Annie is a visual artist and educator living on the unceded homelands of the hənqəminəm and Skwxwú7mesh speaking peoples in Burnaby, British Columbia. The underpinnings of her socially engaged art practice use critical race theory and women of colour feminist theories to question the complex systems that govern our relationships. Despite the rigorous critical and theoretical framework lurking beneath her work, Canto comes at these weighty issues from the side, with an irreverently serious playfulness. In her performance and print-based practices, Canto shepherds us away from the more attention grabbing instances of othering and alienation; towards the quiet moments, those slippery experiences of social rupture and its flipside of kinship and belonging. With a surgeon's precision and a surrealist's cheeky flippancy, she turns our gaze towards the moments that normally slip under our radar; the misconnections, the halting attempts, the fault lines, the absurd, all those unintentionally telling moments that expose the things we simultaneously fear and long for. Canto has been artist in residence for Artist for Kids Summer Camp through Gordon Smith Gallery, North Vancouver, BC, and has shown work with No. 3 Gallery and Access Gallery’s PLOT in Vancouver, BC. Her most recent print series and event space, My Beautiful Laundry, was a collaboration with the Klondike Institute of Arts and Culture in Dawson City, YT. She currently works as a humanities instructor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and mentors the creation of BIPOC lead cooperatives through Solid State Community Industries in Surrey, BC.

Bio cred: Nura Ali