Alexis Williams, Ontario, Canada
Director of the Biophilium

 I'm a Canadian research artist interested in paradigm shifts in culture related to ecology. I have a love for biology and natural philosophy and I raise giant silk moths. I'm a long time amateur mycologist and travel the world in search of wild mushrooms, witches’ markets, muppety birds, wild things to ferment and gates to open along wildlife corridors. My work, which often highlights the kinship of Art, Science and magic is really just an invitation for you to indulge in your geekiest interests.

Catherine Euale, Canada, Mexico
Biophilium Research Leader

Catherine Euale is a textile artist, social justice and environmental activist, costume designer and storyteller. In her practice, she challenges the need to use materials and methods that are noncompatible with living systems. She believes deepening and shifting our relationships with the material can raise awareness of our forgotten relationships within more than human worlds, planting seeds for a “good Anthropocene”. Designing systems for interspecies worlds can ignite tremendous political, social, and philosophical implications that we must consider for a resilient and harmonious future.

Milena Vasquez, Calgary AB

I am a Bolivian-Canadian visual artist whose practice integrates nature exploration, botanical research, and the creation of deep connections between people and the natural world.

As the daughter of renowned botanist Roberto Vásquez, I am inspired by a lifetime spent following in my father’s footsteps as an explorer, illustrator, and photographer. Searching for orchids was my way of connecting with him while he lived separately from my family. From these journeys, I learned to see nature as a sanctuary for both biological and human connection, a place of belonging.

Through Cyanotype, I create blueprints that bring my botanical archives into dialogue with my contemporary imagery and research. Using ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) photography and digital collage, I capture the unseen energy of the plants I encounter. By blending these alternative processes, I explore the materiality of memory and the interplay of light and time. My work integrates family heirlooms with organic materials gathered from forest walks, transforming this shared history into poetic meditations on ancestry, motherhood, and fi lial love.
Orchids are the central metaphor for my work, thriving through the "wisdom of decay" and interdependence. While my father’s life’s work focused on the visible beauty of orchids, I am driven to explore the invisible fungal networks that sustain them, a hidden world his research rarely touched. By moving into BioArt, I seek to expand our family legacy and bring new scientifi c perspectives back to him. My practice now aims to integrate mycology to reveal the deep biological connections that allow these species to survive and transform.

My practice also extends into community work, where I facilitate workshops and nature exploration activities. I use art and nature as portals for refl ection, curiosity, and resilience. For me, human connectivity mirrors the invisible fungal systems that support life in the forest; just as mycelium sustains the woods, our collective well-being thrives through the same care, interdependence, and renewal.

Gideon Hermann, Edinboro PA

Gideon Hermann is a jeweler and metalsmith currently located in northwestern Pennsylvania. They are pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree at Pennsylvania Western University, Edinboro. They received their Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus in Jewelry and Metalsmithing and a Digital Fabrication and Design Certificate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in May 2021.

Their work examines post-industrial landscapes, particularly those of the Rust Belt, and the evolving relationship between industry, ecology, and time. They are drawn to places where natural processes reclaim abandoned structures: rust and rot creep in, plants emerge through concrete, and buildings slowly collapse back into the environments they once dominated. Rust is central to this work, acting as both a material and metaphor for decay, memory, and nature’s persistent reclamation.

Gideon works with mild steel, using rust as a collaborator rather than fighting against it. In their series of “Temporary” brooches, they expose steel to the elements and periodically paint them, mirroring the futile attempt to halt rust on urban infrastructure using paint. The steel continues to corrode beneath each layer, causing the paint to crack and flake. Over time, these layers form an archive of the struggle between preservation and inevitable decay. In this series, Gideon periodically documents the work to create a photographic archive of each brooch’s decay over time.

Ecology is another conceptual anchor for their work. To them, post-industrial sites hold both harm and hope. These sites bear the scars of extraction, yet plants emerge that remediate soil, water, and atmosphere. Gideon explores plants as agents of healing and interdependence, enabling us to imagine futures where human and non-human beings thrive together.

Jewelry, as a format, allows these ideas to unfold at the scale of the body. Its intimacy encourages the viewer to look closely. By miniaturizing industrial forms and elevating overlooked organisms, they create opportunities for slow observation and renewed connection. This work sits at the intersection of geometry and chance, industry and ecology, decay and regeneration. Through metalsmithing, they aim to cultivate empathy, attention, and a deeper understanding of the living systems that persist within and beyond post-industrial landscapes.

Dominica Harrison, UK

Dominica Harrison is an animation director, visual artist and educator whose practice combines experimental animation with printmaking, illustration and installation. Her work explores interspecies communication, ecological consciousness and the capacity of animation to express more-than-human perspectives. She is particularly interested in how movement, material transformation and speculative storytelling can challenge anthropocentric ways of understanding the living world.

