Visit the MFA Low-Residency 2025 Thesis Exhibition.
Carly Thaw (MFA 2025), Big Bill eats a fish (left) and Prairie Shore (right), installation view in Fracture, Fold, Fray: Low Residency Master of Fine Arts 2025 Thesis Exhibition at Emily Carr University. (Photo by Jenn Xu)
Where curiosity and bold creative thinking meet
We are artists, thinkers, designers, experimenters, educators and leaders advancing the critical role of art and design education in a complex and changing world.
#1university for art + design in Canada
1:19approximate instructor to student ratio
#36worldwide for art and design
What will you create design film animate sculpt manufacture paint print illustrate research photograph write
Sonny Assu (Ligwilda’xw of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nations) (BFA 2002) has been recognized for his mashups of Indigenous iconography and popular culture. Through a variety of mediums including sculpture, painting, prints, large-scale installations and interventions Assu’s work maintains a profound connection to past traditions while speaking to pertinent issues of our time.
Coke Salish, 2006 - Duratrans and light box. With the announcement of Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Sonny envisioned the event overshadowing the region’s Indigenous history. Vancouver is built on Coast Salish territory and with Coke Salish, Sonny signalled that when visitors arrived in Vancouver, they would “Enjoy Coast-Salish Territory.” Image courtesy Sonny Assu.
Coke Salish, 2006
1/6
Duratrans and light box. With the announcement of Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Sonny envisioned the event overshadowing the region’s Indigenous history. Vancouver is built on Coast Salish territory and with Coke Salish, Sonny signalled that when visitors arrived in Vancouver, they would “Enjoy Coast-Salish Territory.” Image courtesy Sonny Assu.
Chart #37 from The Paradise Syndrome Series, 2016 - Archival pigment print. The series is named for an episode of Star Trek where the crew encounter a planet inhabited by the descendants of displaced Native Americans. In stark contrast to Star Trek, the early colonial government took land, water and resources after forcibly displacing Indigenous peoples to a fraction of their ancestral territory. This segregation was not only meant to divide individual nations, but families within them as well. Image courtesy Sonny Assu.
Chart #37 from The Paradise Syndrome Series, 2016
2/6
Archival pigment print. The series is named for an episode of Star Trek where the crew encounter a planet inhabited by the descendants of displaced Native Americans. In stark contrast to Star Trek, the early colonial government took land, water and resources after forcibly displacing Indigenous peoples to a fraction of their ancestral territory. This segregation was not only meant to divide individual nations, but families within them as well. Image courtesy Sonny Assu.
Eat your heart out, Bruce Willis, 2021 - Acrylic paint, acrylic ink, acrylic medium, Marvel comic book pages on panel. (Photo by Byron Dauncey; courtesy Equinox Gallery). This series explores how language and myths can straddle multiple cultures and times by bringing together comics from Sonny’s childhood with his classic pop culture sensibility with a Kwakwaka’wakw twist.
Eat your heart out, Bruce Willis, 2021
3/6
Acrylic paint, acrylic ink, acrylic medium, Marvel comic book pages on panel. (Photo by Byron Dauncey; courtesy Equinox Gallery). This series explores how language and myths can straddle multiple cultures and times by bringing together comics from Sonny’s childhood with his classic pop culture sensibility with a Kwakwaka’wakw twist.
1UP, 2016 - In this site-specific installation, Sonny “tags” the colonial landscape to bring attention to the histories of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. A colloquial term in gaming culture, "1UP" becomes a metaphor for how Indigenous people have risen up for rights within a system designed to oppress and assimilate them. Photo by Edward Westerhuis; courtesy Sonny Assu.
1UP, 2016
4/6
In this site-specific installation, Sonny “tags” the colonial landscape to bring attention to the histories of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. A colloquial term in gaming culture, "1UP" becomes a metaphor for how Indigenous people have risen up for rights within a system designed to oppress and assimilate them. Photo by Edward Westerhuis; courtesy Sonny Assu.
Breakfast series, 2006 - Digital print, foam-core. (Image courtesy Sonny Assu) Sonny’s appropriated commercial forms offer commentary on highly charged issues for Indigenous people, including the environment, treaty rights, land claims and food sovereignty.
