Understanding the World through Aesthetics

Elvira Hufschmid is a multimedia artist from Germany and a current Doctoral Research Fellow at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Her research focuses on Aesthetic Transformation processes as a methodology for inter – and transdisciplinary collaboration and learning. In her PhD research in the Queen’s University Cultural Studies program, she applies an Aesthetic Transformation strategy to investigate narratives of land enclosure as they relate to colonial property regimes of the settler society. As a collaborator in the SSHRC-funded art and science project ‘Leaning Out of Windows – Art and Physics Collaborations through Aesthetic Transformations’ and as an affiliated researcher at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts & Sciences (BAS), Berlin University of the Arts, Germany (2017-19), she co-investigates the ways in which metaphor acts as a common code between art and science. Hufschmid holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, US, and she taught as a Visiting Artist at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, BC, as well as a Guest Professor for ‘Artistic Transformation Processes’ at the Berlin University of the Arts, Germany.

Dr. Erica Caden completed her undergraduate degree in physics at The College of New Jersey and completed her PhD at Drexel University in Philadephia, PA, working on the Double Chooz experiment. She moved to Sudbury, Ontario as a postdoctoral fellow at Laurentian on SNO+ and became a Research Scientist at SNOLAB in 2016. Caden works on the neutrino experiments at the lab: SNO+, HALO, and nEXO. She is passionate about science communication, expressing scientific ideas through art, and making sure there is room for everyone who wants to join the scientific community.

Sunny Kerr is a male settler of Scottish and Irish descent living and working in Katarokwi/Kingston, Ontario. As Curator of Contemporary Art at Agnes Etherington Art Centre with adjunct teaching appointments at Queen’s University, Kerr thinks with the experiences, provocations and potentials of art and the uneasy legacies of culture amid the urgencies of racist violence and climate change. He continually tries to contextualize and put his work in reciprocal dialogue with inventive artistic thinking-making. Recent curatorial work includes Drift: Art and Dark Matter and projects with artists Yam Lau, Tau Lewis, Chris Kline, Ciara Phillips, Judy Radul, Walter Scott and Ibghy and Lemmens. He explores curatorial thinking with graduate students in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies, Department of Film and Media while pursuing a doctorate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University.