A program of
It Doesn't Matter Doesn't Matter
It’s WWIII let’s do something about our political fatigue. This panel asks a basic but difficult question: how does an individual resist oppression? Drawing from artistic practice, lived experience, and cultural work, the conversation looks at how people keep going under pressure. It asks what artists notice, what they hold onto, and what kinds of gestures still matter when direct change feels out of reach.
Moving through diaspora, memory, and digital life, the panel stays with forms of resistance that are often quiet, partial, and difficult to measure.
Not grand solutions, but ways of continuing.
Ways of refusing fear, silence, and disappearance.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS
Anran Guo (b. 1996, China) is a queer female artist and art educator based in Hamilton and Toronto. She holds a Master of Visual Studies in Studio Art and an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Art and Art History from the University of Toronto.
Guo’s practice centers on sculpture and installation. Through the semiotic manipulation of visual information and the forms of found objects, she constructs visual fables and (counter-)monuments that offer layered critiques of social and political systems.Her work has been exhibited at YYZ Artists’ Outlet, the Art Gallery of Mississauga, Hamilton Artists Inc., Centre[3], and the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, among others. Her practice is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.
Tak Pham is a Vietnamese contemporary art curator and writer. He is currently curator at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Alberta, Treaty 7 territory. He was formerly associate curator at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 territory. Pham holds an M.F.A. in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University and a B.A. Hons. from Carleton University.
He has curated exhibitions and organized curatorial projects for the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Contemporary Calgary, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Varley Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Nuit Blanche Toronto, among others. His writings and reviews have appeared in Canadian Art, C Magazine, ESPACE art actuel, esse arts + opinions, Galleries West, The Brooklyn Rail, ArtAsiaPacific and Hyperallergic. In 2023, Pham was awarded the Hnatyshyn Foundation-Fogo Island Arts Young Curator Residency.
Yoke-Sum Wong is a Professor in the School of Critical and Creative Studies and helms the research portfolio at Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary. Her background is in history and sociology, with a focus on cultural histories and historiography. She was the Editor-in-Chief of two peer reviewed journals for Wiley-Blackwell, The Journal of Historical Sociology and Sociology Lens and steered the journals to platform more scholarship from the Global South. She has written on post-colonial built environments in Singapore and Malaysia, and architecture and design in North America.She works in the intersections of art and history, and has organized international research-creation workshops drawing multi-disciplinary artists, cultural workers, and academics. She is now embarking on a new project exploring the Cold War in Southeast Asia and cultural reckonings.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Wang Zi 王紫 (born in Nanjing, China) is an artist-educator based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada. She holds a BFA and BDes in Printmaking and Advertising from OCAD University, an MA in Arts Management from SDA Bocconi as a Guggenheim Bilbao Scholar, and an MFA in Visual Arts from York University supported by SSHRC.
Her work has been exhibited internationally at ICA Shanghai, Inbe Art Space (Japan), Metís Space (Hong Kong), and institutions including the Canada Council Art Bank and the Ontario Legislative Assembly. She has served as artist-in-residence at the Richmond Hill Public Library (2022) and the Toronto Public Library (2024–2025). Her works are collected by the Canada Council Art Bank, York University Libraries, and private collectors from Switzerland, Italy, and China. She has curated art programs with partners including the Royal Ontario Museum, CAMH, T&T Supermarket, and the City of Ottawa. She is currently teaching in the Creative Technologies program at York University Markham Campus.
