2021 Graduation Awards

Tom Chung is an independent industrial designer who established his eponymous studio in 2016. The studio creates context driven industrial design pieces for domestic, institutional and public environments.

Mirjana Prpa obtained her PhD degree from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University. Her PhD work contributes to the field of human-computer interaction and Emerging Technologies for well-being through research and design of virtual reality applications that employ respiratory data as a design material in technology-supported embodied, first-person practices.

To capture the embodied, tacit layers of experience that emerge from the technology-supported practice, Mirjana employed micro-phenomenology, offering theoretical and practical implications for further use in HCI and design. Following a research-creation path, Mirjana's work has been exhibited locally and internationally in academic venues as well as at art exhibitions, centering more broadly in the intersection of arts, science and technology.

Zoran Dragelj is an award-winning Vancouver-based auteur and filmmaker. He also served two-terms as an Alumni Senator at ECU. Zoran is a long-time member and a New Media Director of International Press Academy and Satellite Awards in Los Angeles. For four years, Zoran taught film theory and directing at the Canadian Film and Television Institute.

His latest feature is the critically-acclaimed Friends Like These, which premiered in Los Angeles in 2019 and won three major awards in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2017, Zoran associate- produced Dark Harvest, an independent Canadian feature film starring Cheech Marin, James Hutson, Tygh Runyan, AC Peterson, and Hugh Dillon. 2005 saw the first major retrospective of Zoran's work in Florence, Italy. In addition, his short films and videos have been screened and exhibited in New York, Toronto, Berlin, Stockholm, London, Yangon, Madrid, Venice, Milan, Montréal and at Vancouver galleries and art centres.

Zoran's films and videos are distributed by La Videotheque Nomade Distribution in Brussels and archived with Europeana, the European Union's virtual library for the preservation of cultural heritage, and with GAMA network (Gateway to Archives of Media Art), and featured in TransMediale's (Berlin) permanent collection.

With a mélange of talent and skills - visual artist, music video director, and film director - Zoran remains dedicated to the world of motion pictures and media arts.

From grassroots community building to public diplomacy, Scott Mallory has led projects involving collaborations with United Nations entities, foreign consulates, CERN, TED, Forbes 30-under-30, Google AI, Amazon Web Services, and Boma Global. His platform, ISM Arts & Culture, launches and supports a variety of initiatives at the intersection of new media, curation and education that drive innovation, impact and social entrepreneurship.

He is an Arts & Culture Curator at TRIUMF Lab (Canada's particle accelerator centre), home of the world's largest cyclotron which led contributions to CERN's discovery of the Higgs Boson in the Standard Model of particle physics. There, he works on modernizing methodologies in the science communication field to inspire discovery and innovation and create greater access to STEM. This includes applying design thinking approaches and emerging technologies that extend from his art practice.

As an independent creative, he works with immersive 3D, visual effects for film, music, and sound design to explore themes in philosophy and physics. Recent exhibitions include Science World, the Venice Biennale Annual Reception, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture inaugural exhibition, and his industry experience includes Side Effects Software Inc.

At Emily Carr University, he is a DDM Sessional Faculty, MFA alumnus, founder of TEDxEmilyCarrU and Boma ECU, and established the launch of Multilingual ECU Week. He teaches and leads professional development in the ESL industry, and received the 2020 Top 100 Leaders in Education Award at Global Forum for Education.

Mónica Reyes Gallery (MRG) has been backing the growth and development of emerging and mid-career artists at its current location since 2013. Serving the local and international art scene, MRG promotes artist initiatives that shape the economies of art and culture. Located in Strathcona, the gallery is uniquely positioned to create dialogues with the artists and cultural engineers who call the neighbourhood home.

With a commitment to advancing the cultural capital of the city, MRG has since partnered with Pattison to present The Billboard Project (2020). Over the years, the gallery served as the catalyst and headquarters for Vancouver-based artist collective A.K.A., and hosted its first set of projects, Diffractions of the Local I & II. MRG has built connections both nationally and internationally, reaching new markets and influencing collectors, curators and artists by participating in fairs in North America and Canada like the Toronto International Art Fair, Miami Project, Seattle Art Fair, Texas Contemporary and Papier Montreal.

