Scarborough Arts Presents
Annual Juried Exhibition
Every year, Scarborough Arts produces its Annual Juried Exhibition, a showcase of visual and media art created and curated in response to a themed call.
Pieces, which can be in any medium, are selected for exhibition based upon a combination of artistic quality, technical execution, conceptual strength, originality, and impact. The jury, made up of gallery and community arts professionals, changes each year.
The BIG ART BOOK is a print and online anthology of visual arts and literature, published as a companion to the Annual Juried Exhibition.
Scarborough Arts is back with our 37th Annual Juried Exhibition. Last year’s Annual Juried Exhibition “asked us as individuals and as community members to find new forms of resilience.” This year, Chrysalis is taking it one step further and asking you, as artists and community members, “what happens next?” What happens in these moments of resilience and transformation? How do we navigate the in-betweenness of transformation?" As these moments of change impact our relationships with our environment, others, ourselves, and even our perceptions of time, we ask you to explore liminality, weirdness, and even transmutation.
We are hosting visual artists, writers, and poets at Cedar Ridge Creative Centre in showcasing artworks in painting, illustration, photography, sculpture, printmaking, video, installation, poetry, and short story that respond to the theme and title of Chrysalis. Scarborough artists showed up with a beautiful array of artworks spanning visual arts, photography, and writing that we are so excited to share with the community. This year's exhibition is juried by Esmond Lee and Yolanda T. Marshall. The DJs in charge of live music will be Thevya Balendran and Gnanushan "Gnanu" Krishnapillai. The exhibition and event were programmed by Emily Peltier and Faith Rajasingham, and the design was curated by Sarah Alinia Ziazi.
This project is in partnership with The City of Toronto, Ontario Arts Council, and Delta Downsview.
Meet the Chrysalis Jurors
Esmond Lee is an artist, researcher, and architect based in Scarborough. Lee explores long-term, intergenerational experiences of migration in peripheral and in-between spaces. He holds a Master of Architecture and is pursuing a Doctorate in Critical Human Geography. His recent works include two public art installations for Nuit Blanche Toronto in Scarborough and one at Malvern Town Centre for CONTACT Photography Festival.
Yolanda T. Marshall is a Guyanese-born Canadian author. In 2015, after becoming a mom, Yolanda was inspired to write her first children’s book, Keman’s First Carnival.
Yolanda is also the author of, A Piece of Black Cake for Santa, Sweet Sorrel Stand, C is for Carnival and one of CBC’s best Canadian picture books of 2020 - My Soca Birthday Party: with Jollof Rice and Steel Pans.
Gnanushan Krishnapillai is a community worker, researcher and beatmaker, looping and mashing his way through the archives. He rewinds and fast forwards, sampling and layering ghosts (stories) and prophecies (theories), hoping to connect and center marginalized histories. He is inspired by his hometown of Scarborough, where he grew up watching community members engage in development, activism, and mutual aid without institutional support.
View Our Gallery of Artists
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View Our Gallery of Artists 〰️
Meet the Chrysalis DJs
Thevya Balendran is an Eelam Tamil community worker and aspiring local DJ, which cultivated from a love for curating playlists as a form of storytelling. She was gifted a mixer from her friends as encouragement to explore her creativity and hopes to tap into her experiences growing up in Scarborough to craft mixes that sound and feel like home. Apart from music, Thevya passionately combines her education with her commitment to decolonization and community care. Her work is rooted in exploring themes of displacement, identity, and survival in diasporic and racialized communities. She plans to continue curating vibes for all welcoming ears to enjoy.
ABOUT THE ANNUAL JURIED EXHIBITION AND BIG ART BOOK
Scarborough Arts produces the Annual Juried Exhibition, yearly, as a showcase of visual artworks created by artists in response to a unique yearly theme. Pieces are selected by a panel of Jurors based upon a combination of quality, technical execution, conceptual strength, originality, and impact.
Our Annual Juried Exhibition, "Chrysalis," will be happening in person on Sunday, November 27, 2022 from 1 pm-3 pm at Cedar Ridge Creative Centre (Cedar Ridge Park, 225 Confederation Dr, Scarborough, ON M1G 1B2). Selected winners will also get the opportunity to be featured in the 2022 print edition of the BIG ART BOOK.