FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

School of the Arts

About the Artists-in-Residence program

The School of the Arts’ Artists-in-Residence initiative brings established artists to the McMaster campus to engage students and the wider campus community with issues of social justice and equity through arts practice. Launched in 2021, the residency enhances the vibrant contributions of the arts at McMaster with outward-facing events connecting researchers and community artists on campus and off. Artists will offer class visits, workshops, artistic events, public talks, and collaborate with students and faculty on a public arts project.

Ardyn Gibbs

Ardyn Gibbs is a Queer and Trans, Settler-Indigenous (Mohawk from the Six Nations of the Grand River) Artist, Designer and Arts Worker located on the territories of the Haudenosaunee, Anishnaabe, and the Missisaugas of the Credit First Nation otherwise known as Hamilton, Ontario. Using digital new media technologies Ardyn’s work explores the themes of Queer Futurisms, Digital Dreaming and Visibility/Legibility of Queer bodies in public spaces. They are a graduate of McMaster University’s Studio Arts Program (B.F.A.) with a Minor in Community Engagement. Ardyn is passionate about collective dreaming, placekeeping and fostering meaningful connections. Their work is constantly shifting, adapting and growing with the world around them.
Delve into the world of zine making with SOTA’s 2024/2025 Zine Artist in Residence, Ardyn Gibbs. Together we will explore zine making as practice and engage with various fun and critical contemporary topics. Ardyn invites McMaster students to learn, create and play with vibrant zine hangouts and food/drinks provided. Join us for Zine Play this coming 2024/2025 year!

Zine Play drop in dates:

TSH 116 October 9th 5pm-7:30pm
TSH 116 November 20th 5pm-7:30pm
TSH 116 February 5th 5pm-7:30pm
TSH 116 April 2nd 5pm-7:30pm

Photo credit:

Sonali Menezes

Sonali is a Hamilton-based multidisciplinary artist and writer. She holds an Honours BA in Studio Art from the University of Guelph and is the youngest of triplets. While her work spans many mediums, she has been most recently focused in zines, video and printmaking. Sonali’s cookbook zine Depression Cooking won Broken Pencil Magazine’s Zine Award for best info zine in 2022. She loves the way zines take artwork off of the white walls of galleries and puts it directly into working peoples’ hands. Sonali is obsessed with food and finds herself making art work about it often. She makes art as a way to find meaning under the crushing weight of capitalism and the unending anxiety of the climate crisis.

Photo credit: Ariel Bader-Shamai

Artist in Residency 2023-2024 Program Curated by Adrien Crossman

This year’s artist in residency program includes four Queer and Trans artists from across Turtle Island whose practices rely heavily on material exploration, weaving form and concept within the framework of Queer / Trans histories and aesthetics. Each artist will give a SOTA wide artist talk and host a workshop with students. Artists will be available to give class talks and workshops specific to studio-based courses that are being offered during their residency.

Artists will each have a solo exhibition at Orchid Contemporary to take place at the culmination of their residency. The exhibitions will serve as pedagogical tools for students as they will be open to visit as class field trips and can be activated by talks and tours in the space.

Dana Buzzee

October 1 - 14, 2023

Dana Buzzee (b.1986) is a visual artist and educator currently based in Mohkinstsis/Calgary, AB. Buzzee’s practice is rooted in queer ecology, disability justice discourse, internet studies, and visual/material culture, particularly engaging with both the “stuff” and desires of counter-culture communities, composing an interdisciplinary gathering committed to re-wilding the sculptural field. Buzzee’s recent fascination with plastics—a hallmark material of the Anthropocene epoch—reflects a nuanced exploration of consumerist fetishism tied to extractive capitalist economies, while also serving as a narrative medium for deep-time storytelling and speculative thought.