Founder and director Mónica Reyes has been a longstanding figure in the Vancouver art scene, having served as Vice President of the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver and on the board of Latincouver. Today she sits on the board of the Strathcona Board Improvement Association. Reyes is committed to investing in art that gives voice to the cultural diversity of the Pacific Northwest.

MRG's regular exhibition program and special events provide opportunities for artists to show work that includes a range of practices, from more traditional forms of painting, sculpture and photography to experimental video, durational performance, spatial interventions, installation and poetry.

Kunal Sen is the co-founder and creative director of Good Bad Habits, an animation and motion design studio based in Vancouver, Canada. Born and brought up in Calcutta, India he moved to Canada in 2006 to study animation at Emily Carr, and has lived and worked between the two countries ever since. Kunal has created animation for a variety of mediums: narrative and documentary films, advertising, music videos, theatre, gaming as well as digital apps. He has also taught Motion Graphics at Emily Carr and mentored at the Vancouver Film School's Digital Design program.

Justin Ramsey is Assistant Curator at The Polygon Gallery, on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, səl̓ilwətaɁɬ and xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm Nations. He has annually organised the Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize since 2018, alongside numerous other educational programs and initiatives. Ramsey has coordinated many artistic collaborations, most recently with Capilano University, Blueridge Chamber Music Festival, Ballet BC, Little Chamber Music, and the North Vancouver City Library. Recent exhibitions curated include without a word, black and white street photography from the collection of Bill Wu; and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nation Basketball, celebrating young Indigenous women in sport.

Ramsey has contributed frequently to MONTECRISTO Magazine, and has also written for NUVO Magazine, Artomity, VANDOCUMENT, and the Audain Gallery, among other publications and platforms. Previously, he worked as administrator of Republic Gallery, Vancouver. Ramsey is a board member of Project Society, a non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting and commissioning work by contemporary Canadian artists. He holds a Masters of Arts in Comparative Media Arts (2015) and Bachelor of Arts in Communication with Distinction (2012) from Simon Fraser University.

Etienne Zack studied at Emily Carr, Concordia University and College St-Laurent in Montreal.

His recent paintings are attempts at depicting digital cloud space; they are visualizations or assemblages of what recorded digital age history might look like. Primarily, Etienne considers painting as a storing technology and a philosophical terrain. His recent landscape paintings are intersections connecting photography, painting and the web. His paintings are coded environments or mental maps that consider the many ways in which painting, language, text, image and architecture articulate our psychological and physical understanding of our everyday realities.

Noteworthy solo exhibitions include: Etienne Zack: Those Lacking Imagination Take Refuge In Reality, Esker Foundation, Canada; Etienne Zack, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; According to This, Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; Thomas Dane Gallery, England; Vision Machine, Surrey Art Gallery, Canada and Lingering Shadows, Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Etienne’s work can be found in the National Gallery of Canada, Art Bank of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Montreal Fine Arts Museum, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, National Fine Arts Museum of Quebec, Surrey Art Gallery, Glenbow Museum, City of Montréal, Zabludowicz Collection (London, England) and The Model Museum (Sligo, Ireland). His work can also be found in numerous corporate and private collections in the United States, Europe, Scandinavia, Hong Kong, Ireland, England and across Canada.

Daina Warren is from the Akamihk (Cree) Nation in Maskwacis (Bear Hills), Alberta. She was awarded two Canada Council Aboriginal Curatorial Residencies; one with grunt gallery, Vancouver(2000-2001), and the second at the National Gallery of Canada (2010-2011). She has a BFA from Emily Carr (2003) and an MA from UBC (2012).

