Visual Arts / Media Arts Committee

Sean Lee, Chair, is an artist and curator exploring the assertion of disability art as the last avant-garde. His methodology explores crip curatorial practices as a means to resist traditional aesthetic idealities. Orienting towards a “crip horizon”, Sean’s practice explores the transformative possibilities of accessibility as an embodied politic and disability community building as a way to desire the ways disability can disrupt. Sean holds a B.A. in Arts Management and Studio from the University of Toronto, Scarborough and is currently the Director of Programming at Tangled Art + Disability. Previous to this role, he was Tangled’s inaugural Curator in Residence (2016) as well as Tangled’s Gallery Manager (2017). Sean has been integral to countless exhibitions and public engagements throughout his tenure at Tangled Art + Disability.  In addition to his position at Tangled Art + Disability, Sean is an independent lecturer, speaker, and writer adding his insights and perspectives to conversations surrounding Disability Arts across Canada, the United States and internationally. Sean currently sits on the board of CARFAC Ontario, Creative Users Projects, and is a member of the Ontario Art Council’s Deaf and Disability Advisory Group and Toronto Art Council’s Visual Arts / Media Arts Committee.

Julia Paoli is a curator based in Toronto where she is currently Director & Curator at Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art. She provides leadership for the centre's mandate to support the production of new and experimental work, assisting artists to realize pivotal projects. Prior to joining Mercer Union in 2017, Paoli held the position of Associate Curator at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and has contributed programming to organizations including Feminist Art Gallery, Gallery TPW, Pleasure Dome, Trinity Square Video and Vtape. Paoli has organized key solo exhibitions and commissioned new work with artists that include Bambitchell, Nadia Belerique, Bik Van der Pol, Julia Dault, Beatrice Gibson, Leslie Hewitt, Lili Huston-Herterich, Onyeka Igwe, Laurie Kang, Anne Low, Sophia Al Maria, Emily Mast, Native Art Department International, Mike Nelson, Bahar Noorizadeh, Laure Prouvost & Jonas Staal, Jimmy Robert, Jennifer Rose Sciarrino and Evan Calder Williams. She is the editor of Draw the Line, a critical reader on the work of Jimmy Robert published by The Power Plant as part of its series Power Plant Pages. In 2011 Julia received her MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.

Jenifer Papararo is currently the Director/Curator at the Art Gallery of York University, where she is overseeing the building of a new multi-site art gallery. She was the Executive Director of Plug Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (2014 – 2019); the Curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2004 – 2014); and the Program Director at Mercer Union, Toronto (2001-2004). She initiated STAGES biennial in 2017 a temporary public art exhibition of sculpture and performance in Winnipeg, and recently curating the 2019 iteration, including new commissions by Raymond Boisjoly, Daniel Buren, FASTWÜRMS, Kenneth Lavallee, Joar Nango, Andrea Roberts and Silke Otto-Knapp. She has presented solo exhibitions with Skeena Reece, DIS.art, Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa, Nairy Baghramian, Stan Douglas, Mike Nelson, and is currently working with Hannah Black to present The Meaning of Life at the AGYU.  She has written numerous curatorial texts and edited various exhibition related books: including My Best Thing by Frances Stark and the exhibition catalogue Enter the Landscape, and Days of Reading.  Papararo is a founding member of the artist and curatorial collective Instant Coffee, whose work has been exhibited at One +J in Seoul, South Korea;  Vancouver Art Gallery; the Toronto Sculpture Garden; the Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco; Subvision, Hamburg; Encuentro Internacional, Medellín; Sparwasser HQ, Berlin; the Americas Society, New York; and the 2nd Tirana International Biennial, Albania and are represented by MKG 127, Toronto. She is currently working with the City of Toronto and Workshop on a public art program for the George Street Revitalization Project. She joins the Visual/Media Arts Committee at the Toronto Arts Council in 2022 and is on the Board of Directors of Mammalian Diving Reflex, and Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology. 

Camille Georgeson-Usher is a Coast Salish / Sahtu Dene / Scottish scholar, artist, and arts administrator from Galiano Island, British Columbia, unceded territories of the Penelakut, Lamalcha, and Hwlitsum First Nations, as well as the ceded traditional territories of Tsawwassen First Nation. She is a PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies department at Queen’s University where she is writing on the many ways in which peoples move together in urban space, relationalities and intimacies with the everyday, and acts of mark making through the example of public art practices as types of gathering from an Indigenous perspective. She is the Executive Director of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective and serves as a board member for the Toronto Biennial of Art, Artspace in Peterborough, and the Galiano Island Literary Festival; OCADU Indigenous Education Council Member; City of Kingston’s Public Art Working Group Committee Member; and Member of Queen’s University Research Creation Committee.

Deanna Wong is an arts administrator who spent many years volunteering and working in the not-for-profit cultural arts sector in  her hometown of Winnipeg prior to moving to Toronto in 1996. She has sat on the boards of Dreamwalker Dance Company and the Regent Park Film Festival and has participated in various film and arts council juries over the years and was a Toronto Arts Council's Leaders Lab fellow in 2019. She was the administrative director at REEL CANADA from 2011 to 2019, and previously served as Reel Asian’s executive director from 2005 to 2008.