Buzzee’s recent exhibitions include solo and group exhibitions at: HOT*BED, Philadelphia (2022); Ditch Contemporary, Springfield (2022); Eugene Contemporary (2021); The Plumb, Toronto (2021); Xpace, Toronto (2020); Harcourt House, Edmonton (2019); and Stride Gallery, Calgary (2018). Buzzee has received grants from the Calgary Arts Development Authority, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Buzzee’s recent residency participation includes the Banff Centre (2021), The Icelandic Textile Center, Blonduos (2019), and Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto (2016). Buzzee holds a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design (now the Alberta University of the Arts), Calgary (2012), and an MFA from the University of Oregon, Eugene (2022).

Arjun Lal

October 27 – November 10, 2023

Arjun Lal (he/they) is an multidisciplinary artist based in Kijipuktuk. Working in sculpture and performance focusing around contemporary queer themes of identity, colonialism, fetish culture, and cultural fetishization. They are inspired by their lived experiences as a queer Indian diasporic person who has lived in cities on Turtle Island and in Berlin.

Tyler Matheson

January 8 - 31, 2024

Tyler Matheson is a queer interdisciplinary research-based artist, educator, and culture worker residing in the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. Matheson received his BFA from York University and his MFA from the University of Waterloo. He recently held positions at the Blackwood Gallery, The Toronto Biennial of Art, and Visual Arts Mississauga at Riverwood. Currently, Matheson is the Marketing and Development Assistant at Oakville Galleries, is a resident artist and fellow at Mississauga’s Living Arts Centre, and serves on the Board of Directors at Hamilton Artists Inc. His work has been exhibited at Small Arms Inspection Building, Mississauga; Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario, Sudbury; The University of Waterloo Art Gallery; Hamilton Artists Inc.; Art Gallery of Mississauga; Art Mûr, Montreal; and the plumb, Lonsdale Gallery, Gallery TPW, Stephen Bulger Gallery, and Trinity Square Video, in Toronto. Matheson was the recipient of the Shantz International Research Scholarship and Superframe Framing Award and has participated in residencies at Plug In ICA Summer Institute and Artscape Gibraltar Point. Matheson’s work has been published in Femme Art Review, Off Centre, Peripheral Review, and dArt Magazine. Matheson’s practice has been supported by the Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts funding.

Sheri Osden Nault

February 1 - 29, 2024

Sheri Osden Nault is an artist, community worker, and Assistant Professor in Studio Arts at the University of Western Ontario. Their work spans mediums including sculpture, performance, installation, and more; integrating cultural, social, and experimental creative processes. Their work considers embodied connections between human and non-human beings, land-based relationships, and kinship sensibilities as an Indigenous Futurist framework. Methodologically, they prioritize tactile ways of knowing, and learning from more than human kin. Their research is grounded in their experiences as Michif, nêhiyaw, and Two-Spirit, and engages with decolonizing methodologies, queer theory, ecological theory, and intersectional and Indigenous feminisms. They are a member of the Indigenous tattoo revival movement in so-called Canada, and run the annual community project, Gifts for Two-Spirit Youth.

Recent notable exhibitions include Kwaatanihtowwakiw – A Hard Birth, at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2022; Hononga at Hoea! Gallery in Aotearoa (New Zealand), 2021; Where the Shoreline Meets the Water, the ArQuives, Toronto, 2020; Off-Centre at the Dunlop Art Gallery, 2019; Fix Your Hearts or Die at the Art Gallery of Alberta, 2019; and Li Salay at the Art Gallery of Alberta, 2018. Their short film, maachi kashkihtow, was part of the official selection for both the 2023 Images Festival and the 2023 Toronto Queer Film Festival.

Sheri currently lives and creates near the Deshkan Ziibing, on the lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lunaapéwak, and Chonnonton Nations, also known as ‘London, Ontario.’ They are colonially displaced Michif of the Charette, Bélanger, and Nault families, registered with the Métis Nation of Ontario, and with familial connections to the Red River, Duck Lake, North Battleford, and Rocky Mountain areas.