Breakfast series, 2006
5/6
Digital print, foam-core. (Image courtesy Sonny Assu) Sonny’s appropriated commercial forms offer commentary on highly charged issues for Indigenous people, including the environment, treaty rights, land claims and food sovereignty.
Sonny Assu - Sonny explores multiple mediums and materials to negotiate western and Kwakwaka'wakw principles of artmaking. Often autobiographical, humorous, solemn and/or political, his diverse practice deals with the realities of being Indigenous in the colonial state of Canada. Photo courtesy Equinox Gallery.
Sonny Assu
6/6
Sonny explores multiple mediums and materials to negotiate western and Kwakwaka'wakw principles of artmaking. Often autobiographical, humorous, solemn and/or political, his diverse practice deals with the realities of being Indigenous in the colonial state of Canada. Photo courtesy Equinox Gallery.
Annie Briard
Annie Briard (MFA 2013) is a Canadian artist known for her practice in expanded photography and digital media. With beginnings in Montreal and now working from the Pacific North-West, her works connect aesthetics steeped in affect theory, photo conceptualism, and the light and space movement rooted in California. Briard is also a faculty member at Emily Carr University.
Sun Simulation - View from solo exhibition Within the Eclipse, Burrard Art Foundation. With Sun Simulations, Annie continues her preoccupation with light and subjectivity, with an added meditation on the digitization of human experience. Image courtesy Annie Briard.
Sun Simulation
1/4
View from solo exhibition Within the Eclipse, Burrard Art Foundation. With Sun Simulations, Annie continues her preoccupation with light and subjectivity, with an added meditation on the digitization of human experience. Image courtesy Annie Briard.
Sun Simulation - View from solo exhibition Within the Eclipse, Burrard Art Foundation. With Sun Simulations, Annie continues her preoccupation with light and subjectivity, with an added meditation on the digitization of human experience. Image courtesy Annie Briard.
Sun Simulation
2/4
View from solo exhibition Within the Eclipse, Burrard Art Foundation. With Sun Simulations, Annie continues her preoccupation with light and subjectivity, with an added meditation on the digitization of human experience. Image courtesy Annie Briard.
Within the Eclipse - From The Glow of Two-Thousand Moons. 3 Kodak Ektagraphic III slide projectors, syncopated automatic settings, 240 35mm color slides, grey metallic plinths. The images for this work were created using photos of the clear, daylit sky shot by Annie through colourful cinema gels. Annie asks us to consider how our own perception could be seen to act as another gel, or filter, shading our vision and altering reality. Image courtesy Annie Briard.
Within the Eclipse
3/4
From The Glow of Two-Thousand Moons. 3 Kodak Ektagraphic III slide projectors, syncopated automatic settings, 240 35mm color slides, grey metallic plinths. The images for this work were created using photos of the clear, daylit sky shot by Annie through colourful cinema gels. Annie asks us to consider how our own perception could be seen to act as another gel, or filter, shading our vision and altering reality. Image courtesy Annie Briard.
Eclipse - From The Glow of Two-Thousand Moons. 3 Kodak Ektagraphic III slide projectors, syncopated automatic settings, 240 35mm color slides, grey metallic plinths. The images for this work were created using photos of the clear, daylit sky shot by Annie through colourful cinema gels. Annie asks us to consider how our own perception could be seen to act as another gel, or filter, shading our vision and altering reality. Image courtesy Annie Briard.
Eclipse
4/4
From The Glow of Two-Thousand Moons. 3 Kodak Ektagraphic III slide projectors, syncopated automatic settings, 240 35mm color slides, grey metallic plinths. The images for this work were created using photos of the clear, daylit sky shot by Annie through colourful cinema gels. Annie asks us to consider how our own perception could be seen to act as another gel, or filter, shading our vision and altering reality. Image courtesy Annie Briard.
Stan Douglas
Stan Douglas (alumnus 1982) has created films, photographs, and other multidisciplinary projects that investigate the parameters of their respective mediums. His ongoing inquiry into technology’s role in image making, and how those mediations infiltrate and shape collective memory, has resulted in works that are at once specific in their historical and cultural references and broadly accessible.
