Pride Toronto Partners With Artists For Pride 2021

The initiative showcases local visual and digital artists this summer…

Pride Toronto has commissioned six artists to create original pieces for the Pride 2021 visual branding campaign efforts. Pieces from the selected artists will be used across a variety of visual branding campaign efforts and social media campaigns this summer.

The assets or series of assets all incorporate themes related to Pride 2021 such as the Pride movement as a protest, the 40 years of Pride Toronto’s history, and our community.

Here’s a bit more on each of the artists who are working with Pride Toronto this summer.

Mitch Duncan (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in the east end of Toronto who is currently studying illustration at OCAD University. He loves reading comic books, painting, and walking and riding his bike around the city. He is best known for the posters he makes for anything: parties, drag shows, festivals, comedy shows, music events, etc. Besides making gig posters, he loves to create weird illustrations and paintings, and make zines. His first completed comic book, entitled The Sculpture Garden, is a queer sci-fi story about self-preservation in an isolating, brutalist cityscape, which he will be self-publishing once the pandemic is over.

Brian Jiang (they/them) is a queer non-binary artist and illustrator of Chinese descent based in Toronto. Their practice comprises of illustration, graphic design and fine art. Brian’s multidisciplinary works use both digital and analogue (drawing, painting) media to discuss topics such as identity politics, queerness, communities and communal spaces. Through Brian’s works, they seek to reconcile the complexity of personal identity and establish a connection between the individual, the physical and immaterial worlds. Brian finds inspiration in the formal qualities of folk art, ’60s Japanese graphic design, Surrealism, print ephemera and the natural world. They’re a 2020 graduate of OCAD University, and hold a Bachelors of Design in Illustration.

Eric Kostiuk Williams (he/they) is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Toronto. His work explores queer communities, gender expression and urban upheaval. Over the years, Eric has released several comic publications, including Our Wretched Town Hall from Retrofit Comics and Condo Heartbreak Disco from Koyama Press. He is an Eisner, two-time Lambda, and three-time Doug Wright Award nominee. He has also produced nightlife flyers, harm reduction campaigns, murals and music videos, and is currently at work on a new long-form graphic novel.

Jenelle Lewis (she/her) is a Black and queer freelance illustrator, born and raised in Jane & Finch Toronto. Growing up, Jenelle was inspired by graphic novels’ ability to capture so much motion alongside narrative in a single drawing, and she strives to emulate that in everything she does today. Her style ranges from bouncy hand-drawn typography to graphic design, but her main focus is illustrative, expressive comics and designs, as well as portraiture. In 2019, Jenelle won a graphic design contest, for Starbucks, against 1,518 stores across Canada, and she has worked for various businesses across Toronto, ensuring that acceptance and community are at the forefront of everything she does. Her goal is to show the world fluid concepts and designs no one has seen before, and she often thinks outside the box to get there.

Roza Nozari (she/her) is an illustrator and storyteller based in Tkaronto (Toronto). She is a tender-hearted queer, Muslim femme with ancestral roots in Iran. Her art practice is deeply informed by her own lived experiences, the communities she belongs to, and the profound critical thought of BIPOC scholars, healers, activists and community/cultural workers. Weaving together words and visuals, she tells stories of personal and collective wounding, of healing, of community, and of radical self-love. Her art is a radical re-imagining of queer and trans-affirming worlds, rooted in justice, in community, and in our collective healing. She strives to create art that feels like love letters to the communities she belongs to – art that says “I see you, I hear you, and I honour you – as you are.”

Vivian Rosas (she/her) is a Toronto-based queer, Mestizx/Latinx multidisciplinary illustrator, dancer and muralist. Feminism, empowerment and diversity are recurring themes in her work. Her goal is to create imagery that expresses a sense of inclusiveness for underrepresented communities.