Vesod was born in Turin in 1981 and he lives and works in a Venaria Reale (TO). After earning a degree in Mathematics, he chose the artistic career over numbers. Vesod has been a writer since 1998, working in Italy and abroad. He has participated in the most important industry events, such as the Picturin Festival and the Meeting of Styles, presenting his personal painting language which drew inspiration from both renaissance art and futurism. During his early age, he was deeply influenced by his father, an Italian surrealist painter Dovillo Braro. Ever since he could remember, Vesod was fascinated by the early 20th century Italian movement Futurism.

As a mathematician, Vesod concentrates on harmonizing the proportions in the dynamics of his pieces. His work is characterized by high contrast figures full of staggered motion and bright geometric abstractions. On the canvas, Vesod combines different media, such as spray and oil. He also likes to use a variety of mixed media including oil, acrylic, spray-paint and plastic. The notion of perceiving time as a continuum is fundamental for Vesod’s work. The ingenuity of his expression, however, is that he investigates the dimension of time through three dimensional spaces by “freezing” time into crystallized fractures.

Johnny Lee is a metis pencil artist, illustrator, and freehand portrait artist who was born in Toronto and now lives in Vancouver. He draws from his own personal experiences and expresses his stories in both color and black and white. Johnny’s illustrated story of the two wolves depicts how the choices we make can determine our path. A change in thoughts can in turn change ones own life. The miracle lies in the power to choose. Johnny Lee’s work steps out from the shadows of another time and place. Impeccably rendered drawings of growling grizzlies, willowy horses, and proud native warriors peer into the soul. Beautifully crafted in graphite on board and often using historical photographs of First Nations individuals for inspiration. Johnny’s art is as dramatic as it is aesthetically accomplished. He shifts from brooding figural studies to airy summer landscapes, beckoning the audience toward a simpler existence.

His work often takes the form of classic portraits, yet other pieces become dynamic collage-like compositions replete with headdresses, tribal abstractions, birds of prey, buffalo skulls, and proud men on horseback under endless skies. Johnny has been represented by galleries spread across Canada and in New York. He is currently represented at “The Gallery at the Chemainus Theatre” in Chemainus, BC and has been represented by “Eagle Feather Gallery” in Victoria, “E.J. Hughes Gallery” in Duncan, “Ahnisnabae Art Gallery” in Thunder Bay, Ontario, “Gust Gallery” in Waterton Lakes, Alberta, “Qualicum Trading Post” in Qualicum Beach, BC., Wah-sa Gallery in Winnipeg, Ancestral Spirits Gallery, Port Townsend, Washington, USA, Whetung Ojibwa Centre, Ontario, Armen Art Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, and Northwest Tribal Art in Seattle, Washington, “Misty Mountain Gallery” in Qualicum, “Batoche Gallery” on Quadra Island, BC, Chemainus Trading Co. in Chemainus BC, Lonewolf Gallery and Lighthouse Gallery in Victoria, BC.

Angela Sterritt is an award-winning Gitxsan journalist, artist and writer, from British Columbia. Angela’s paintings are exhibited across the world. In August of 2016, she painted a large mural in Jiangxi China with eight other international artists. 2012 took her on the dream of her life — animating and exhibiting five of her original paintings on over 300 LCD screens on the Toronto Transit system, 33 English Malls, and the Calgary Airport. The theme was the 1200+ missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada.

Angela has worked as a journalist for close to twenty years and has been with the CBC since 2003. Her reports have appeared in the Globe and Mail, The National, CBC’s The Current, and various other national and local news programs. Angela just won Best Audio Work of the Year (2016) at the prominent ImagineNative film festival in Toronto for her CBC documentary called The Story She Carriers. The documentary explores Lorelei Williams’s fight to find justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women. She was also recently (October 2016) nominated for a Canadian Online Publishing Award. Also in 2016, Angela was nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists Award for a text feature she wrote on missing and murdered Indigenous, women, girls and two-spirit people. The topic is the focus of a book she is now writing that digs into the cases of those missing or murdered along the Highway of Tears, at the Pickton farm and in Manitoba.

In 2014, Angela was awarded a prestigious William Southam Journalism Fellowship at Massey College in Toronto and is the first Indigenous person of Canada ever to receive the award in the school’s 60-year history. Angela and her production team at CBC’s 8th Fire earned a nomination for a Canadian Screen Award for their digital platform with the groundbreaking TV series on Indigenous history and current realities.

Her other awards include winning Best Radio of the year (2013) at the ImagineNative Film Festival for her documentary on Cindy Blackstock and two CBC President’s awards for her work as a producer on CBC’s 8th Fire and a reporter at CBC Aboriginal.

