Speaking of Textiles: An Afternoon of Artist Conversations

Hangama Amiri holds an MFA from Yale University, New Haven, where she graduated in 2020 from the Painting and Printmaking Department. She received her BFA from NSCAD University, Halifax, and is a Canadian Fulbright and Post-Graduate Fellow at Yale University School of Art and Sciences. Her recent exhibitions include Parting (2025) at Esker Foundation, Calgary; Reminiscences II (2024) at T293 Gallery, Rome, Circle of Friends (2024) at Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto; Quiet Resistance (2023) at Moenchehaus Museum Goslar; Rumi (2023) at Aga Khan Museum, Toronto; A Homage to Home (2023) at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield; Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present (2023), and Toronto Biennial: Precarious Joys (2024). 

Sarah Quinton lives and works in Toronto, Canada. She has curated many exhibitions that put cultural inclusivity, social awareness, and accessibility at the forefront through educational programs and community outreach. Her curatorial practice includes benchmark projects that have come to define a discourse that focuses on complex intersections between art, craft, and design, and she has written extensively on Canadian artists and their contributions to the field of contemporary textiles. 

Nehal El-Hadi is a Toronto-based writer, researcher, and editor. An environmental journalist with a PhD in urban planning, Nehal’s research explores our relationships with the materials, technologies, objects and spaces/places that define what it means to be human.

Panya Clark Espinal is a Canadian artist with a diploma in Experimental Art and Sculpture Installation (OCA 1988) and an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice (OCADU 2019). Her work focuses on bringing renewed intimacy to the act of looking while raising questions about reproduction, materiality, and perspective.

Sage Paul is an urban Denesuline woman in Toronto and a member of the English River First Nation—her ethos centres on family, sovereignty and resistance for balance. Sage is the Executive & Artistic Director and co-founder of Indigenous Fashion Arts. She is also an artist/designer who creates fashion for art, film, TV, theatre, and anywhere else she finds fashion. She has worked professionally as an administrator and designer in Indigenous arts for over 20 years, creating and leading several fashion arts projects and collaborations. Sage has been recognized by her community and the art and fashion industries as a leader and changemaker.

Gordon Shadrach (BDes, M.Ed) was born and raised in Brampton, Ontario. He is a Toronto-based portrait painter, textile artist, and educator whose work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. His work often focuses on the Black male form to question the impact of cultural stereotypes and the prevalence of the colonial gaze. 

Omar Badrin (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His practice is based on his personal history and examines identity formation through the lens of transracial adoption. Badrin obtained his MFA at OCADU and has received grants from the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts. He currently lives and works in Toronto. 

Julia Brucculieri is the Curator and Exhibitions Manager at the Textile Museum of Canada. She co-curated Samuel Nnorom: Eye of the Earth and contributed to exhibitions including Made by Many, Padina Bondar: Refuse, and Gathering. She holds an MA in Fashion from Toronto Metropolitan University, and has a background in fashion and lifestyle journalism with a focus on fashion and textiles as material culture.

Lyn Carter’s sculptures, drawings and videos have been exhibited across North America and in Australia, Britain, Spain, and China. Educated at York University and the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University) in Toronto, Carter has maintained a studio practice for over forty years and often incorporates textiles in her three-dimensional works.

Meera Sethi is a New-Delhi born, Toronto-based visual artist with a process-oriented interdisciplinary practice that moves between mediums. Her work sits at the intersection of the body and cloth with a particular focus on South Asia and it’s diasporas. She references histories of gender, labour, textile, environment, clothing, and migration among other interests.