Vtape’s Board of Directors works by a consensus model to make decisions, and policy discussions are undertaken on a yearly basis with full Board participation.
Given the range of artists we represent in our distribution collection, and the importance of diversity at the Board level, we maintain representation on our Board by at least one member from outside of Toronto, at least one Francophone member, one or more Aboriginal members, and one or more members of colour. In addition, to achieve a true reflection of the media arts community, we maintain representation on our Board from emerging, mid-career and established video and media artists as well as from critics, curators, and/or archivists specializing in video and media art exhibition, criticism, and preservation.
Current Board of Directors
Hélène Brousseau
Erika DeFreitas (Treasurer)
Andrea Fatona (Co-chair)
Richard Fung
Jean Gagnon
John Greyson
Oliver Husain (Secretary)
Michelle Jacques
Lisa Myers (President, Co-chair)
Shelley Niro
Hélène Brousseau is a visual artist and the Digital Media and Visual Resources Librarian at Concordia University, subject librarian for Cinema, Contemporary Dance and Music programs. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in visual arts (Concordia), a certificate in archival studies (UQAM) and a Masters of Information Sciences (Université de Montréal). From 2016 to 2022, she was the Digital collections and systems librarian at Artexte, where she also served as Interim Director. Her research interests include topics related to open access in the arts, research-creation and participatory digital culture in Wikimedia projects.
Erika DeFreitas is a Scarborough-based multidisciplinary conceptual artist. Placing an emphasis on process, gesture and documentation, her work explores the influence of language, loss and culture on the formation of identity with the use of textile-based works and performative actions which are photographed. DeFreitas has shown nationally and internationally, including Project Row Houses and the Museum of African American Culture (Houston), the Art Gallery of York University (Toronto), and Platform Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts (Winnipeg). She was a recipient of the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts 2016 Finalist Artist Prize, the 2016 John Hartman Award, and long-listed for the 2017 Sobey Art Award. DeFreitas holds a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto. erikadefreitas.com.
Andrea Fatona is an Associate Professor and is currently the Director of the Criticism and Curatorial Practice Graduate Program at the OCAD University. She is an independent curator and the former curator of contemporary art at the Ottawa Art Gallery. Fatona has worked as the Programme Director at Video In (Vancouver), Co-Director of Artspeak Gallery (Vancouver) and Artistic Director of Artspace Gallery (Peterborough). She is the primary investigator of the SSHRC-funded State of Blackness: From Production and Presentation conference project and has developed a vast network of black cultural producers. Fatona has also contributed to the development of pedagogical materials for the classroom and community organizations. She is a member of the editorial committee of Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, and C Magazine.
Richard Fung is a video artist, cultural critic, and Professor in the Faculty of Art at OCAD University. His award winning productions have been widely screened and collected internationally, and his essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. He is the co-author with Monika Kin Gagnon of 13: Conversations on Art and Cultural Race Politics. Richard sat on the founding board of the Images Festival and has served on the boards of A Space Gallery and the Toronto Arts Council, as well as the editorial committee of FUSE Magazine. He also sat on the Media Arts Committee and the first Racial Equality Committee of the Canada Council for the Arts, which drafted guidelines and strategy, and oversaw implementation of equity for the institution. For his work Richard has received the Bell Canada Award, the Toronto Arts Award and the Kessler Award for “substantial contribution to LGBT Studies.” richardfung.ca.
Jean Gagnon (PhD) was Director of Preservation and Access to the Collection at the Cinémathèque Québécoise, the largest private audiovisual collection in Canada. He is a well-known curator, critic and arts administrator who has been active for the last 30 years. He was the initiator and director of the DOCAM Research Alliance from 2005 to 2010. He currently is part of the board of directors of the contemporary photography art magazine ‘Ciel variable’. He has served on the board of directors of the Cinemathéque Québécoise from 2002 to 2007; as President of the board of the Cinémathèque Québécoise’s Foundation from 2001 to 2004; and as Vice-President of the Board of the Hexagram Institute for Research and Creation from 2000 to 2007.