Her ongoing collaborative project, Anima Mundi, brings together international artists to investigate relationships between humans, plants, animals and altered states of consciousness. Its first instalment, In the Garden: Giggles in the Greenery, explored entheogenic plants through a risograph publication and animated film. Her current short film, Re-Mind, draws on ethnobotany, panpsychism and alchemical thought to consider humanity’s search for spiritual meaning from the perspective of a more-than-human consciousness.

Harrison’s practice-led research combines artistic experimentation with interdisciplinary reading, collaboration and embodied encounters with environments and materials. She works across digital and analogue processes, including risograph and intaglio printmaking, allowing texture, repetition and material unpredictability to participate in the development of each work. Through the Biophilium programme, she hopes to deepen her scientific understanding of ecological systems and develop more informed approaches to representing non-human agency, movement and interdependence through animation.

Lorenz Wiedemann, Munich, Germany

https://lorenz-wiedemann.de/

My name is Lorenz Wiedemann and I am a digital artist and 3D Designer from Munich Germany. I recently discovered mycelium and have become deeply fascinated by its potential.  Together with a friend from the Buinho FabLab in Portugal, and its founder Carlos Alcobia, I am planning a joint venture to explore the possibilities of mycelium-based composites (MBCs).

At our family farm in Bavaria I have set up in the last months my own small Bio Lab with a laminar flow hood a pressure cooker. At the moment I am growing on different substrates: Reishi, Cordyceps, Lions Mane, Shiitake and different varieties of Oyster mushrooms.

 My professional focus lies in 3D design, computer generated imagery, and visual effects. As an artist, I have been part of the art collective Goat Solutions since 1999, where we have been exploring the subject of the goat as an artistic theme for more than 25 years.

November 2026

Alexis Williams, Ottawa
Director of the Biophilum

As an artist whose work is always expressing the value of life and living systems, the taboo against death as a conversation topic has not stopped Alexis from contemplating mortality in her performance, lab, wildlife photography and studio work.

Everyone can do it, but artists have a particular advantage as practiced creative players: we have a profound freedom to invent mourning rituals and regularly renegotiate our relationships with the dead, which Alexis celebrates and encourages in others. She is curently making sacred objects whose sole purpose is to reveal the magic in all mater, living or dead and the devine in every moment, banal or ceremonial.

Monika Kinner,
Saskatoon / Jackfish Lake (both in Treaty Six Territory)

Monique Blom, Saskatchewan

Monique Blom is a multifaceted interdisciplinary artist, activist, consultant, and arts educator whose creative journey unfolds amidst Canada's wildwood landscapes. With a profound connection to nature, Blom seamlessly integrates environmental elements into her artistic exploration, from wood chopping to shelter building. Her expansive repertoire includes captivating performances and thought-provoking public art interventions, focusing on the intricate dynamics between women, domesticity, and spirituality.

Recently honored with the 2024 USSU Excellence in Teaching award from the University of Saskatchewan, Monique holds a Master of Education from the University of Saskatchewan and a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction from the Alberta College of Art and Design. Her research delves into the transformative power of the creative process. For 25 years, she has contributed her expertise as a full-time practicing artist and an Art Education Sessional Lecturer. Additionally, Blom serves as a Palliative Arts Specialist and Death Doula at the Hospice at Glengarda, guiding projects aimed at compassionate end-of-life care. Together with Shayne Metcalfe, Blom co-created Skullback Studios Residency/Retreat Centre and ISEE Motion Picture Company.

Jency Sekaran, NYC

Jency Sekaran is a New York City-based multimedia artist exploring themes on intersectionality of identity. Combining many different techniques such as printmaking, embroidery, and ceramics, Sekaran is able to depict stories of the complexity of being a third culture person in America. 

Being an Indian woman in America, Sekaran struggled with adhering to both cultures which led her to create her own culture, a third culture. By depicting the female form breaking free of cultural and societal ideology, Sekaran evokes emotions of acceptance of multiple identities and freedom of choice.

In 2013, Sekaran received their BA in Art and minor in Biology from Augusta University, however, being raised by Indian immigrant parents, she followed her parents dream of being in the sciences. Receiving her Master in Public Health in 2017 from Georgia State University, science has heavily influenced her art by incorporating organic chemistry and beakers serving as a container for memory and emotion. 

In 2023, Sekaran had her first residency and solo exhibition, ‘She is....’ at Carroll Hall in Brooklyn, NY. She currently is represented by Atlantic Gallery, and has been in multiple group shows in New York City. Sekaran has been published in the Canvas Rebel and the Artist Talk magazine as well as been on the Scouted podcast.. 

Eileen Wiediger, Leesburg, VA

My artistic practice explores perception as a living, relational process. Working primarily with alcohol ink, mixed media, collage, and symbolic forms, I am interested in the space where intention and emergence meet; where material behavior and intuition interact in ways that resist complete control.
Rather than beginning with fixed narratives or predetermined outcomes, I approach art-making as a form of inquiry. The work often unfolds through layering, interruption, fluidity, fragmentation, and response. In this process, images and forms are not imposed so much as discovered through sustained attention and dialogue with the materials themselves.

I am most intrigued by transition: edges, thresholds, ambiguity, dissolution, and becoming. Much of my work investigates what can emerge when perception slows enough to encounter experience before it is immediately categorized or explained. Phenomenology, symbolic inquiry, contemplative practice, and process-oriented philosophies inform my approach, along with ongoing explorations of creativity as a mode of perception rather than solely one of self-expression. With my practice, I hope to create experiences that invite viewers into spaces where meaning remains active, participatory, and unfinished.

Bedia Ekiz, Turkey

Bedia Ekiz was born in the rich ecological and biological landscape of Çukurova, characterized by its volcanic cones and leached soils. She establishes a deep connection with her personal roots shaped by the mystical historical texture of this region—ancient Anatolia, mythologies, and a nomadic-pastoral lifestyle. The region’s archaeological mounds, ancient stories, bird sanctuaries, and ecological richness form the foundation of her profound explorations into human nature and existential traces.

Drawing from her personal witness and the expression of primal pain, Ekiz approaches urban habitats and the rewilding of the “three hills” through a philosophical, psychoanalytic, sociological, ecological, and spiritual perspective. Her artistic practice is centered on examining the existential relationships of human beings and the notion of psychogeography. She documents these experiences through performance videos, sound collages, interactive objects, sketches, and scents. In her studio, she immerses herself in these sources, engaging deeply with their technical and research-based dimensions. Alongside primitive materials such as paper, ink, and charcoal, she adopts a multidisciplinary language that
allows her research to resonate with intuitive human perception.

Raised in a nomadic (Yörük) and agricultural lifestyle, Ekiz aims to raise awareness through her art around themes such as ecology, biology, psychoanalysis, psychogeography, and Anatolian narratives. She continues her work in her studio in Kadıköy, Istanbul, and in the open-air setting of her home in Üçtepe, Çukurova, where she also documents her personal
witnessing.

Miranda Newman, Toronto, Canada

I’m a bestselling award-winning nonfiction author (ROUGH MAGIC, McClelland & Stewart, 2024) and journalist whose work focuses on psychology, identity, healthcare, disability, and lived experience. My artistic practice is driven by the idea that personal narratives and concise reporting can demystify complex human realities and transform isolating experiences into shared and nuanced opportunities for connection.

I work within the intersection of literary arts, healthcare advocacy, and trauma-informed community building. My creative environment is shaped by my identity as a queer, disabled writer. I’m committed to producing work that reframes culturally challenging subjects like grief, death, and trauma through nuanced, accessible, and socially engaged nonfiction. My artistic practice grapples with systems of care and harm, from psychiatry to palliative care, and is deeply informed by my role as both a writer and peer support provider within communities that experience marginalization and medicalization.

“The End” will be my second essay collection. The research-intensive structurally ambitious nonfiction collection will combine memoir, journalism, and cultural criticism to explore topics like what we can learn about death acceptance from Ukrainian cultural rituals and attitudes, the bureaucratic systems surrounding dying and its role in grief, and dying in a society that prioritizes productivity.

Afuwa, Vancouver, BC

don’t be afraid of the dark forest. just know that some things are not meant to be understood.

have faith in the machete, and be strong in your heart/mind.

look back often, but go forward always, until you can go no more. you are never alone.

jessi t walsh

from rupture to garden.

Anni Rossi,  Brooklyn, New York

Anni Rossi is an American singer, songwriter and producer from Minnisota. She plays an electric-viola that was handcrafted from a tree branch. Rossi adopts modern guitar and bass techniques and applies them to this instrument, as well as traditional viola styles. In recent years her music has evolved to incorporate elements of R&B and electronic music.

Melissa Cole, Calgary, Alberta

Traditionally, botanical illustration has tended towards the science of botany with a lesser focus on fine art or beauty. Nevertheless, most plants are things of beauty unto themselves, and as such, easily become works of art when painted with the precision and observation required of botanical artists.

My attraction to botanical illustration stemmed from an interest in southern Alberta’s native plants and ecology. Botanical illustration requires thorough observation of live specimens to create a scientifically accurate representation of the subject; once the flowers have withered and the leaves dropped the illustrations are essential tools for identification and study. While my paintings follow these scientific tenets, my background is firmly planted in the world of fine art. It is natural then, that my priority is to create pieces of art, while keenly observing plants and their place in the natural world.

By using dramatic lights and shadows to create depth and three dimensionality, my aim is to bring a plant to life on paper. My process involves quick sketches, dissections and colour studies; each component of the plant must be meticulously measured to create a detailed scale drawing before painting can commence. Working in watercolour, I use layers of subtle washes to build depth and volume before recording fine details.

This lengthy and detailed process brings me closer to my subjects, and has underscored the complexity of the natural world, and just how vulnerable and precious natural ecosystems are.