Bareket Kezwer is a Tkarón:to/Toronto-based muralist, community-engaged artist, facilitator, curator, cultural producer, creative director, graphic designer, poet, collage enthusiast, mentor, frequent collaborator, and eternal optimist.
Her multidisciplinary practice is motivated by a desire to playfully celebrate the power of kindness and compassion and cultivate gratitude. They use bright colours, joyful patterns, and bold typography to captivate people’s attention and invite them into a deeper sense of belonging or delight and are passionate about creating art that promotes radical self-love and acceptance.
Bareket has created custom large-scale artworks for clients including The New Yorker, Tourism Canada, the City of Toronto, Union Station, Luminato Festival, Gallery Stratford, Airbnb, The Bentway, the City of Mississauga, the City of Brampton, the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Toronto, Stackt Market, 401 Richmond, and private clients. She has also partnered with local organizations and institutions including Arts Etobicoke, Baycrest Health Sciences, East End Arts, Lakeshore Arts, Mural Routes, STEPS Public Art, StreetARToronto, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the Toronto Public Library, and others, to facilitate community-engaged public art projects.
Their artwork has been featured in numerous publications including The New Yorker, The Globe and Mail, CBC Arts, and Toronto Life.
Gerda Boateng is a Ghanaian Canadian, multi-disciplinary creative. Her work showcases unconventional standards of beauty and shows women of color they are art too. Since graduating from OCAD University with a Bachelor of Design, Gerda has merged her design degree and illustration skills to start her own art brand. It has become her mission to move the conversation of representation for women of colour, minorities, disabled, and Indigenous women forward by designing creative concepts that illustrate the idea of beauty as more than skin deep. Gerda hopes to motivate people to look at themselves as art and inspire them to truly love themselves from the inside out. She hopes to give back in a meaningful way by uplifting others and contributing to a more inclusive art space.
Nicole Kozak is a Brampton-born artist whose interest relates mostly to self-identity, community, and life (in terms of grief and turmoil). Being an LGBT+ artist, much of her art relates to causes circling gender identity and battling external interests in one's plight for their identity. She has been experimenting with involving the community in her work, using her practice in Anthropology to incorporate interviews, participant observations, and diligent expressions of culture. She trained formally at St. Thomas Aquinas and under the late Liv Babra and through these early experiences has built a foundation for her art. She has since expanded her practice across the GTA, with recent collections in Scarborough due to attending school there to complete her degree at UofT.
Sabbie Narwal is a self-taught illustrator and stationary designer specializing in traditional and digital illustration, and multi-media art. Her work is known for its warm, whimsical, and inviting nature, as she aims to uplift and comfort people through her art. Sabbie's works tend to depict the gentle joy of everyday moments, often incorporating food, nature, and her South Asian heritage into her designs. Her public art projects delve deeper into the vast stories found within local communities, with the hope of illuminating important issues whilst celebrating the power that resides within the collective group. Sabbie currently lives and works in Brampton, where she does freelance illustration, and public art commissions and runs her art goods brand, The Paper Narwhal.
