Emerging BIPOC Arts Leaders Lab (September 2024)

Angel is a Taiwanese Vancouver artist who enjoys puns, food, dancing, and connecting with creatives.

Chimgee Mendee is a community-driven creative from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples (Vancouver, BC). She enjoys drawing, poetry, and graphic design and hopes to keep growing in these mediums and more.
As a continuous love letter to the communities in this city that make it feel less cold and distant and much warmer, kinder, sexcier, and softer, she created and curates @hotmothertruckers, a “Vancouver” events page where QTBIPoC events are prioritized.
Through community work and event planning, she hopes to create and build experiences where those of us who have been actively pushed to the margins in broader society are boldly celebrated, are in the forefront, and can nurture their craft and community.

Deepali Raiththa (she/her)
I am a multidisciplinary artist, attended Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai, India, and did Post-Baccalaureate in Visual Art at San Francisco Art Institute, California. 2021, Graduated with MFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Iris Danae is an interdisciplinary artist from Vancouver, Canada, specialising in the film arts. She has recently written and produced a short film titled Chance, currently in the post-production stages, and is co-writing another film soon to enter production. Passionate about technology and the arts, Iris aims to use the two to create innovative, empathetic stories that highlight real issues.

Jessamine Liu (柳垂萱, she/her) is a queer woman of colour and diasporic writer, artist, and facilitator with roots in Taiwan, the Philippines, and China. She currently resides on the stolen lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, colonially known as Vancouver, BC.
Jessamine currently co-facilitates a QTBIPOC collaborative call-and-response art project with Phebe Ferrer, titled from our roots to yours. Our first theme revolved around relationships with land and featured 12 artists. Stay tuned for our second theme!
Jessamine is also an MA Counselling student and hopes to work as a counsellor and continue her art and facilitation practices. As a QTBIPOC artist drawn to working with and in community or collective spaces, she also hopes to be able to foster and create spaces for dreaming, resource sharing, connecting, and community-building for QTBIPOC artists.

Kira Saragih (she/her) is an artist based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (Vancouver, BC). Drawing inspiration from her hometown, Jakarta, Indonesia, she makes crocheted tapestries about common everyday objects and spaces speaking on their essentiality and how these elements contribute to community-making in underappreciated ways.
Alongside her textile practice, she also founded ANTS/ASS (Artist Nurturing Thoughts and Skills/Alternative Support System) a multidisciplinary, emerging & student artist collective focused on group assembly that promotes long-term care and friendships. Her work has been shown in Audain Gallery (Vancouver), Liquidation World (Vancouver) and Taman Ismail Marzuki (Jakarta). Kira holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University.

Ky is a stand-up comedian of mixed taiwanese and canadian descent who’s work is a proud celebration of transness in all it’s forms. She host’s her own monthly open-mic queer/trans Standup show, and is dedicated to creating space for queer and trans people to share joy in community. She is also the Vice Chair of the Board at QMUNITY, a local queer nonprofit here at BC.

Muhan Zhang (she/her) is a quadruple Gemini and eldest daughter of Chinese immigrants. She moved to the unceded and stolen territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ peoples at age four.
As a career arts administrator, Muhan believes strongly in the administrator’s power to advocate and propel change from within cultural institutions. In her current role as Marketing & Communications Manager at Out On Screen, Muhan amplifies the stories of 2SLGBTQIA+ peoples through the annual Vancouver Queer Film Festival and Out In Schools program.
She has previously worked at Sector Equity for Anti-Racism in the Arts (SEARA), the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, Rubin Museum of Art, Access Gallery, and Richmond Art Gallery. Muhan studied Art History and East Asian Studies at McGill University, and received a Master of Arts in Visual Arts Administration from New York University. She has a sporadic and eclectic creative practice, mainly as a writer and singer-songwriter.

Sakshi is a cultural producer and arts organizer who is deeply passionate about transformative space making, vulnerability and feeling as resistance, and the power of stories to bridge, mobilize, and heal.
She graduated from Simon Fraser University with a BA in English and Communications. Since graduating, Sakshi has produced events ranging from visual art installations, performing arts events, book launches, concerts, symposiums, art parties and more. She is currently the producer at Indian Summer Festival where she aims to create spaces that invite people into embodied collective experiences and evoke belonging, vulnerability, and community connections.
Born and raised in Delhi, she is now based on the occupied territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaɬ Nations. As a South Asian queer immigrant and settler, she is working on accepting the complexities and contradictions of her identity, that love, nostalgia, and joy can coexist with conflict, dissonance, and pain.

Hello, my name is Sarah-Audrey and I’m an African American, multidisciplinary artist raised in California to 2 Camerounais/ Cameroonian parents. My first passion has always been writing and poetry in both French and English. My writing mostly focuses on my ancestry, identity, love, shadow work and theology. My other art medium of choice is fashion and styling for local artist’s music videos and projects in Vancouver. For more insight on my work within the community, look to: @Steezy.filez (on Instagram).

Sophia Santos English (she/they) is a filmmaker, writer, arts & cultural administrator based in ‘Vancouver, BC’ working on the traditional unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Sophia holds a BFA with distinction in Film Production from Simon Fraser University and is currently working at Gallery Gachet as a curatorial assistant. Sophia’s film work begins as an investigation into her Filipino heritage, dissonant archives and community memory. She questions how we can call upon the magic of the moving image to uncover the visible/invisible in the daily diasporic ecosystems.
Sophia is dedicated to cinema because of its emergent capacity for unraveling past narratives and generating new worlds. Her writing practice begins as an extension of her research, into imagining alternative futures that are activated in community processes of creation.