2022 Graduation Awards

Julian Araneta
Anthropologist, Industrial + Service Designer

Julian is by training an anthropologist (BA 2009) and industrial designer (ECU BDes 2015) with a wide experience base gathered over the last ten years. Julian has held positions as a designer working in many of its facets - from concept design and CMF to useability and service design, technical CAD design and form work in classic industrial design within furniture, clothing, bags and luggage, and consumer products. He has also worked within product management, driving the product development of multi-million-dollar business segments on a global scale and supporting designers and engineers in the task of taking product concept to market.

Julian works with strategic and visual communication in Sweden where he applies design methodology in supporting the innovation and transformation towards sustainable and renewable raw materials within the chemicals industry. Two books from the ECUAD days that are a staple on Julian's desktop, no matter the job position, are Sherry Turkle's Evocative Objects and Convivial Toolbox by Sanders & Stappers.

Julia Conejero
Interaction Designer

Julia is a Project Coordinator with Unity Technologies. She has been in the tech field for more than 5 years and prior to her current work, gained vast knowledge and experience by working for companies such as Electronic Arts and Microsoft. Through a career of developing for emerging technologies, she quickly gained awareness for opportunities to create and challenge appropriate human-centred design for emerging tech. Her current challenge is to create intuitive and accessible design in the Mixed Reality Space.

Julia is a Sessional Faculty at Emily Carr where she teaches at the Shumka Centre.

Bergþóra Jónsdóttir
Graphic Designer

Bergþóra is a visual designer and Art Director from Dalvík, Iceland. She loves seeing things from a new perspective, which has led her to study in four countries and work in three.

She has a BA degree from the Icelandic Academy of the arts, with semesters in Denmark and Vienna.

MDes from Emily Carr (2016). This was followed by three wonderful years at House9 design in Montréal, where Bergþóra discovered her passion of working in small teams, along with people trying their best to make the world a better place. After two years of freelancing, hiding beneath the mountains of Dalvík during Covid, she returned to Reykjavík last fall to work with the talented people at Kolofon design studio.

“I'm the absolute happiest when working with teammates on versatile projects, including branding, wayfinding and web design among others.”

Recent works include the Icelandic masculinity project, graphics for Icelandic MP Andrés Ingi Jónsson, branding and soon to be released web design for the Multicultural center of Iceland, branding and web design for the municipality of Mosfellsbær and my sisterhood II exhibition, nominated for the Icelandic design awards.

Noura Kevorkian
Independent Filmmaker

Lebanese-Canadian filmmaker Noura Kevorkian made her filmmaking debut with the documentary VEILS UNCOVERED (Official Competition IDFA) about the veiled women of Damascus.

Her debut feature the Canada-Lebanon historical documentary ANJAR: FLOWERS, GOATS & HEROES (MED Festival Rome), is a complex and emotional POV documentary about a young girl growing up during the Lebanese Civil War. Noura’s follow-up film, the Canada-Lebanon-UAE drama-doc hybrid feature 23 KILOMETRES, premiered to acclaim in Official Competition at Karlovy Vary, followed by Dubai and Munich festivals. This one-of-a-kind experiential film is a cinematic portrayal of one man’s experiences with Parkinson’s disease.

Noura’s latest film, the Canada-Lebanon-Qatar feature BATATA (Official Competition FIPADOC, Thessaloniki, Hot Docs 2022), is an unparalleled documentary that follows 10 years in the life of Maria, a strong, beautiful unmarried Syrian woman as she turns from migrant farm-hand to refugee stuck in a camp in Lebanon, unable to return to her hometown of Raqqa. Concurrently Noura is working on the development of her debut feature drama, SYRIAN DANCER, the story of two teenagers who find love against all odds, along with the screen adaptation of the award-winning non-fiction book The Taste of Longing about an unknown female WWII Canadian war hero.