Vancouver, 15 June 2011 - 2021, Chromogenic print on Dibond. The 2022 exhibition Stan Douglas: 2011 ≠ 1848 comprised a series of works inspired by historical events of social and political turbulence. Stan connects points of social rupture, rendering in minute detail and with technical ingenuity historic moments of protest, riot, and occupation from 2011 that echoed upheavals that swept Europe in 1848. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Venice, and David Zwirner, New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong.
Vancouver, 15 June 2011
1/4
2021, Chromogenic print on Dibond. The 2022 exhibition Stan Douglas: 2011 ≠ 1848 comprised a series of works inspired by historical events of social and political turbulence. Stan connects points of social rupture, rendering in minute detail and with technical ingenuity historic moments of protest, riot, and occupation from 2011 that echoed upheavals that swept Europe in 1848. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Venice, and David Zwirner, New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong.
New York City, 10 October 2011 - 2021, Chromogenic print on Dibond. The 2022 exhibition Stan Douglas: 2011 ≠ 1848 comprised a series of works inspired by historical events of social and political turbulence. Stan connects points of social rupture, rendering in minute detail and with technical ingenuity historic moments of protest, riot, and occupation from 2011 that echoed upheavals that swept Europe in 1848. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Venice, and David Zwirner, New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong.
New York City, 10 October 2011
2/4
2021, Chromogenic print on Dibond. The 2022 exhibition Stan Douglas: 2011 ≠ 1848 comprised a series of works inspired by historical events of social and political turbulence. Stan connects points of social rupture, rendering in minute detail and with technical ingenuity historic moments of protest, riot, and occupation from 2011 that echoed upheavals that swept Europe in 1848. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Venice, and David Zwirner, New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong.
ISDN - 2022, Still from two-channel video installation. Cairo: Joker. The 2022 exhibition Stan Douglas: 2011 ≠ 1848 comprised series of works inspired by historical events of social and political turbulence. Stan connects points of social rupture, rendering in minute detail and with technical ingenuity historic moments of protest, riot, and occupation from 2011 that echoed upheavals that swept Europe in 1848. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Venice, and David Zwirner, New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong.
ISDN
3/4
2022, Still from two-channel video installation. Cairo: Joker. The 2022 exhibition Stan Douglas: 2011 ≠ 1848 comprised series of works inspired by historical events of social and political turbulence. Stan connects points of social rupture, rendering in minute detail and with technical ingenuity historic moments of protest, riot, and occupation from 2011 that echoed upheavals that swept Europe in 1848. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Venice, and David Zwirner, New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong.
ISDN - 2022, Still from two-channel video installation. London: TrueMendous. The 2022 exhibition Stan Douglas: 2011 ≠ 1848 comprised series of works inspired by historical events of social and political turbulence. Stan connects points of social rupture, rendering in minute detail and with technical ingenuity historic moments of protest, riot, and occupation from 2011 that echoed upheavals that swept Europe in 1848. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Venice, and David Zwirner, New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong.
ISDN
4/4
2022, Still from two-channel video installation. London: TrueMendous. The 2022 exhibition Stan Douglas: 2011 ≠ 1848 comprised series of works inspired by historical events of social and political turbulence. Stan connects points of social rupture, rendering in minute detail and with technical ingenuity historic moments of protest, riot, and occupation from 2011 that echoed upheavals that swept Europe in 1848. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, London and Venice, and David Zwirner, New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong.
Nadia Myre
Nadia Myre (BFA 1997) is a contemporary visual artist from Montreal Quebec and an Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation. For over a decade, her multi-disciplinary practice has been inspired by participant involvement as well as recurring themes of identity, language, and longing. and loss.
Traverser l’Océan / Across the Ocean - 2014. Installation view on Gorée Island, Senegal. Nadia began learning traditional fishing-net techniques in Québec, then from local fishermen in Mexico and Senegal. In doing so, she surfaces a material history that connects distant cultures. Photo by Aurélie Leveau / Courtesy Musée Dapper, Paris, and Nadia Myre.
