What the Edge Knows: Artist Talk with Natia Lemay
Massey College and OCAD University invites you to a special artist talk with Natia Lemay, joined in conversation by Visiting Scholar Ilene Sova, Senior Fellow Sarah Robayo Sheridan, and Junior Fellow Emma Avery. The event will open with a multimedia presentation by Lemay, followed by a discussion exploring her creative practice and its resonances within broader cultural contexts.
Raised in Winnipeg and now based in New Haven, Lemay works through an interdisciplinary, autoethnographic approach, examining the intersections of mind, body, memory, and space. Her work has been widely exhibited across North America and is held in major public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the High Museum in Atlanta, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She is a graduate of OCAD University (BFA, 2021) and Yale School of Art (MFA, 2023), and has held residencies at The Fountainhead (Miami) and the Royal Drawing School (Scotland).
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Speakers
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Natia LemayNatia Lemay (b. 1985 in Toronto, Ontario) was raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and is based in New Haven, CT. Her Interdisciplinary autoethnographic practice reflects her lived experience. Through personal stories, she interrogates the intersections between the mind, the body, and space to understand how these experiences relate to a broader cultural context.
Natia Lemay has exhibited widely throughout North America. The artist was selected for the 2024 Fountainhead residency in Miami and the 2022 Royal Drawing School Residency in Dumfries, Scotland. She was awarded the National Trust Prize at Expo Chicago 2024, with her work acquired by High Museum in Atlanta in addition to being collected by the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Minnesota Museum of American Art, The North Dakota Museum of Art and The Montclair Museum of Art. She received her BFA from Ontario College of Art and Design in 2021 with a minor in Social Sciences and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2023.
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Emma Avery
Emma Avery is a Plastic Surgery resident at the University of Toronto. She has published a number of papers in science, medicine and EDI. Her clinical interests lie in craniofacial surgery, microsurgery and trauma reconstruction. Her current research focuses are biomedical engineering, equitable access to health care within the Indigenous and LGBTQ* community, and understanding the role of burn out and stress amongst university students and young professionals. She aspires a mentor and role model to other female (and LGBTQ*) surgical trainees and scientists. Outside of work she enjoys playing soccer, boxing, indoor climbing.
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Ilene Sova
Ilene Sova is an Artist and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Art at OCAD University in the Contemporary Drawing and Painting Department. As an artist, Sova has had extensive exhibitions in Canada and abroad. Sova’s work has most notably been shown at the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art, FUZE Caribbean Art Festival, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and Mutuo Centro de Arte in Barcelona. She is also the founder of Blank Canvases, an in-school arts programme with partnerships in both the TDSB and TCDSB. She is an award-winning Artist & Program Director offering 20+ years of developing, governing, and advancing art programs for renowned organisations. She has been invited to speak nationally and internationally at conferences on new and emergent arts pedagogies, focusing on student-centred learning and studio processes, and to train faculty at institutions such as Pratt Institute for the Arts, Harbourfront Centre, the University of the Bahamas, Art Gallery of Ontario and OCAD University. Her innovative curriculum and art projects have been featured on national news platforms such as MSN/NBC, CBC, Globe and Mail, and Global News. Most recently, Sova was awarded a sabbatical because she was invited by Lived Places Publishing in New York to write a textbook for studio and art history courses on decolonial art practices in the Americas entitled Art, Land and Ancestral Stories.
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Sarah Robayo Sheridan
Sarah Robayo Sheridan is a Toronto-based writer, curator, and educator specializing in contemporary art. She has held prominent roles at the University of Toronto Art Museum, The Power Plant, and Mercer Union. Following a BA at Queen’s University, she worked in magazine publishing and media arts presentation before obtaining an MA from the California College of the Arts. In addition to serving as Curator of the Massey College Art Collection, and Executive Director of the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation, she is Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.
