Chiedza Pasipanodya (chee-ed-za pasi-pano-jga) is an artist, curator, and writer. Their research-based practice emerges from southern African ways of being, knowing, and aesthetics, and is informed by African pottery and social practice. They are committed to elevating narratives which might otherwise be forgotten or misremembered, especially the cultural productions of people of African descent. Through exhibition-making, sculpture, conversation, collaboration, and writing, they have developed a multi-disciplinary Afro-diasporic practice that considers how and if connection, repair, and retrieval are possible through the making of objects and transmutation of materials. Pasipanodya uses clay as a tool for translation, recording, and remembering.

Pasipanodya completed a BFA (Hons) in Criticism and Curatorial Practices at OCAD University in 2019. They have exhibited at Artspeak Gallery, The Art Gallery of Burlington, Nia Centre for the Arts, Xpace Cultural Centre, Gallery Two Seven Two, and Whippersnapper Gallery, and curated exhibitions with The Art Gallery of Peterborough, Aspace Gallery, BAND Gallery, The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, and Nuit Blanche. They were a Toronto Biennial of Art Curatorial Fellow (2022) and have sat on committees and juries with the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Nia Centre for the Arts, The Canada Council for the Arts, and the inaugural Black Curators Forum (2019). They live and work in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Harare, Zimbabwe; and Toronto, Ontario. Pasipanodya is an MFA candidate in the Sculpture department at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Class of 2025.

Mallory Lowe Mpoka is a Cameroonian Belgian artist who works between Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal) and Douala. Through her practice centered on photography, textiles, and ceramics, Mpoka addresses nuanced themes related to migration, hyper/(in)visibility, and memory. Moving across analog photography, handprinting techniques, and natural dying on textiles, she weaves together archival images, family photographs, and self-portraitures to create poetic compositions that marry personal experience and collective memory. Mpoka’s organic sculptural installations explore notions of place-making and place-based knowledge among African and Afro-descendant diasporas, and untangle complex histories related to colonialism. Growing up between cultures and continents, she places special emphasis on the land being a site of trauma and possibilities, as well as on its inextricable links to identity formation.

Mpoka was a Villa Lena Foundation artist-in-residence in 2021 and has been nominated as a finalist for the Access ART x Prize 2022-23 by Art x Lagos and Yinka Shonibare’s Foundation. She is also the winner of the Malick Sidibé Prize by the Bamako Encounters – African Biennale of Photography, and the winner of the Royal Bank of Canada Future Launch Scholarship 2023. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at Atiss Dakar Gallery, 1-54 NYC, Art Toronto, Next Contemporary, SAVVY Contemporary Berlin, and Centre Phi, among others.

Mpoka’s next textile installation will be on display at the Aga Khan Museum starting in July 2024.

Zainab “Zai” Aliyu is a Nigerian-American artist and cultural worker living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY). Her work contextualizes the cybernetic and temporal entanglement embedded within societal dynamics to understand how all socio-technological systems of control are interconnected, and how we are all materially implicated through time. She draws upon her body as a corporeal archive and site of ancestral memory to craft counter-narratives through sculpture, video, installation, built virtual environments, printed matter, archives, and community-participatory (un)learning. Aliyu is currently a co-director of the School for Poetic Computation, design director for the African Film Festival at the Film at Lincoln Center in NYC, and a 2023-24 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow. Her work has been shown at Film at Lincoln Center (NYC), Museum of Modern Art Library (NYC), Miller ICA (Pittsburgh), the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (Hong Kong), Casa do Povo (São Paulo, Brazil), Aktuelle Architektur der Kulturimages (Murcia, Spain), and Pocoapoco (Oaxaca, Mexico), among others.

Sarah Edo is an emerging curator, researcher, and cultural worker born and based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her practice and research orbit themes of Black visual and material cultures and queer diasporic sensibilities. Her creative and cultural pursuits are guided and grounded by her experiences in community work and collective study. Edo holds a Masters in Gender Studies from the University of Toronto, and has a range of curatorial and project coordination experience. Edo has organized with 1919Mag, a print magazine and multimedia platform for Black cultural production and political education. She has held project coordination roles with arts collective Diasporic African Women Artists (DAWA) and plant medicine school Seed Soil Spirit. Edo has curated exhibits and programs with BAND Gallery (2022), Images Film Festival (2023), Whippersnapper Gallery (2023) and most recently, through her Curatorial Residency at the Gardiner Museum (2024). Her art writing has been featured in Studio Magazine, BlackFlash Magazine, CMag, and 1919Mag. Edo recently joined the Toronto Biennial of Art team as a Curatorial Fellow, Programs.