One of Toronto’s most beloved art events is here and you won’t want to miss it.
OCAD University is hosting the city’s largest free art and design exhibition now until May 7.
You can expect to see work by 800 emerging artists, designers and digital media makers from across the globe at this year’s GradEx 108.
The five-day showcase features paintings, mobile apps, product and furniture designs, fashion, architectural designs and so much more.
The event is described as the best place to see the next generation of Canada’s creative talent.
Now Toronto got to speak with three graduate students who have been standing proudly beside their work, ready to tell its story.
We first caught up with artist Hayley Chiu, who specializes in oil painting.
Her series, Snail’s Home, explores and celebrates the relationship with the self that gives her a feeling of fullness and satisfaction.
Combining high realism and overtly overlaid images, Hayley breaks the illusion that her paintings are direct representations of reality, but she isn’t afraid to add charm to an ordinary life.
“These pieces are very inward searching. They talk about how the body is a home for ourselves. The way a snail carries its home on its back,” she told Now Toronto.
You can follow more of her work here.
Next up we have creative writing student Blaine Thornton‘s non-fiction poetry.
Thornton used their personal experience of being queer while experiencing homelessness.
Here’s to Letting Go offers an intimate and introspective exploration of the intersectional experiences of queerness, being unhoused and mental illness, when as a 15-year-old, their family rejected them.
“It’s a poetic memoir delving into my time, experience being unsheltered. I put the pages behind to act as a shelter, a shelter I didn’t have when I was on the street,” Thornton shared.
You can follow more of their work here.
Lastly, we spoke with Emma Martin, whose work speaks to the growing rift between nature and technology, shown in poetic photography.
She uses many upcycled materials in this work, which aims to inspire thought and action on climate change. With her Ojibwe roots, Martin’s photography also reclaims her Indigenous heritage by using tintypes and ambrotypes, which were colonial ways of documenting Indigenous people.
“[It’s about] destruction of society and how we’re heading towards a very chaotic reality opposed to reconnecting to our roots,” she said.
You can follow more of her work here.
