Aliyah Aziz is a multidisciplinary storyteller, poet and musician who uses light to talk about shadows, and sound to physically move them through us. She uses disruption as a tool of resistance, embracing glitch and static to channel the friction that exists between the surface and the depth of the technology that we engage with. Aliyah’s expressions take many forms, from multimedia moving collages of archived material, experimental sound and poetry compositions, interactive media installations, to performance art. She considers her practice to be an exploration of identity and the power that stories hold, from the history of our shadows to the projection of our futures.

Aliyah works with experimental sound techniques and audio archives such as voice loop samples on magnetic tape, as well as electromagnetic frequency statics made audible in combination with spoken word recitations. She is currently exploring live performance in 5.1 using different instruments she has built to direct the power of the “auditory glitch” as a liberating disruption in confronting naturalized instances of dehumanization of the “Other”. Aliyah finds that cultural resilience is only possible through resistance, and her work is how she does this, using sound as a material force.

Ghislan Sutherland-Timm (they/she) is a multidisciplinary craftsman, media-based researcher, and cultural worker based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Their practice braids archival materials with collage-based techniques across a diverse range of mediums, including analog, to shape autobiographical-fictional narratives centred on ambiguous beings and land formations. Sutherland-Timm volunteers at the8fest Small Gauge Film Festival and The ArQuives. They hold a BFA in Integrated Media from OCAD University and are an alum of the Independent Imaging Retreat: Film Farm (2024) and Black Women Film! Canada (2019).

Previous works of Sutherland-Timm’s has been featured at Sankofa Square (Yonge & Dundas Square) (2025), Artist Project (2024), InterAccess (2024), Xpace Cultural Centre (2024), ArtSpace Gallery (2023), Images Festival (2023), PITCH Magazine Issue 4 (2023) & Issue 2 (2021), RBC Commission Career Launcher OCAD U x RBC (2022), InsideOut 2SLGBTQ+ Toronto Film Festival (2022), Toronto Queer Film Festival (TQFF) (2022), and Nia Centre for the Arts in collaboration with McMaster Museum of Art (2021).

Middle is a multidisciplinary musician, producer, and sound artist whose practice bridges identity, mental health, and social justice. As a queer, Black artist, she expands her musical world into the realm of installation, using sound as an aura, designed to surround, hold and tell stories.

Her sonic practice blends genres, while also exploring the use of optimal tunings, meditative frequencies, and resonant textures that move beyond entertainment into embodied listening. Through field recordings, synthesized instrumentation, and live soundscapes, she builds immersive sonic environments where audiences don’t just hear, but feel and inhabit sound as space.

Her music has been featured on Prime Video’s Dating Unlocked and TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, while her remix series #MiddleMix and original works have drawn recognition from artists such as Sampa the Great and Jessie Reyez.

Beyond her own artistry, Middle is an arts educator and mentor committed to fostering spaces where BIPOC and LGBTQ+ creatives can thrive. With over a decade in community-based work, she bridges creative expression and industry knowledge, equipping emerging artists with the tools to navigate their careers with intention. Her dedication was recognized with the 2024 Community Recognition Award from MPP Chris Glover as a Youth Leader.

Tanya Louise Workman is a multidisciplinary artist and writer who works with spoken word, text, images and vibration to create tactile installations that oscillate in the space between what is heard, seen and felt. Listening in to make audible what the body holds, she arrives at her practice through a trauma-informed lens, and is most interested in holding spaces that invite intimacy, connection and embodied, felt experiences.

Tanya received her MFA from Maine Media College + Workshops in 2022. She also holds a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University, a post-graduate certificate in creative writing from the Humber School for Writers and a photojournalism diploma from Loyalist College.

Her work has been exhibited and screened in spaces in Toronto and internationally, including at Gallery 44, MOCA Toronto, CONTACT Gallery and the Gladstone Hotel, and with PhotoSensitive, Project Re•Vision, Magnum in Motion and Workman Arts.

As a journalist, Tanya’s writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, TV Guide Canada and Canadian Living. Her radio doc, “What Happened to Your Face?,” about the stories we tell about difference, aired on CBC Radio’s The Doc Project.

