TroubleMaker Biographies
Peter Morin
Peter Morin is grandchild of Trouble Makers. Tahltan citizen. Crow Clan Member. French-Canadian. Performance Artist. Curator. Writer. Scholar. Cross-Ancestral Collaborator. Educator. Bannock Maker. Beadwork Artist. Karaoke Artist. Caregiver. Dreamer. Drum Maker. Morin is most proud of his designations as Failed Poet and Failed Stand-up Comedian. Morin is an award winning Artist. Throughout his twenty-year career making trouble, Morin follows the teachings/practice(s) of his mother Janell who fought for people and built/contributed towards building braver spaces. Morin is a member of teaching community at the Interdisciplinary Masters in Art Media and Design, and is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Art at OCADU. Morin is the holder of 3 failed Guinness World Record attempts: World’s Largest Bannock, World’s Largest Gluten-Free Bannock, and World’s Largest Button Blanket.
Jay Irizawa
Jay Irizawa is a 3rd generation Japanese Canadian interdisciplinary artist, designer and researcher exploring relations in ancestral knowledges. He is the Graduate Program Director for the Interdisciplinary Art Media and Design master’s program (IAMD) at OCAD University; also known as a TroubleMaker. Jay is troubling the ways we come to know the world by inviting speculative, futurist, critical, anti-oppressive, and anti-racist methods of art and design knowledge to raise ethical questions at the forefront of creative processes, both in theory and in the materiality of collaborative making.
Nova Bhattacharya
Nova Bhattacharya is an award-winning, barrier-breaking, artist and cultural leader based in Tkaronto. Her inspiration is found in identities, hybridities and diversities, manifesting creations that resonate with technical virtuosity and lush, vivid imagery. She’s always been a rebel reinterpreting traditions and reinventing rituals. In 2008, she founded Nova Dance, embedding the principle that building for the margins ensures inclusion for everyone. The Company offers a space for vital conversations and serves community with care, compassion and kindness. Nova’s recent choreography Svāhā! features a cast of 22 performers proficient in more than 29 dance forms currently practiced on Turtle Island. The epic work embodies her vision of a diversiform company where the perceived boundaries of culture and technique are dissolved and bodies from the margins are centered. Nova believes that dance expresses the essence of our humanity.
James Miller
James Miller is a Kanaka ‘Ōiwi scholar, architect, and urbanist, James runs a design lab, ’Ike Honua, centering Indigenous knowledge in building resilient communities through architectural and planning frameworks. Miller’s research investigates the role of Indigenous Design Knowledge in the creation of culturally supportive environments.
Catherine Blackburn
Catherine Blackburn was born in Patuanak Saskatchewan and is a member of the English River First Nation (Denesytiné). She is a multidisciplinary artist and jeweller, whose narrative work often addresses Canada’s settler-colonialism. Her work grounds itself in the Indigenous feminine and is bound through the ancestral love that stitching suggests. Through stitchwork, she explores Indigenous sovereignty, decolonization and representation. Her work has exhibited in notable national and international exhibitions including: Radical Stitch, Abadakone, Santa Fe Haute Couture Fashion Show and Toronto Indigenous Fashion Week. She has received numerous awards for her work including the Sobey Art Award longlist (2019/2023), a Forge Residency Fellowship (2022), and an Eiteljorg Fellowship (2021).
Ge Lu
Ge Lu is a Chinese-born filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto. With a background in film production—from cinematography and editing to international distribution—his practice spans both commercial and experimental media. His current research explores the philosophical implications of technology: how it shapes human desire, disciplines behavior, and restructures perception. Through a research-creation approach, Ge Lu investigates new ways to innovate and push the boundaries of storytelling.
Jean Mathew
Jean is a Toronto-based creative, writer, and painter. Their work introspectively documents the day-to-day through sketches of the seemingly trivial and mundane. In past work, Jean’s art explored themes of domestic violence, justice, racial and gender identity, safety, and community. Jean has a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English Literature from Simon Fraser University and Toronto Metropolitan University respectively.
Inéz Petrazzini
Inéz Petrazzini is a transdisciplinary artist of Jamaican and Argentine descent. Her work confronts systemic injustices such as colonialism, mysoginoir, capitalism, and White supremacy. She is completing an MFA thesis exploring the manifestation of love and rage in othered bodies as emancipatory tools against such injustices.