Ava Berkson
Babita Sharma
Chester Friesen
Dona Maria Mouaness
Fisher Talbot-Hills
Gerardo Sanchez
Ingrid Askey
Jericho Sanderson-Knight
Kali Catterall
Lisa Aernoudts
Lumi Mitton
Magali Christensen
Mak Hogue
Raven (Qingqing) Li
Taj D’souza Muise
Opening: Wednesday, April 16, 6PM-9PM
Event description: The Shifting Forms exhibition showcases the accomplished work of advanced
ceramics students from Concordia University. Born from rigorous dedication and collaborative
teamwork, these pieces represent growth and cultivation of technical knowledge and experience
in ceramics.
By sharing their insights and achievements, they demonstrate a growing confidence with the
medium, shifting perspectives on their ability to challenge themselves and find comfort in
innovative approaches to working with clay and glazes.
This exhibition highlights their evolution, while being a celebration of the development of a strong
sense of community. Their collective desire to further explore, and their passion for sharing their
commitment to ceramics with the community honors its collaborative foundation.
Ava Berkson
Ava Berkson is a Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist originally from Washington State. With a
special affinity for drawing and ceramics, Ava embarks on illustrative storytelling through elements
of movement and dance. Drawn from her childhood in an Irish-Ashkenazi Jewish home, Ava is
heavily inspired by Celtic folklore and knot work, Yiddish dance styles and Irish and Yiddish folk
music. As a musician herself, music and storytelling are inseparable materials from her work,
compatible with multidisciplinary installation. Ava currently resides in Montreal as she is
completing her Bachelors in Fine Arts at Concordia University.
Babita Sharma
Babita Sharma is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice includes drawing, painting, and
ceramics. Born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, and deeply rooted in the South Asian
diaspora community, Sharma's work is driven by process, healing, and mindfulness. Her art
reflects a profound connection to nature and her Indian heritage, weaving together personal
experiences with broader cultural narratives.In her ceramic work, Sharma prioritizes sustainable
practices and traditional techniques, exploring themes of connection, ancestry, and environmental
consciousness. Through her diverse media, she creates works that invite contemplation and
reflection.
Chester Friesen
Chester Friesen is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tio'tia:ke (Montreal, Quebec), currently
pursuing a BFA in Fibre and Material Practices at Concordia University. His work explores three-
dimensional space through both fibre and ceramic sculpture. While his fibre work delves into the
metaphysical relationship between people and materials, his ceramic pieces focus on aesthetic
form and stylistic expression. Drawing inspiration from underground cartoonists like R. Crumb and
Leomi Sadler, Friesen's ceramic practice merges realism with primitive forms, often featuring
character-based figures that serve as vessels for open-ended narratives and personal
interpretation.
Dona Maria Mouaness
Dona Maria is a Lebanese Canadian artist currently based in Montreal, primarily working in
ceramics, drawing and photography. Dona describes her practice as being a personal excavation
of memory and visual storytelling. Born and raised in Jbeil, a mediterranean city in Lebanon, her
creative practice is deeply influenced by the rich tapestry of her homeland; the history, the
limestone and the landscapes. Through her art, she emphasizes the vital importance of a
nurturing connection to the land, both earth and sea, as well as the communal life that shapes
identity. She considers her work to be a reclamation of heritage and an ode to her people,
therefore inevitably political. Dona has exhibited her work in several group exhibitions in Montreal
and is now completing her BFA in studio arts at Concordia University.
Fisher Talbot-Hills
Fisher Talbot-Hills is a Montreal-based ceramicist completing his Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at
Concordia University. Born and raised in a small town in Western Massachusetts, the great
outdoors is his biggest inspiration. Inspired by symmetry and asymmetry in nature, notably with
insects and bugs, Fisher’s practice centers on the ongoing investigation of faces and emotion in
figurative sculptures. In his exploration of hand building, glaze mixing and surface treatment,
Fisher has recently been diving into human expression with an ongoing series of masks. In the
cold, almost unfeeling look of an insect, to the varying range of human emotion, he combines
several elements to create creatures of biomorphic distortion.
Gerardo Sanchez
Gerardo Sanchez is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores memory, identity, spirituality,
and perception in the context of immigration. Originally from Mexico, he has spent the last decade
navigating different cultural landscapes, an experience that deeply informs his practice. Now
based in Canada, Gerardo’s work juxtaposes political and social tensions with a search for
spiritual reconciliation, often incorporating religious iconography to examine ideological clashes.
Ingrid Askey
Ingrid Askey is a 21 year old Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist originating from Kansas state
residing in Canada since 2012. They’re in their third year of completing a BFA in studio arts at
Concordia University, specializing in ceramics, linocut prints, and oil painting. Their artwork is
informed by their experience as a sex worker and artist, combining the two fields of work to
create interdisciplinary works that explore their relationship to sex work from an intersectional
feminist perspective. Their goal is to create works of art that further the discussion around the
stigma surrounding sex work, as well as to create a voice for fellow workers in the industry to
resonate with and find representation within. Their work is informed by them and their fellow
workers in the industry’s lived experience, allowing for further dialogue on a subject that they
believe is under-represented in the world of fine arts.
