I am a Canadian of Indian origin, a multi-disciplinary artist, and an MFA candidate at the University of Saskatchewan School for the Arts. My primary research interests include community, landscape, land, and migratory experiences—human or material journeys—along with memory, presence, and absence themes. I have honed these interests through various media, such as sculpture, photography, printmaking, drawing, and ethnographic research methods. My connection to diverse lands, cultures, and the narratives of different people inspires my artistic journey. I start with experimentation, research, and a desire to understand my materials. I aim to create a dialogue between myself, my chosen materials, my methodologies, and my viewers. My work often fosters reciprocal relationships by promoting listening and sharing of stories. An ongoing question, "What is the connection between art and me?” positions me in a state of receptiveness—between the known and unknown in each piece I create. As I attempt to answer this question, a pattern of connections emerges among my childhood experiences, stories, memories, and relationships up to this moment. 

Veronika Chermenskaya is a young Russian-Jewish artist, who recently relocated from Israel for her MFA in Studio Art. She merges traditional drawing with animation using a variety of digital software to immerse the viewer in mental states that provoke transcendental experiences. Anchored in memory, Veronika’s work allows her to journey through time, place, space, and states of mind. She depicts specific places where each remembered detail acts as a type of object mnemonic. 

Shona Dietz is a prairie based multi-media artist whose work has a strong connection to ritual and the everyday, involving memory and the aging process. Her practice is rooted in materiality and allegory; the history and associations of her materials become the content of both her installations and performance work. The alternate realities that she creates question our own perceptions of what or whose reality we actually live in.

Currently Dietz is examining how attitudes and behaviors can be altered by the experiential and perceptual shifts that occur if we are fortunate enough to age. These shifts rework the thought processes, creating random feelings of joy and comfort or fear and anger. Unexpected changes upset the status quo and greatly affect an individual and their communities, that is to say, all human connections - without bias. It’s a human thing…or perhaps it’s an animal thing?