Digital Lab Residencies

How we do the work we do has been changing constantly – every year there are 6 new ways to do our jobs, making skills upgrading more essential than ever.
This spring we welcome 10 arts workers into our studio to support each other’s capabilities with a variety of new digital tools. Building digital proficiencies in stage management to sound, set, video and lighting design, these are our residents:

Alejandra Higuera is a multidisciplinary, visual storyteller focusing on creating poetic visuals through different mediums: illustration, animation, embroidery, and projection. Her work focuses on themes of migration, feminism, memory, grief, ritual and being a solo parent by centering the intricate stories of immigrant, queer, and BIPOC resilience, exploring how healing leads us to re-imaging ourselves. As a Latinx artist, Alejandra supports our ever-changing identities, resisting homogenization through a decolonizing lens.
Alejandra spends a lot of her time being curious: making up songs and languages, learning about plants, drawing, and being creative with her six-year-old kiddo.

Avideh Saadatpajouh is a multimedia designer and activist who explores the endless possibilities of techno-art. Born in the west side of Asia, lives in the East side of Canada. She is a citizen of nature. Her motto: Explore, Experience, Enhance.  Her explorations are at the intersection of performance art and technology, focusing on the impact of the Human-Centric worldview. Drawing on her collective knowledge of new multimedia, architecture, industrial design, she explores design in digital spaces, internet art practices, performance art and interactive installations. She works internationally and has had shows and exhibitions in Canada, USA, Iran and Turkey. She is a recipient of the best stage design award for the kid’s puppet festival in Iran in 2020 as well as mentorship and assistantship from Associate Designers of Canada in 2022 and 2023.

Diana Lopez Soto is an award-winning multidisciplinary Mexican/Canadian artist, mother and land caretaker. She has presented her work nationally and internationally. She has produced site-specific performances, vertical dance, art installations and experimental films for 15 years. Her interest inspires her work in sustainability as a process and the responsibility of art practices. Diana’s love for material, physics and space also inspired her to design rigging structures, installations and sculptural sets that come to life through her movement explorations. The Land has always shaped and informed her process, from her grandmother to her mother and herself. She is a founding member of Norma and a core member of Vanguardia Dance Projects.

pothound (Jay-Marie Philips) is a Trinidadian-Canadian musician, producer, and artist exploring identity, solitude, and cultures. Her debut album, Video Garden, draws on visual themes of neon noir, solarpunk, and urban jungles. As a queer, trans, Trinidadian-raised artist in Toronto, she co-founded Cooler Fete and Queer Skate Toronto. Jay collaborated with MOCA, Pride Toronto, and stackt markt to create No Skateboarding, and completed her Artist in Residence at MOCA with Restorative-Transformation. She received the Queer Emerging Artist award and Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Grant.

Jessica Esmeralda Zepeda is a settler in Canada (Treaty 13) with a diaspora from postcolonial El Salvador (Kuskatan). Devised theatre is their specialty, and they have performed in the dance film piece Siwat Piedra, choreographed by Irma Villafuerte. In 2022, Jessica starred in the short film Saturday Fuego Diablo, a #Salvi disco drama set in 1981 Montreal (Official selection: Sivar en Cortos 2022, The 30th San Diego Latino Film Festival 2023, and The Houston Latino Film Festival 2023) Stage Manager credits include: Otros Rostros – Uxbridge Studio Tour 2021, TAOS The Art Of Storytelling – Presented by Why Not Theatre’s Riser Toronto 2022.

Kristine White is a multidisciplinary artist who works in theatre as a designer, puppeteer, and occasional performer. She has worked with several local theatre companies (Volcano Theatre, Common Boots, Clay and Paper Theatre, Shadowland Theatre) as well as international collaborators to create immersive visuals, set pieces, costumes, and projection art. Additionally, Kristine has collaborated with musicians, dancers, and other artists to create installations and immersive environments. She often works with light, shadow, projection, and puppetry.

Lorena Torres Loaiza was born in Bogota, Colombia, and grew up in Canada. She works in comics, illustration, theatre design, and fiction, sometimes crossing artistic disciplines within a single project. Her work often has a quirky visual style and speculative elements. Within fiction, she’s interested in flawed characters solving problems, hope as an active process, fantasy as a tool to brainstorm real world solutions, and narrative as a secular way of building community and a sense of belonging. She is currently experimenting with VR. She can be found @lorenatorresloaiza on Instagram or at lorenatorresloaiza.com.

Renato Baldin is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist, curator, and LGBTQIA activist from Brazil. His work focuses on immersive art installations, which have been influenced by his background in Architecture, Museology, and Queer Culture.
The artistic themes of his work have also been inspired by Anthropology, Psychology, and Philosophical theories and how it converges in art installations. When beginning a project, Renato incorporates theoretical concepts into visual statements, as tridimensional and experiential artwork which invites audiences to reflect together.

Rica Gudiño (he/she/they), is a queer and autistic creator and spirit worker with Mexican roots based in so-called Toronto. Rica has inherited creative practices and honours all of his ancestral traditions through the ritual of performance and storytelling. Sancta Maria, their performance alter ego, is the embodiment of this process, with a focus on finding divinity in technology. Originally working with found materials and paints to collage, now Rica creates digital collage and has integrated robotics to make cybersacred installations. Rica is a hereditary bruja and currently works as a metaphysician. Rica has a BFA in Graphic Design from OCADU.

Rihkee Strapp entered the world from a sea of blood, fully grown wearing a gold set of armour. They are an Ayakwew Red River Metis multi-disciplinary artist raised in Northern Ontario by nohkum’s dial-up internet and its dark vistas. Rihkee is an alumni of the Studio [Y] systems leadership fellowship at the MaRS Discovery District. Their highly collaborative work re-appropriates pop-culture, myth and nostalgia, playing with concepts of time and technology often using humour and character to animate their ideas.