Faculty

Solange Adum Abdala is of Palestinian and Lebanese descent and is based in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations. Solange has exhibited in solo and group shows and festivals internationally. She received First Place at the ICPNA Photography Salon in 2011, and her work has been featured in Collage: Women of the Prix Pictet. In 2024, she was awarded the Affiliated Fellowships Master’s Program Award at UBC. She was selected for the 2025 Launch Pad project in Vancouver. In 2020, she co-founded Galería Pública, a platform that promotes contemporary photo-based arts production in Peru.

Rebecca (Becky) Bair is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in photography. Becky was an AICAD teaching fellow in 2022 at OCAD University, and a sessional faculty member at ECU since 2019. She joined the faculty of Culture and Community full-time in 2024. Becky teaches in Foundation, prioritizing diverse, diasporic, Black, interdisciplinary, and cultural methodologies, materials, and makers.

Annie Briard’s photography has been the object of exhibitions at Royale Projects (Los Angeles), AC Institute (New York), the Quebec Biennale, Burrard Arts Foundation (Vancouver), MKG127 (Toronto) and Joyce Yahouda Gallery (Montreal). Group exhibitions have spanned The Three Shadows Photography Centre (Beijing), the Lincoln Film Centre (New York), the Switzerland Architecture Museum (Basel), the Canada Council for the Arts and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Her 2024 artist book The Glow of 100 Moons is distributed in Canada and the US.

Stephanie Gagne is a Vancouver-based artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans photography, sculpture, drawing, and video. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from ECU and a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University. Influenced by themes of popular culture and childhood nostalgia, Stephanie’s creative research explores the dynamics between memory and collective cultural narratives, with a particular focus on the role of media in shaping personal experience.

Jingqing Jia is a filmmaker, educator and entrepreneur whose interdisciplinary practice spans visual art, design and media. Her teaching and creative work focus on film production, media arts and courses in creative thinking and studio practice. Drawing from her industry experience and artistic perspective, Qing encourages engagement across multiple dimensions of practice, from visual storytelling to cultural and critical reflection.

Yani Kong is a writer, editor, and scholar of contemporary art. Her writing appears in publications across Canada and internationally. Their research areas are reception aesthetics, contemporary art history, digital ecology and eco-aesthetics. As a member of the Low Carbon Research Methods Working Group and director of the Small File Media festival, they explore sustainable practices in streaming media.

Kelly Lycan is a photo-based installation artist based on the traditional unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam Nations. Kelly investigates how objects and images are placed and displayed in the world and the cycle of value they experience. She has taught at ECU since 2013 and is a sessional lecturer at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. Her work has been exhibited across Canada, the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

Brady Ciel Marks is a computational artist and interactive-arts mentor. Brady is concerned with our technological entanglement and creates media configurations that express a middle way between technological fetishism and dystopian fantasies. She works with technology and against technological thinking. Brady holds an MSc in Interactive Arts from Simon Fraser University. She has a broad understanding of the contemporary issues and technologies in our mediated digital environment, with a specialty in sound, light and interaction.

Jonathan Middleton is an artist and curator working between Toronto and Vancouver. His work has been exhibited, screened, and performed at VIVO, Plaza Projects, Contemporary Art Gallery, Tracey Lawrence Gallery, Vancouver International Film Festival, InsideOut, and Chicago International Film Festival, No Soul For Sale Festival (at Tate Modern), and Slakthusateljéerna (Stockholm). Jonathan has worked extensively in curatorial and directorial positions since 1999 at organizations including Western Front, Fillip, Or Gallery, Art Metropole, C Magazine, and Vancouver Art Book Fair.

Laura Hart Newlon’s work has recently been exhibited at the Anatolia International Film Festival (Istanbul), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha), Frye Art Museum (Seattle), Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans), Specialist (Seattle), Bellevue Art Museum, SOIL (Seattle) and the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts. Her work appears in the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection and Photographic Center Northwest. Laura holds an MFA in Photography and an MA in Cultural Anthropology

Birthe Piontek’s art practice involves photography, installation, sculpture, and drawing, focusing on the interconnections between photographic images, objects, history, and personal and collective memory. Birthe is an award-winning author of several photography books, and her work has been exhibited solo and in group shows internationally. At ECU, she is especially interested in utilizing the photographic medium to foster deeper connections between people, expand knowledge and understanding, and build stronger community.

Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez works in photography, film and video to examine the temporal ambiguity of our experiences of images. His work has been exhibited internationally, most recently in group exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, at Luhring Augustine, New York and at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow. His work has been featured in Artforum, Border Crossings, and the New York Times and others. In 2019 he was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture.