Emerging Artists

Alia is a Bahamian-Colombian artist currently based in Toronto. Her work is translated through her use of reminiscent color schemes and patterns from her two cultures. Bringing to life scenes of melancholy surrounding the female figure, while examining topics of mental health, the female gaze and personal experience. Alia explores what it is to be her and takes you along, through her works of art. Her most recent bodies of work include ceramics, while experimenting with the many techniques within the craft such as firing and glazing. Creating pieces that are interactive in a living space.

Born in the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Cheyenne Gold is a multi disciplinary artist and creative visionary. She is no stranger to the stage, as a dance artist with over 15 years of experience. In her career as an independent dance teacher/choreographer in the Greater Toronto Area, she has instructed youth of all ages, and some also know Cheyenne through the world of public speaking and Spoken Word.

Desiree is an award-winning poet who has touched many stages sharing her truth. As a director of the Toronto BAM! Youth Slam and the 2019 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word National Champion with Up from the Roots, she’s looking for growth by way of the stage. She has represented Toronto Poetry Slam at the 2020 Women of the World Poetry Slam in Dallas, Texas placing in the top 40 of 100 poets and was ranked among the top three poets in Canada at the 2020 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam. Her poetry has also been featured as part of CBC’s Poetic License series and The Bentway’s ‘Safe in Public Spaces’ campaign. In addition to her performance experience, she helps facilitate a range of community programming for organizations like Unity Charity, JAYU, Poetry in Voice and is currently part of VIBE Arts NExT mentorship cohort. She is the recipient of the JAYU’s iAM Arts for Human Rights Award, and the RBC Future Launch Scholarship.

Dominic Justina is a Creative and Health Advocate who recently earned her degree in Health Sciences, Biology and Psychology from The University of Toronto. As the daughter of a reggae artiste, she grew up in a household filled with music when her parents enrolled her in dance at age three. Dominic also took several visual art classes which ignited her passion for painting abstract pieces. She enjoyed working on a universe-themed mural that was featured at the ARTSIDEOUT Festival in Scarborough. Her passion for the arts goes hand in hand with her interest in mental health and well- being. She lead a ‘Black Mental Health Matters’ campaign and is the creator of “Life on Hifi”- a new podcast featuring her journey to self mastery and the creators she meets along the way. Though the artistic mediums may vary, Dominic’s creations all stem from one intent- to uplift herself and others.

Gloria Sze-Ming O’koye (aka. G.L. Glowz) was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. Gloria realized her passion for music and love for creative writing at a very young age. A talented song writer for the and 13 years, and dedicated short story writer for 14 years. Her writing reflects on her personal experience and the lives of people surrounding her. Also passionate about building relationships with different communities, she has been an active member in community engagements across the GTA since 2010.

Joaquín, is a Colombian born visual artist who has always allowed his creativity to take him to different mediums, scales and explorations but has always been drawn to a more graphic and illustrative language to communicate this expression. Alongside practicing his illustration and art, Joaquín knows firsthand the positive and powerful impacts that come with access to expression, resources and good mentors. He strives to provide accessibility to others who are in need of that same nourishment.

Karyin Qiu is a first generation Hakka Chinese Canadian artist born in the northern city of Whitehorse, Yukon. Breaking was her first love and introduction into Hip-Hop culture, where she later expanded her practice into different Street Dance and classical forms to develop her versatility as a freestyle dancer. Upon moving to Toronto, she became immersed in the dance scene through engaging in community events, participating in numerous training programs, performing on various stages, film and television, and dance competitions across the GTA. She is extremely grateful for the opportunities she’s had, and strives to make an impact by upholding authenticity in all aspects of her self-expression. Her goal as a VIBE Arts emerging artist and arts facilitator is to foster spaces for people to realize their greatest potential and co-create a better reality with one another.

Maneesa is a multidisciplinary creative on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Wendat peoples, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. As a gender non-conforming, queer, child of refugees, their work reflects ancestral history, trauma and healing as it pertains to home and belonging. Maneesa holds a Bachelors in Communications, Art and Technology, minor in Sociology and Certificate of Social Justice from Simon Fraser. They have been volunteering for organizations, delivering speeches, facilitating workshops, organizing fundraisers and events for over a decade. They have published and performed poetry, screened a short film, exhibited soundscapes and displayed their art in print as well as in Vancouver, Toronto, Minnesota and many digital platforms. Maneesa values resource sharing, creative expression and mindful experiences such as, hiking, painting, kneading dough, and lying on flat surfaces or critically consuming cultural commodities.

Nailah is constantly searching for further learning opportunities to strengthen her skills as a teacher, performer, and choreographer. Her artistry utilises interdisciplinary collaborations, sophisticated athleticism, and transitional performance and imagery, and her movement quality is inspired and influenced by the extremes that the human body can experience and is conducted by nuances of musicality.  She most recently participated in the VIM VIGOR Winter Intensive and is looking forward to beginning her second degree at Sheridan College in January.