As a motivational speaker, Angela talks about her climb from street kid to journalist and about breaking stereotypes and creating change in Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. She also speaks to journalists about reporting in and building relationships with Indigenous communities with the organization Journalists for Human Rights.

Tran Nguyen is an award-winning illustrator and gallery artist. At the age of three, she and her family were given the opportunity to immigrate to the United States, escaping their impoverished life in Vietnam. Growing up in a more developed country, she was able to pursue her passion for the arts and is currently working as a freelancer.

Tran’s paintings are created with a soft, delicate quality using acrylic and colored pencils, while her drawings are composed with ink. She enjoys exploring abstract shapes and patterns that embody celestial qualities. Tran has worked for clients such as VH1 and Smithsonian magazine, and has showcased with galleries in New York, California and Italy.

Moriviví is a unique and empowered female artist collective whose members gained their first big public art experience through participating at the Santurce Es Ley street art festival in 2013. Based in Puerto Rico, Moriviví has gained recognition for the creation of murals, where the team has developed the subject of human condition directed to sensibilize spectators. Moriviví currently includes Joy Díaz Marty, Sharon Nichole, and Raysa Raquel Rodríguez García as its members.

Moriviví Collective is a model of artistic production focused on bringing the voice of its context into the public forum. Muralism is understandable and powerful for the general spectator. Portraying ideas in collectiveness and collaboration with others is a challenge and that is what validates painting as a process. By promoting teamwork as a way to produce things of value in society Moriviví is set upon elevating it in order to achieve social justice. It is a model that the team intend to replicate on different scales, with each community it touches, in order to create an effect in society’s general model.

“Moriviví is the most commonly used name in Puerto Rico for the wild weed, sensitive to touch, scientifically named mimosa pudica. We understand that in English it is sometimes called a touch-me-not. It closes its leaves when touched, its stems possess thorns, and it blooms a puffy pinkish-purple flower. When we chose the name it was quite spontaneous and we simply loved it. But when we met ourselves and our own way of working further, it truly identified us.

Moriviví is literally translated as ‘I Died, I Lived,’ a duality that has generally been depicted in our work and is an essence of human condition. Besides that, being named after a wild weed -that according to Taíno mythology is the re-incarnation of a woman named Cohaí- also stands for our close attention to nature, which is constantly present in our work. We depict nature in an effort to comment on the impact of our imposition upon it and our collective inclination as human kind towards its manipulation. Bringing that point a little bit further, is relevant to say that we’ve always identified with femininity, even as a quality, and that the nature of femininity—nurturance– can ‘rescue’ this world. We could say there is a lot of eco-feminism cooking in our artistic discourse.”

Moriviví is a unique and empowered female artist collective whose members gained their first big public art experience through participating at the Santurce Es Ley street art festival in 2013. Based in Puerto Rico, Moriviví has gained recognition for the creation of murals, where the team has developed the subject of human condition directed to sensibilize spectators. Moriviví currently includes Joy Díaz Marty, Sharon Nichole, and Raysa Raquel Rodríguez García as its members.

Moriviví Collective is a model of artistic production focused on bringing the voice of its context into the public forum. Muralism is understandable and powerful for the general spectator. Portraying ideas in collectiveness and collaboration with others is a challenge and that is what validates painting as a process. By promoting teamwork as a way to produce things of value in society Moriviví is set upon elevating it in order to achieve social justice. It is a model that the team intend to replicate on different scales, with each community it touches, in order to create an effect in society’s general model.

“Moriviví is the most commonly used name in Puerto Rico for the wild weed, sensitive to touch, scientifically named mimosa pudica. We understand that in English it is sometimes called a touch-me-not. It closes its leaves when touched, its stems possess thorns, and it blooms a puffy pinkish-purple flower. When we chose the name it was quite spontaneous and we simply loved it. But when we met ourselves and our own way of working further, it truly identified us.

Moriviví is literally translated as ‘I Died, I Lived,’ a duality that has generally been depicted in our work and is an essence of human condition. Besides that, being named after a wild weed -that according to Taíno mythology is the re-incarnation of a woman named Cohaí- also stands for our close attention to nature, which is constantly present in our work. We depict nature in an effort to comment on the impact of our imposition upon it and our collective inclination as human kind towards its manipulation. Bringing that point a little bit further, is relevant to say that we’ve always identified with femininity, even as a quality, and that the nature of femininity—nurturance– can ‘rescue’ this world. We could say there is a lot of eco-feminism cooking in our artistic discourse.”