection. What started off with crayons has now expanded to painting, photography, videography, poetry, mixed media, installation, movement, and any medium that she has access to learn. Her choice of medium(s) for her pieces are most often led by the concept(s) she is trying to convey. Overall, striving to make art that is honest, genuine and creates spaces for open conversations.
EMILY CHU
Community Events Lead
Emily Chu (she/her) is a visual artist and writer whose work blends personal narrative with existential reflection. A recent BFA graduate, she creates with an awareness of material impact, exploring how art, memory, and responsibility intertwine. She wishes to continue investigating the philosophical, ethical, and emotional dimensions surrounding contemporary art, whether that may be through graduate studies or her own personal research. In her free time, she enjoys playing music and writing poetry.
RAINE HERMOSA
Curatorial Assistant
Raine Hermosa, also known as bcball or bishi, is an 18 year old queer singer songwriter and music producer based in from Victoria BC. He has been writing music since he was a child, and in his early days posted songs on Youtube and Soundcloud. His practice ranges from writing for piano and strings, songwriting and electronic music production. Outside of music he also works in digital art, drag, and creative writing. Raine is currently studying Music and Sound at the SFU School for Contemporary Arts in Vancouver.
AMANDA KACHADOORIAN JORDI
Curatorial Lead
Amanda Kachadoorian Jordi is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores migration, bureaucratic systems, and hybrid cultural identities through mixed media, sculpture, and photography. Raised in San Diego and of Mexican, German, and Armenian descent, she investigates the emotional and psychological complexities of movement, belonging, and in-betweenness. Originally trained as a painter, she began with large-scale oil paintings of surreal, hybridized botanicals, each drawn from plants, flora, and landscapes developing a metaphorical language of layered histories and identities. Her practice has since evolved to incorporate unconventional materials through an evolving collage-based process, reflecting the layered tensions of movement, the weight of bureaucracy, and the fragile negotiations of belonging across shifting borders.
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Jordi has exhibited at the Oceanside Museum of Art (California) and Ahoi Galerie (Lucerne, Switzerland), and her work has been featured in New American Paintings (West Coast Issue #163).
OPAL MCLEAN
In Memorium - Founder
Mclean is best described as the “selfish artist” meaning her practice entirely revolves around herself. Her work often relates back to a mental psyche that cannot be described by words alone. Instead, it can be described by an action. A reference to a state of being or a performance that lends to the way her brain functions. This manifestation and documentation of different processes becomes her tool to relate to the outside world. Her own existence comes into question in a way that so many experience in their own daily life. This experience becomes a social, cultural, and political connection to her projects. Her work becomes both alienating but connecting in a shared experience that translates through different media.