Daina was awarded the 2015 Emily Award and was selected as one of six Indigenous women curators as part of the Canada Council for the Arts Delegation to participate in the International First Nations Curators Exchange that took place in Australia (2015), New Zealand (2016), and Canada (2017). Her most recent accomplishment was winning the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellency in 2018. She is currently the Director of Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Born to Guyanese parents, award-winning filmmaker Karen Chapman is committed to honing her craft as a storyteller.

She is an alumna of Emily Carr University, the Banff Centre, Women in the Director Chair, the CaribbeanTales Incubator, the HotDocs Accelerator and TIFF Talent Lab and the TIFF 2020 Accelerator. Chapman’s CBC Short Doc, Walk Good won Women In Film and Television Toronto’s 2017 Audience Choice Award at their annual Showcase and her short, Lesson Injustice won the Best Screenplay Award the year after.

In 2018, she completed the Cineplex Film Program Directors’ Lab at the Canadian Film Centre and was named one of the “5 Filmmakers to Watch” by Playback Magazine. Chapman’s love story, Essequibo Rapture, won the Caribbean Film Academy’s International Screenplay Competition and received funding from Bell Media’s Harold Greenberg Shorts-to-Features fund.

Her VR experience, They Should be Flowers, premiered at HotDocs and was nominated for a Canada Screen Award for Best Immersive Non-Fiction. Her short Measure premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019, where it won the International Hollywood Foreign Press Award and Residency at the 2020 Golden Globe Awards.

Karen is currently preparing to shoot her first feature film, Village Keeper through Telefilm Canada’s Talent Program.

Janeann Dill's paintings and films have been exhibited throughout Europe, South Africa, the Middle East, China and the USA. Her films have screened widely in international film festivals, on public television, and in theatrical and museum environments across the globe. As an author, her scholarship has been published and translated into Spanish, Catalan, Korean, and Arabic.

Janeann has been awarded numerous grants, notably, from the Ahmanson Foundation and the James Irvine Foundation, and the Annenberg Foundation's Independent Media Grant. Her fine art has received awards and Artist Residencies from the American Center In Paris and the National Endowment for the Arts. She received an award from an International Jury of European Cultural Attachés at the International Festival of Painting in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France.

She is Affiliated Faculty of Record for the Advanced Critical Writing and Research Seminar, “Animation Histories: Jules Engel (1909-2003) and Experimental Animation” in the Visual and Media Arts Department of Emerson College, Boston. This seminar has had various iterations under the rubric of Animation Histories such as “From Concept To Screen” and “From the Pre-Cinematic Toy to the Experimental Arts in Contemporary Animation.” Janeann also serves as Production faculty for Experimental Animation in the VMA.

Deblekha Guin is the founding Executive Director of the Access to Media Education Society (AMES), an organization that uses digital media, collaboration, and creative facilitation to engage marginalized youth in personally and socially transformative storytelling practices.

Deblekha has more than 25 years of experience in community and arts-based project development and has been instrumental in visioning and co-creating over 50 distinct participatory media arts initiatives since 1995, all of which have encouraged and directly impacted communities to self-represent, self-advocate and debunk often-harmful cultural stereotypes. Deblekha was recently recognized with an Intercultural Trust Award at the 2020 BC Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Awards.

Peg Campbell is a documentary and narrative fllmmaker, whose work has received international acclaim. She has won awards from the Genies (now Canadian Screen Awards), Banff World Media Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, Women in Film, Yorkton and Reel2Real International Film Festival for Youth. Peg’s films have been broadcast on CBC, Knowledge Network, PBS, WTN, A&E, and The Movie Channel. Her social activist films seek to rebalance power and unsettle societal assumptions.

Peg taught film at Emily Carr University of Art + Design for over 30 years, winning the Ian Wallace Teaching Award. She is ABD on her PhD in Philosophy (Media and Communications) from the European Graduate School and has an MFA in Creative Writing and Film Production from the University of BC. She is a founding member of Cineworks Film Co-op, Women in Film Vancouver, and Women in the Director’s Chair. SFU awarded her the Outstanding Alumni Award for service to the community; and she was given the Vancouver Mayor’s Award for Film and New Media in 2017.