Traverser l’Océan / Across the Ocean
1/4
2014. Installation view on Gorée Island, Senegal. Nadia began learning traditional fishing-net techniques in Québec, then from local fishermen in Mexico and Senegal. In doing so, she surfaces a material history that connects distant cultures. Photo by Aurélie Leveau / Courtesy Musée Dapper, Paris, and Nadia Myre.
From Indian Act, 2000-2002. - Indian Act was produced with contributions from more than 230 friends, colleagues and strangers. Photo courtesy Nadia Myre.
From Indian Act, 2000-2002.
2/4
Indian Act was produced with contributions from more than 230 friends, colleagues and strangers. Photo courtesy Nadia Myre.
From Tell me of your boats and your waters, where do they come from, where do they go? - 2022. Lithograph series. Installation view at Gallery 2 of Edinburgh Printmakers. Commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival. Through prints, installation and sound, the works in this show explores reference points spanning Scotland and Canada, migratory routes started on the canal, Indigenous storytelling, archival research methods, pattern, prose and song. Photo courtesy Nadia Myre.
From Tell me of your boats and your waters, where do they come from, where do they go?
3/4
2022. Lithograph series. Installation view at Gallery 2 of Edinburgh Printmakers. Commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival. Through prints, installation and sound, the works in this show explores reference points spanning Scotland and Canada, migratory routes started on the canal, Indigenous storytelling, archival research methods, pattern, prose and song. Photo courtesy Nadia Myre.
From Tell me of your boats and your waters, where do they come from, where do they go? - 2022. Lithograph series. Installation view at Gallery 2 of Edinburgh Printmakers. Commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival. Through prints, installation and sound, the works in this show explores reference points spanning Scotland and Canada, migratory routes started on the canal, Indigenous storytelling, archival research methods, pattern, prose and song. Photo courtesy Nadia Myre.
From Tell me of your boats and your waters, where do they come from, where do they go?
4/4
2022. Lithograph series. Installation view at Gallery 2 of Edinburgh Printmakers. Commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival. Through prints, installation and sound, the works in this show explores reference points spanning Scotland and Canada, migratory routes started on the canal, Indigenous storytelling, archival research methods, pattern, prose and song. Photo courtesy Nadia Myre.
Chelsea O'Byrne
Chelsea O’Byrne (BFA 2016) is an artist and illustrator who uses materials including gouache, watercolour, coloured pencil, pastel, graphite, ink, and various printmaking techniques. She has earned awards and recognition from the BC Arts Council, Access Copyright Foundation, the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, Kirkus, and The New York Times. Chelsea is also a staff member and MFA student at ECU.
The Springtime Storks - For her work on the book Springtime Storks, Chelsea used baby blues, bright pinks and green foliage to light up a landscape in full bloom as the story moves toward spring and its joyful conclusion. Image courtesy Chelsea O’Byrne.
The Springtime Storks
1/3
For her work on the book Springtime Storks, Chelsea used baby blues, bright pinks and green foliage to light up a landscape in full bloom as the story moves toward spring and its joyful conclusion. Image courtesy Chelsea O’Byrne.
- In these hand-drawn thumbnails from the wall of Chelsea’s studio, she works to establish the vernal colour palette and other visual themes for the book Springtime Storks. Photo by Perrin Grauer.
2/3
In these hand-drawn thumbnails from the wall of Chelsea’s studio, she works to establish the vernal colour palette and other visual themes for the book Springtime Storks. Photo by Perrin Grauer.
- “I always try to find some way to bring a little abstraction to my stories. All of my favourite children’s books have that deeper layer of meaning that can be inferred.” Chelsea says. Photo by Perrin Grauer.
3/3
“I always try to find some way to bring a little abstraction to my stories. All of my favourite children’s books have that deeper layer of meaning that can be inferred.” Chelsea says. Photo by Perrin Grauer.
The next century of creativity
Emily Carr University of Art + Design provides students with a flexible and responsive curriculum that is multidisciplinary, and encourages critical inquiry, sustainability, research, social responsibility and cultural development. The Advancement Department works with donors, corporate sponsors and community partners to provide students with the financial support and resources needed to prepare them to become the next generation of innovators and leaders in Canada’s creative economy.