Natalie “Rare” Chattargoon better known as Rare, is a multifaceted Toronto born & raised creative. Her craft involves spoken word poetry, photography, film and an educational background in Social Service Worker. She grew up facing many barriers and challenges throughout her journey that motivated her to strive for a better life. Her work explores social issues through her art forms. Educating others on social issues, spreading love through art and helping others grow. She hopes to engage people through the mind, body and soul. Rare takes pride in her community development work and empowers young leaders to go for their dreams. She has worked in many marginalized communities to try to break the stigmas surrounding social issues. She loves what she does and is very passionate. Rare is truly one of a kind, so divine and hard to find.

Nicholas Ridiculous is a multidisciplinary artist who loves organic creation; raw, flawed, and original. After a lot of his own life experiences with things like the child welfare system, he wants to use his passions to express those experiences and to help others who may have similar ones. With a foundation of creative writing, visual arts, and fresh off a four-year college stint for fashion arts and design, Nicholas hopes to keep building his skills to tell many stories across all mediums of art. He is a nostalgia junky drawing inspiration from his life and the things he loves, in hopes to process and better understand this ridiculous world.

Prince Amoako is a spoken word artist from Toronto. He uses his art form as a way of therapy through creative expression. This platform has become a way for Prince to shed light on current social justice issues around the world and his own community. His work has been featured on platforms such as CBC Arts: Poetic License Series III, Toronto Black Film Festival, and 416RISE. He has also represented Toronto on the Toronto Poetry Slam team and has won many competitions. Prince has also been a part of a program called Speakers University which focused on developing public speaking techniques which was featured on CBC. Prince has gone on to curate poetry workshops for Humber College students as a way to help them destress and share their experiences as post-secondary students. As an artist Prince pushes himself to be uncomfortable by sharing the most vulnerable pieces of his life and making himself uncomfortable on stage to show the audience they are not alone in their experiences. He is determined to give back to his community through creative expression.

Serene is a self-taught acrylic painter for Serene Illustrations, specializing in surreal fantasy worlds. Her style of painting tends to involve whimsical tones in a fairy tale dreamscape. She enjoys focusing her subject on escape; exploring a different life, remembering a childhood past or taking a break from a difficult reality. She is also the founder of Serene Creates, an online business venture where she transforms art into functional home goods – whether it be trays, coasters, keychains, or more, everything is designed with an artistic flair.

Shaniece Phillips is a dancer, choreographer and creator from Rexdale.  Her dance dreams began watching her older sister teach hip hop classes, studying music videos on 106 & Park and watching You Got Served 10,000 times.  Hip hop and dancehall are her two loves. She is inspired by the Jamaican culture she was brought up in. As she teaches, she hopes to instill the fact that dance is a full comprehensive culture of people, places, and history. She wants to instill that dance is a living and breathing thing that exists outside of the studio. It was not born in pristine studios with glass mirrors. The pioneers of these dances often didn’t have access to these spaces. They were often born out of struggle, rebellion, celebration and the fight to be seen and take up space. She has experience working within her own community in camps and afterschool programming. She is currently on faculty of the Youth program at City Dance Corps Studio in Toronto.  Shaniece graduated from the University of Guelph-Humber in 2016 with a Bachelors’ degree in Psychology. She now studies at the Create Institute in Toronto, training to become an Expressive Arts Therapist, where she learns to use not just dance, but all modalities of art to access healing. While still pursuing her dance dreams hopes to inspire those from her community to find the power of dance.

Siddharth Khaire also known as Graffi sid, was born in Baroda, India in 1992 and now resides in Toronto, Canada. Sid came to Canada in 2016 as an International student to learn Project Management. As it was one of the key course to learn for a Mural artist and a Street artist. Sid is a self-educated visual artist who stimulates his creativity based on the day-to-day activity. As a child he was always to be found with a sketchbook and pencil in hand, so the choice of cartoon creators and funky design always been seen in his artwork, as he grew up as a teenager, he was exposed to Hip-hop Culture, though it was just arrived in India. He was fascinated by graffiti and street art. Sid was once a fan of only black and white, he now paints with explosions of colors. He predominantly approaches his artwork utilizing a street art perspective with an underpinning of re-contextualization through mixed media materials and his creativity, Freehand aerosol and traditional brush techniques are evident with Sid’s works, primarily incorporating mixed media such as acrylics, aerosol, inks, markers and stencils, among other things. He is always known for his detail work and creative concepts. He is an artist who always believe in learning and does not believe that he has finished becoming a “grown up”.

SRE is multidisciplinary artist who is passionate to create things from scratch. He believes that having a blank canvas in any artistic direction can bring out the best in any person. Due to the environment that SRE has been around, he believes that everyone has a voice/skill that has not been tapped into to the fullest and strives to be the push that an artist would need to push boundaries.

Tristan Sauer a New Media Artist working in the mediums of physical computing, wearables and installation work. Sauer’s practice involves disciples in design, fabrication, curation and community outreach. His work addresses various facets of social norms and issues in a poetic manner. Challenging viewers preconceived ideas surrounding challenging topics. Sauer hopes to continuously engage with changing narratives in his work while inspiring new faces and voices within the art world. He graduated with honours from the New Media program at Ryerson University with a specialization in computational and narrative media.