Foundation Mentorship 2015/2016

Seema Goel is an artist, writer and craftivist. She draws on her dual background in arts and sciences to focus on the relationship between humans and the natural world, often highlighting contradictions within this relationship and noting the ways in which nature is used to advance human thinking. An eclectic range of materials from wool to projections on buildings allows her to combine high and low tech to engage her viewers through touch, humour and play.

Natalia Lebedinskaia holds an MA in Art History from Concordia University, where she also received her BFA in Art History and Studio Arts. She has held curatorial and art administration internships at The Banff Centre for the Arts and Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff, Alberta. In 2009, she co-founded Studio Béluga, an exhibition and residency program in Montréal that is run as a self-pedagogical community with a board of artists, art historians and curators. Lebedinskaia has also worked independently on projects and publications for Art Mûr, FOFA Gallery, Les Ateliers Jean Brillant, and Centre des arts actuels Skol, in Montréal.

She is currently the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandon. Her research focuses on the ethics of exhibition and display, especially as they relate to negotiations of personal memory in the public sphere. Her curatorial approach aims to build communities, both ephemeral and lasting, through exhibitions and programming.

Shawna McLeod is a recently repatriated Winnipeg artist and an alumnus of the 2003 MAWA Foundation Mentorship Program. Her watercolour paintings range from quiet and autobiographical to ornate and psychedelic. She completed her MFA at Concordia University in Montréal in 2008. Her work has been shown throughout Canada and the U.S. and has been featured in several publications, including Border Crossings and Frieze. Her work is part of the Canada Council Art Bank, Musée National des Beaux-Arts de Québec and the Winnipeg Art Gallery collections. She has taken part in artist residencies including Flux Factory and Apex Art in New York City. McLeod has a strong interest in arts in the community and has worked with the Graffiti Gallery and other Winnipeg organizations, as well as facilitated workshops in Saskatchewan and Northern Manitoba through the Canada Council for the Arts.

Praba Pilar is a queer diasporic Colombian artist creating performance art, digital/electronic installations, experimental public talks and workshops in museums, universities, festivals, galleries and streets around the world. Pilar has a long practice critical of extraction-based approaches to technology and a PhD in Performance Studies, co-directs the Hindsight Institute, and can be visited at prabapilar.com.