John Greyson is a video/film artist whose award-winning shorts, features and installations include Gazonto (2015), Murder in Passing (2013), Fig Trees (2009), Lilies (1996), and Zero Patience (1993). Greyson is recipient of the 2012 Cinema Politica Alanis Obamsawin Award, the 2000 Toronto Arts Award for Film/Video, and the 2007 Bell Canada Prize in Video Art. His work has been presented at retrospectives in Toronto (TIFF/AGO), Birmingham, Halifax and Prague, and has won over 22 best film prizes in festivals in Berlin (3 Teddies), TIFF, Montreal, Locarno, Johannesburg, San Francisco, Vancouver, Los Angeles and Lisbon, as well as numerous LGBT festivals. An outspoken author, artist and activist engaged in diverse social justice issues, Greyson is the subject/co-author of The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson (2012), the co-editor of Queer Looks (1993), and author of Urinal and Other Stories (1993). He currently runs the Graduate Film Program at York University, where he has taught since 2004, and sits on the Advisory Boards/Boards of Directors of Cinema Politica, the Toronto Palestine Film Festival, Year Zero One, and Vtape.
Oliver Husain is a filmmaker and artist based in Toronto. Husain’s projects often begin with fragment of history, a rumor, a personal encounter or a distant memory. He uses a wide range of cinematic languages and visual pleasures — such as dance, puppetry, costume, and special effects — to animate his research and charm or fold the viewers into complex narrative set-ups. In 2018, his work was shown in solo exhibitions “Roving” at Remai Modern, Saskatoon; “were here” at Republic Gallery Vancouver; “French Exit” at Gallery Susan Hobbs, Toronto; and “Watermelons” at Gallery Clages, Cologne. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions and film festivals including: Forum Expanded, Berlinale, 2017; Kunstverein Nürnberg, Germany, 2017; Art Museum, University of Toronto, 2016; MAK Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2013; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA, 2011. Special screenings of his films took place at Pleasure Dome, Toronto, Canada, 2015, and at Experimenta Film Festival, Bangalore, India, 2011. His website is www.husain.de.
Michelle Jacques was born in Toronto to parents of Caribbean origin who immigrated to Canada in the 1960s. She is currently Head of Exhibitions and Collection/Chief Curator at Remai Modern in Saskatoon, having joined the museum team in early 2021. Formerly, she was Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, where she has curated exhibitions with contemporary artists Carol Sawyer, Rodney Sayers and Emily Luce, Gwen MacGregor, and Hiraki Sawa; co-curated major retrospectives of the work of the Canadian artists Anna Banana and Jock Macdonald; and developed a series of installations that used the Gallery’s collection to evoke cross-cultural conversations. Prior to moving west, she held various roles in the Contemporary and Canadian departments of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; was the Director of Programming at the Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax; and taught courses in writing, art history at curatorial studies at NSCAD University, University of Toronto Mississauga, and OCAD University.
Lisa Myers is an Assistant Professor in York University’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, and is an independent curator and artist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration. She received her MFA in Criticism and Curatorial practice from OCAD University; her recent artwork involves printmaking, stop-motion animation, and performance. Since 2010, Myers has worked with anthocyanin pigment from blueberries in printmaking and stop-motion animation. Her participatory performances involve sharing berries and other food items in social gatherings reflecting on the value found in place and displacement, straining and absorbing. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions at venues including Urban Shaman (Winnipeg), Art Gallery of Peterborough and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Myers’s writings have been published in a number of exhibition publications in addition to the journals Senses and Society, C Magazine and FUSE Magazine. She is based in Port Severn and Toronto, Ontario and is a member of Beausoleil First Nation.
Shelley Niro was born in Niagara Falls, NY. Currently she lives in Brantford, Ontario, where she is a member of the Six Nations Reserve, Bay of Quinte Mohawk, Turtle Clan. A multi-media artist whose work involves photography, painting, beadwork, and film, Niro is conscious of the impact post-colonial media have had on Indigenous people. Like many artists from different Native communities, she works relentlessly to present people in realistic and exploratory portrayals, in photo series such as Mohawks in Beehives, This Land is Mime Land, and M: Stories of Women. Niro’s films include Honey Moccasin, It Starts with a Whisper, The Shirt, Kissed by Lightning, and Robert’s Paintings. An Honours graduate of the Ontario College of Art, Niro received her MFA from the University of Western Ontario. In 2012, she was the inaugural recipient of the Aboriginal Arts Award, presented through the Ontario Arts Council. In 2017, she received a Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts from the Canada Council; the Scotiabank Photography Award; and the Hnatyshyn Foundation REVEAL Award. Niro also received an Arts and Culture Award from the Dreamcatcher Charitable Foundation. Niro continues to produce work reflecting herself and her community. shelleyniro.ca/
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