Karen Knights
Archivist, VIVO Media Arts Centre

Manager of the Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive (CDMLA) at VIVO Media Arts Centre, a non-profit, artist-run centre. The CDMLA houses a significant repository of media by artists, activists, and independent producers. Spanning over 50 years of production, its 8000 video titles reflect the history of video art and activism in Canada and abroad, and social and political movements. Media genres include art, documentary, experimental documentary, narrative, synaesthetic, animation, event documentation.

Nathan Thomas
Senior Artist, Unity Technologies

Nathan Thomas is an animator and filmmaker with over 15 years of experience animating on franchises like Marvel, Transformers and Star Wars - but in recent years has dived deep into real time filmmaking tools. He currently works as Senior Artist at Unity Technologies.

Anju Singh
Sound Artist + Media Artist

Anju Singh Multidisciplinary artist, digital producer, and non-profit/arts administrator located on the stolen, unceded, and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, colonially known as Vancouver, BC. Anju has performed internationally in Brazil, Europe, Mexico, and Canada. Her professional work expands across Canada and internationally.

Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes
Visual Artist

Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes (b. 1991) is a Hong Kong-born artist based in so-called "Vancouver." Holmes is interested in how people look at, view and exchange images online. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Infinity Ball, Unit 17, Vancouver (2022); My Owns, Project Native Informant, London (2021); Everything Leaks, Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver (2020); Open Heart Run Off, Sibling, Toronto (2019); Keep Your Eyes On Your Prizes, Calaboose, Montreal and ddmmyyy, Artspeak, Vancouver (both 2018). Select group exhibitions have been held at the Royal Academy Antwerp, Access Gallery & Centre A, Vancouver (all 2017). In 2020, Holmes was the recent recipient for the New Generation Photography Award from the National Gallery of Canada and was the winner of the Second Annual Lind Prize in 2017, as well as the ECUAD Graduating Photography award. Holmes graduated from ECUAD with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography & a Curatorial minor in 2017.

Vanessa Kwan
Visual Artist, Producer, and Curator

Vanessa Kwan is an artist, producer, and curator with a focus on collaborative, site-specific and cross-disciplinary practices. They are currently Program Director at grunt gallery on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories (Vancouver, Canada). They have worked in artistic and curatorial leadership roles since 2003, contributing to organizations such as the Vancouver Art Gallery, Other Sights for Artists' Projects, Access Gallery, Powell Street Festival and Out On Screen. They regularly write, speak and publish on art and culture, and since 2017 have been producing residency projects across the Pacific Rim (Vancouver, Seoul, Melbourne and Sydney) exploring artist-led creative exchange. In addition they have produced significant public art works including Geyser for Hillcrest Park (with Erica Stocking), Speaker A, a permanent sound installation co-created with Theatre Replacement (Maiko Yamamoto and James Long) and Particles, an upcoming collaborative media work.

Lyse Lemieux
Visual Artist

Lyse Lemieux’s interdisciplinary practice has focused on drawing, and includes sculpture, painting, and installation. In recent years Lemieux has expanded her practice to include outdoor large scale Public Art with projects that consider the physical, emotional and communal environments these spaces can offer. Through considerations of process and materiality her work continues to explore the space between abstraction and representation, while maintaining a strong connection to the human and sometimes not so human figure. Originally from Ottawa Lemieux attended the University of Ottawa and graduated with a BFA from the University of British-Columbia. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including the Canadian Cultural Centre in Rome, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Oakville Galleries, Richmond Art Gallery, Trépanier-Baer Gallery in Calgary, Katzman Contemporary, Toronto; Wil Aballe Art projects, SFU Gallery, and, the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver. Lemieux has been awarded grants from the BC Arts council, the Canada Council and is the 2017 recipient of the VIVA AWARD granted annually by the Doris and Jack Shadbolt Foundation for the visual Arts. Based in Vancouver, two of Lemieux’s large-scale public art projects were installed in Vancouver in 2020 and 2021. Upcoming projects and exhibitions include a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery at the Evergreen art Centre in Coquitlam and an exhibition of works on paper at the Lalani-Jennings Gallery in Guelph this fall. Lemieux has been awarded new public art project scheduled for completion in 2025.