Jericho Sanderson-Knight
Jericho Sanderson-Knight is an interdisciplinary installation artist working with ceramics, textiles,
and printmaking. Based in Tiohtià:ke, Montreal, Quebec, her practice explores themes of care,
containment, and emotional labor, often drawing parallels between material structures and human
resilience. Through a tactile approach, she investigates the tensions between strength and
fragility, using hard and soft materials to reflect the complexities of vulnerability and support. Her
installations invite audiences to engage with the physicality of care and the structures that shape
our emotional and communal experiences.
Jericho is currently completing her BFA at Concordia University. She also has extensive
experience in production assistance, project management, and artistic collaboration, having
worked with musicians, designers, and artists to bring immersive creative projects to life. Her
installations invite audiences to engage with the physicality of care and the structures that shape
our emotional and communal experiences.
Kali Catterall
Kali Catterall (2000) is a contemporary mixed media artist based in Montreal, specializing in
painting and sculpture. Passionate about art from a young age, she decided to pursue a career in
art therapy after experiencing the positive impact of art on her own mental health. She works with
a variety of materials, including paint, clay, papier mache and charcoal.The abstract nature of her
paintings reflect her interest in a playful and intuitive practice. With many works also inspired by
my cats, her practice serves as a tool for meditation on the joy we can find within and share with
ourselves, our animals, and the world around us. She earned a DEC in Fine Arts from Dawson
College in 2019 and is currently completing her BA in Fine Arts with a minor in Psychology at
Concordia University (2024).
Lisa Aernoudts
Lisa Aernoudts is a Dutch-Canadian multidisciplinary artist working primarily with the mediums of
ceramics, drawing and painting. Her artworks explore the liminal aspects of natural spaces that
have been modified by human hands and intentions and then given back to nature. She considers
these spaces as an entry point to dig into her own cultural roots in the Netherlands, where so
much of the territory has been conquered by man from the sea. She attempts to put forward
these paradoxes using a mix of abstraction and surrealism while putting emphasis on technical
exploration, continuously eager to investigate new manual processes.
Lumi Mitton
Lumi Mitton is a playwright, performer and sculptor from Rexton, New Brunswick. Her writing
focuses on surrealist and in-yer-face theatre with themes of disease, motherhood, and ecology.
She is interested by the ability objects have to tell stories. As a Maritimer she considers her work
to be folk-art reflecting the landscape and people of her youth. She is currently working on two
productions for the St-Ambroise Fringe Festival, as writer and producer of To Pieces, and Director
of Better Off Dead. While completing a BFA at Concordia she is currently a part of Teesri Duniya’s
Fireworks Play Development program as well as Imago Theatre’s Artista program.
Magali Christensen
Magali Christensen is a French-Danish artist raised in the states. She has a lifelong practice of
fiber arts and sculpture that she kept up during her degree in Education at McGill University.
Magali spent the pandemic teaching in Japan where she re-discovered a love of clay, moving
back to Montreal in 2023 to commit to the medium full-time. She is in her second year studying
ceramics at Concordia University in Montreal where she spends her time teaching, spending time
with loved ones, applying for Canadian PR, and making art.
Mak Hogue
Mak Hogue is a ceramic artist, illustrator, and printmaker based in Tiohtià:ke, Montreal, Quebec.
Currently, they are pursuing an undergraduate degree at Concordia University. Hogue studied at
H.B. Beal Secondary School's specialized art program, Beal Art, from 2018 to 2020, where they
discovered their passion for ceramics and print media. Afterwards, they continued their studies at
the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, taking courses in interdisciplinary arts before
transferring to Concordia University in Montreal, where they are completing their BFA in ceramics.
Hogue’s goal is to teach visual arts and ceramics to younger generations. Taking steps toward
that, they taught art at a non-profit summer camp in 2023.
Raven(Qingqing) Li
Raven Li is a multimedia artist from China. Raven started her art development in Montreal in 2020,
focusing on the interaction between different materials; her works keep breaking the borderline of
real life by playing with surrealist expression. Raven is an artist whose live environment influenced
her art style a lot, The international living experience in Quebec and her cultural background from
Canton make up her unique point of view. The ideas of surrealism, Nihilism and antique art
features are some of the most common themes in her work. Eye eyeball is one of the most
common elements in Raven's work, she believes it can establish the connection between the
audience and the artwork.
Taj D’souza Muise
Taj D'souza Muise is an artist currently pursuing his BFA at Concordia University. He mainly works
in three-dimensional media. Muise is of Indian-Portuguese and Canadian-Lebanese descent. His
mixed heritage has brought an interest towards his practice in themes such as cultural
assimilation, violent histories, nationalism,
