(she/her) is an artist-illustrator, researcher, and cultural administrator – she holds a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) from the University of Windsor (2018) and is recipient of the Conundrum Press Mini-Comic Bursary for Black and Indigenous Creators (2021). Residencies include: New Zealand Pacific Studio (2016), ArtsPond (2020-2021), and Pelee Quarry – Stone & Sky Artists Residency (2020 - 2021).

Bujold-Abu has spoken and exhibited at the Intersections | Cross Sections Conference in Toronto, ON (2018) on the conceptual hybridity of black bodies, and participated in the Structures of Anticipation Research Symposium and Exhibition in Windsor, ON (2019). Recent panels/presentations include: Reclaiming Hidden Histories: Researching, Writing, and Re-Imagining Community Narratives with Arts Council Windsor & Region (2019), the Black Creators Series/Discussion with the Art Gallery or Windsor (2020), and Growing Creative Careers with Work In Culture Windsor, ON (2021).

(she/her) has been honing her skills as a digital artist for the past several years. Originally a chalk pastel portraitist specializing in urban expressionism, Kiki blended her love of art, technology, and social change to bring about the perfect marriage of her passions. An alumna of the University of Windsor with degrees in Education and French, Kiki is self-taught in digital art and embraces a pedagogy of online teaching that is shared by a growing community of Millennial-era artists. Her medium includes both digital work and photographic prints which she encourages her audience to share in windows, neighbourhoods, on placards, and in the hands of friends and family in a movement to “lift up” the voices of her beloved community.

Kiki’s digital art depicts the everyday life of Black communities. Visually capturing cultural themes of family, history, education, as well as racism and social inequality, Kiki’s art has a global audience with recent exhibits in New York City, a feature on HGTV’s Urban Oasis and commissions in France, Spain, Australia as well as the United States and Canada. Her illustration of subjects navigating everyday environments allows Kiki to expand the boundaries of traditional depictions of Black people in art and the open faces of her subjects are a signature feature of her work that allows viewers to step into the portrait and realize their right to expression. Kiki creates her art to emphasize the beauty and strength in the relationships and actions that make up everyday life for the Black community.

(he/him), otherwise known as his ancestral totem Zomkhonto, comes from a defiant bloodline of praise singers whose beauty expands beyond love for Afrikan black history, to beyond the collective Afrikan experience in the grander black performance of our reality. His interest in Emancipating The Space is inspired by a desire to illuminate conversations that slowly begin to change perceptions on the who, what, when, why and how of the black condition. That journey is only beautiful through incremental efforts at detaching from the hurt, and encouraging the celebration of lives that without our active engagement remain lost to the children we are raising. Mbonisi Zikhali, a poet from Zimbabwe but equally a child of the entire black experience and graceful defiance, is hence as much of a child of the underground railroad as any one of us seeking to illuminate the beauty in what was formally seen as ugly, and in the process show the kinks in our hair as the strength in our bones. To Mbonisi Zikhali, henceforth known as Zomkhonto (them of the spear) the goal spills over beyond just this exhibition. It is a commitment to praise the warrior in us, breastfeed the joy in our individual black households, but most importantly wipe the tear and mistrust of the world that clouds the world of our young children. Join us in amplifying that new religion of self confidence and collective love.

(he/him) is an Afro-Indigenous descendent of Underground Railroad travelers who unsettled upon the stolen lands of so-called Canada. Throughout his creative career he has been identified as an artist, activist, educator, administrator, historian, and storyteller. He considers himself to be a single string, weaved into a complex quilt, draped over the expanding cosmos. When he’s not spinning esoteric nonsense, he’s pretending to be the Executive Director of Artcite Inc., a non-profit artist run centre in Waawiiyaatanong.