Winta Hagos is a Toronto-based multisensory artist and sound archivist whose work explores the intersection of sound, science, and cultural memory. Centering East African sonic traditions, she uses archival recordings, sculptural sound objects, and cymatics to investigate how sound can be both form and feeling. Her practice is rooted in community engagement, upcycling, and deep listening — creating immersive experiences that connect participants to epigenetic  memory, emotional release, and spatial storytelling.

Saturday, November 23, 2024 | 12-3 PM
WA Offsite Gallery – 180 Shaw St. Unit 302
Registration Required
Maximum Capacity: 14

Storyteller, Sarah Abusarar will be accenting the exhibit by weaving Palestinian stories of long ago. The Palestinian traditional stories were told by women in the villages. It is a tradition that was passed down from generation to generation. Often the women would tell these stories while engaging in other folk art such as embroidery and weaving.

Saturday, December 7, 2024 | 1-3 PM
Hallway Galleries, Youngplace, Third floor, 180 Shaw St. 
Free Entry

In this tea gathering, Helen will demonstrate a Chinese tea ritual and serve teas to the participants and attendees. This will serve as context to her piece “Tea by the Apricot Tree” made during the “Way of Weaving” course facilitated by Jana Ghalayini. 

Agnieszka (Aga) Forfa is a Tkaronto based artist, working mainly in the material culture of her ancestors, practicing textile, paper and straw craft.  She was born on the Baltic shores of Soviet-occupied Poland.

Tapestry for the Dead, 2024

Apanaki Temitayo is a Toronto-based, disabled, mixed-media textile artist, art facilitator, and mental health advocate. Her work combines African fabrics and storytelling, often exploring themes of identity, heritage, and resilience. She has exhibited in various galleries and her workshops focus on the therapeutic aspects of art, aiming to foster mental wellness and community connection.

apanaki-temitayo-m.pixels.com

Arokin Iwure, Yoruba for Griot’s Prayer, 2024

Originally Palestinian, born and raised in Jordan with an Austrian grandmother, Tara Hakim creates public displays of vulnerability that invite the viewer to meditate on notions of self, diasporic existences, and spaces in between – both physically and mentally. Her first short film ‘Teta, Opi & Me’ screened in festivals around the world including RIDM, and won Best Documentary and Audience Choice at MOMO in Zurich 2019. Since then, Tara has been creating short films, experimenting with gallery spaces and currently exploring tactile mediums including ceramics, Tatreez, weaving and glass work.

but you are still here, 2024

Merle Harley is an artist and maker who continuously creates visual alternate realities balancing the line between beautiful and uncanny. With no specific fixed media they work eclectically with what is readily available or collected. Using mediums such as drawing, painting, knitting, weaving, comic books, videos, built structures, as well as working in theatre and TV. They have exhibited work across Canada and beyond, in galleries and outdoors in site-specific locations and are particularly interested in stories based in nature, animals, mental health and queer themes.

warm hands weave shadows, 2024

Saretta Khan is Bangladeshi-Canadian born and raised in Toronto. Ever since being a child she has always been doing some form of art such as drawing and painting. She’s heavily influenced by her mother who is also an artist/painter. Her mother recognized Saretta’s talents at an early age and allowed her to explore and discover her passion for art. Currently, Saretta is a multidisciplinary graphic designer/artist who graduated from an advanced graphic design program at George Brown. She is also teaching art for The GEM (Giving Education Meaning)community program which allows her to introduce the wonders of art to students with learning disabilities. Her goal is to facilitate an inclusive space for them to express their creativity.

The Ocean, Textile, 2024

Helen Kong is a second generation Chinese Canadian living and working in Tkaronto (Toronto). She studied her first ritualized tea while living in Japan. Chado (the Way of Tea) is a meditative life journey through tea and hospitality. It is the gateway into art, culture, and philosophy. After returning to Canada, she studied ceramics as a way to better understand tea vessels. She established Secret Teatime, a clay studio where people play with clay and sip tea. She has expanded from making tea wares for Japanese teas to also studying and making wares for her own heritage of Chinese tea.

Tea by the Apricot Tree, 2024