MEET THE
ARTISTS
DARIA KHOSRAVI
Daria Khosravi (b.1997) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Ontario. Her current practice focuses on ceramics exploring both the expressive properties and inherent limitations of clay as a material.
Emilya Guerrero Antillon
Emilya Guerrero Antillon’s practice is an ongoing inquiry into “spirit memory” an exploration of the space between waking life and the unseen realms accessed through sleep, ancestry, and intuition. Through painting and collage, Emilya visualizes the movement of the spirit beyond the limits of the human vessel, proposing that the self exists across multiple planes of being.
EUGENE WOO
Eugene Woo, known professionally as Grandmasboy, is an illustrator, tattoo apprentice, and writer whose work explores the stories and formative experiences that shape people’s lives. His moniker stems from a childhood moment when, asked which parent he resembled most, he pointed to his grandmother—an early nod to his independent spirit. For Eugene, drawing and writing are both tools and lifelines for processing the world, blending his love of internet rabbit holes, art, and cultural history into cohesive, resonant visuals and prose that seek nuance, clarity, and context.
MINERVA NAVASCA
Minerva Navasca is a Filipina-Canadian filmmaker exploring narratives of cultural dysphoria and girlhood with intimate specificity. Stating, “I want to make films about subjects that make me uncomfortable,” Minerva delves into perspectives steeped in anxiety and internalized shame, using the medium to interrogate the socio-political roots of these beliefs. She is a 2022 & 2024 TIFF Next Wave Alumni, and the winner of the 2024 BFI Future Film Festival Best Documentary Award. She collaborated with NBC Universal and Canada Walk of Fame as part of the Future Storytellers Program.
NANCY CORREIA
Nancy Correia is a Tkaronto-based artist working in illustration, drawing, painting, and ceramics to explore narratives within the Marathi diaspora and concepts of identity such as intersectional senses of self that surge through broader, globalized contexts. Her practice began as a child loving bright colours and nature; she now explores thresholds, simultaneous truths, and childhood nostalgia. Examining personal and collective identity, Correia endeavours to understand and depict the complexity of labelled existence while navigating her own identity as a person of colour in the West, striving to discover how one transcends liminality to inhabit third spaces.
Niya Ahmed Abdullahi
Niya Ahmed Abdullahi is a Multidisciplinary Artist, Technologist and the founder of Habasooda, a collective dedicated to sharing the richness of the Muslim experience. Her work has been exhibited at Nuit Blanche Toronto, TIFF Next Wave, Black Film Festival Zurich, Gallery 44, Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, MENA Film Festival, Eastern Edge Gallery, amongst others. She was a 2021 Hot Docs Accelerator Fellow and currently sits on the advisory committee of the City of Toronto’s ArtworksTO program and the board of Work in Culture. Her work evokes memory, both past, present and future, in connection with diasporic experiences, and ancestral awakenings. Pillars of resistance are drawn through her divine labour of love.
PARASTOO HADDADI
Parastoo Haddadi is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of love, freedom, and the profound connection between women, nature, and wildlife. As a painter, she employs symbolic imagery to depict human emotions and societal roles, often using animals particularly the horse as a representation of feminine strength, resilience, and spirit.
Her evocative works, often drawn from imagination and layered with profound narratives, have been published in IHRAF (USA), Women Unite Art Magazine, Say It in Color Zine, and Art Hole Magazine, among others. Through her artistic practice, she continues to advocate for freedom, equality, women's rights, and environmental awareness.
Paul-Daniel Torres
Paul-Daniel Torres is a Toronto-born director, writer, actor, and community worker whose films explore the immigrant experience, identity, and community within neo-colonial systems, blending eclectic visuals and sound with storytelling that entertains and connects. His thesis film, Do Turtles Swim in Maple Syrup (2019), and follow-up short The Mis(RE)education of the Invisible yet Furious Five earned multiple awards and festival screenings, and his upcoming short, Fried Fish & Plantain (2025), stars TIFF Rising Star Emma Ferreira. Beyond filmmaking, he teaches youth guerrilla filmmaking and media literacy with Vibe Arts, is an installation artist and Canadian League of Poets member, and cares deeply for his grandmother and young nieces.
PUSHPA SAHA
Pushpa Saha is an emerging artist working as a visual storyteller in film and photography. Her work presents dynamic and diverse spaces in Toronto. Growing up in Regent Park and Scarborough ignited a need in Pushpa to represent unheard and marginalized voices. Her work focuses on themes of community, belonging, mental health and the stories of South Asian diaspora in Canada.
REZA DAHYA
Reza Dahya is known for his work as a host and producer of OTA Live on FLOW 93.5 FM in Toronto. He transitioned into filmmaking with his short films, ESHA and the crowd-funded FIVE DOLLARS, which premiered at the TIFF Kids International Film Festival, screened internationally and aired on CBC’s "Canadian Reflections". An alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre’s Directors’ Lab, Dahya completed his CFC Short Film, CHAMELEON, the independent THE WORST PART and recently completed his debut feature, BOXCUTTER, which had it’s international premiere at SXSW in 2025 and will be released in the U.S. this fall.
SERVILLE POBLETE
Filipino-Canadian filmmaker Serville Poblete lives in Toronto’s Bleecker Street neighbourhood, where he grew up with the two main participants in his new National Film Board short documentary, King’s Court, filmed in the same neighbourhood. His 2019 debut feature, Altar Boy—produced with Mark Bacolcol through New Radio Pictures—is currently streaming on Netflix. His second feature, Lovely, is releasing in 2025. Poblete’s series The Centre was selected for the 2024 TIFF Series Accelerator program and he’s now in post-production for his second short documentary, In the Morning Sun.
SYDNIE BAYNES
Sydnie Baynes is a Toronto-based animator and visual artist whose work blends traditional and digital mediums to explore Black history, ancestry, and identity through surreal and experimental animation. Her films, including African American Express and Welcome to A.N.N.A., weave personal and collective narratives that reflect on Black femininity, self-love, and heritage. Beyond her art, Sydnie is a committed advocate for representation in animation as Co-Lead of Women in Animation Montreal and Co-Founder of Black Animators Matter, earning recognition such as the Black Excellence Award in Community Engagement. Through her practice and advocacy, she creates work that empowers marginalized voices and invites audiences to reimagine identity, culture, and history.
Vishwa Patel
Vishwa Patel is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist and curator. She has a BFA (Honours) from OCAD University in Drawing & Painting. Her practice blends traditional South Asian techniques, such as miniature painting, embroidery, and textile design, with contemporary materials to explore diasporic memory, cultural continuity, and emerging ecological concerns. She works with upcycled acrylic, gouache, and thread, layering sacred geometry and textile-inspired forms to reflect the quiet labor embedded in both craft and lived experience. Rooted in slow, material-based storytelling, her work bridges Eastern visual history and contemporary life, creating space for non-linear, intergenerational narratives. Vishwa is increasingly interested in ecology and sustainability, experimenting with natural pigments, reclaimed materials, and visual language that reflects interdependence and care. Her evolving practice seeks to engage more deeply with the environmental impact of materials and processes.
