Board of Directors

Vtape’s Board of Directors works using a consensus model to make governance 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 try to 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)
Ryan Ferko
John Greyson
Oliver Husain (Secretary)
Michelle Jacques
Lisa Myers (President, Co-chair)

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.

Ryan Ferko is an artist working predominantly in film and video. Between cinemas and galleries, his work is concerned with landscapes as unstable sources of narration, turning to myth, storytelling, amateur experts, and distorted memories as a way to find narratives alternative to official histories. Based in Toronto, recent work has been shown at Viennale, TIFF, NYFF, Black Canvas Festival de Cine Contemporaneo, amongst others. Since 2013, he has been working in collaboration with Parastoo Anoushahpour and Faraz Anoushahpour. Their shared practice explores the tension of multiple subjectivities as a strategy to address the power inherent in narrative structures. Foregrounding the idea of place as a central focus, their work seeks to both decode their surroundings and trouble the production of images through speculative narration and dialectical imagery. Their recent work has shown at Punto de Vista Film Festival, Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Art (Spain), Sharjah Film Platform, Viennale, NYFF, TIFF, IFF Rotterdam, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Experimenta (Bangalore), and Media City Film Festival (Windsor, Ontario). www.ryanferko.com and www.p-f-r.com

John Greyson is a video/film artist whose award-winning shorts, features and installations include International Dawn Chorus Day (2021), 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.

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