Art Nest: Public Art at TOAF
Home for Public Art Installations
Art Nest is TOAF’s annual public art incubator, providing access to artists who are at the early stage of taking their studio practice to public space.
See Art Nest Archives.
Myta Sayo, Curator of Art Nest 2025
I’m thrilled to be curating this year’s Art Nest exhibition, which brings large-scale and thought-provoking installations to the public. Art Nest offers a rare opportunity: a space where emerging curators and artists engage directly with public art. These works aren’t made for quiet contemplation in white cubes – they’re placed into the bustle and noise of urban life. That shift changes the stakes. It asks artists to think not only about form and concept, but about visibility, execution, accessibility, and risk.
This year’s artists were selected for the ambition of their practices and the clarity of their proposals. Each one pushes material limits while opening up space for dialogue. As their artworks take shape, I’m excited to share a few thoughts on the nature of their work.
Sharl G. Smith is building a freestanding sculpture from oversized stainless steel beads and aircraft cable. She and her team undertake the arduous task of weaving under tension, creating a structural tapestry that feels both solid and ephemeral. Drawing on physical forces, she composes a visual language that reminds us how our world is built – one knot, one strain at a time.
Tracey-Mae Chambers will create a large-scale woven yarn installation that spans across two trees in the Art Nest square. Her red yarn works speak to belonging, identity, and decolonization. They offer a “soft” intervention in an urban setting, inviting viewers to step in, pause, and reflect.
Svava Juliusson’s practice begins with the ordinary: rope, cable ties, and for Art Nest, plant pots – everyday objects drawn from her immediate environment. Her process is one of attaching one thing to another until a familiar shape emerges, a method that collides with ideas of landscape and domestic space. Her gestures repeat, iterate, and insist – not toward uniformity, but toward a quiet transformation, revealing how the monumental might arise from the most familiar things.
Smith, Chambers, and Juliusson alike reframe weaving as a site of strength and transformation. They ask us to reconsider what kinds of work we value – and the kinds of bodies we imagine performing it.
Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster explore the politics of play. For Art Nest, they will rearrange off-the-shelf ping pong tables into a deliberate traffic jam – tables without nets, with no clear sides or direction. The expected flow of the game breaks down; there’s no obvious way to win, and that uncertainty is part of the invitation. The work encourages improvisation and insists on collaboration. Strangers are drawn into a new site of play, where rules are broken and active participation becomes the means through which the game (and art) is continually reinvented.
Jes Young turns to pigeons. They’re creating a porcelain flock in lifelike poses – eating, resting, preening. For Young, pigeons are a metaphor for resilience. Like artists, they persist, even when pushed out or dismissed. Their work is dedicated to those who’ve been “shooed” from spaces and honors those who adapt, endure, and stay.
Young, and Jamrozik and Kempster offer playful interventions that interrupt the seriousness we’re conditioned to bring to art. Their works invite us to play, linger, and look again.
This is my first time working on a curatorial project of this scale, and I’m deeply grateful for the support of Technical Director Calder Ross, the guidance of Mentor Rui Pimenta, and the leadership of Executive & Creative Director anahita azrahimi.
Right now, these works exist as sketches, models, and conversations. The artists are creating them as you read this, and soon, they’ll take shape. I look forward to watching these works emerge, and to sharing more with you as they do.
—Myta Sayo, Art Nest 2025
Meet the Curator
Myta Sayo,
Independent Curator
Myta Sayo is an art dealer with extensive experience placing works with collectors across North America, Europe, and Asia. As studio manager at Kal Mansur Studio, she has overseen the production of large-scale works for global corporate and hospitality clients. She founded and ran reference: contemporary (2015-2021), an online gallery that exhibited at major New York and Miami fairs, and later operated Myta Sayo Gallery in Toronto’s Dundas West (2021-2024), showcasing mid-career and emerging artists. Her gallery continues to participate in Art Toronto and the Affordable Art Fair New York. Through her advisory, Myta Sayo Research Projects (MSRP), she bridges contemporary art with research-driven practice, collaborating with consultants, architects, and designers to place works, secure commissions, and curate exhibitions. Outside of her professional work, she is an amateur CNC machinist and a keen novice golfer.
Meet the Participating Artists
Tracey-Mae Chambers,
Artist
Tracey-Mae grew up as a stranger to her own story; adopted and re-named, grafted into a new family tree.
As an adopted person the discovery in adulthood of her Métis heritage was a revelation that set
her on a path of discovery. Her developing story is as an indigenous heritage woman and her
quest for harmony with the natural world. She is a proud citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario.
Since July 2021 Tracey-Mae has created over 150 fibre art installations at residential school historical sites, museums, art galleries and other public spaces.
The goal of this project #hopeandhealingcanada is to bridge the gap between settlers and First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people by creating art that is approachable and non-confrontational and starting a conversation about decolonization and reconciliation.
Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster,
Artists
Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster create spaces and objects that interrupt everyday situations in critically engaging and playful ways. They operate at a variety of scales, from temporary installations to permanent public artworks. Their practice focuses on ‘social infrastructures’ which seek to build community by fostering playful interactions in physical space and alternative methods of documentation as forms of historic preservation. Their work is in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (Albright-Knox) and the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts (CEPA Gallery). They have exhibited internationally, including solo shows at Vtape in Toronto, the Weissenhofwerkstatt in Stuttgart and Gallery Kolektiv 318 in Marseille.
Svava Thordis Juliusson,
Artist
Svava Thordis Juliusson is a visual artist born in Siglufjörður, Iceland in 1966, and is currently based in Haldimand County, Ontario. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at NSCAD University in 1997. Juliusson completed her MFA in studio at York University in 2007.
Juliusson has exhibited her work widely and participated in residencies in Canada and abroad. Her work can be found in the collections of The Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton ON; McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton ON; Akureyri Art Museum, Iceland; Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax NS; the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, as well as, in several private collections.
Sharl Smith,
Artist
Sharl G. Smith is a Jamaican-born Canadian sculptor based in Kitchener/Waterloo. She earned her Bachelor of Architecture in 2003 and spent over a decade working as a designer and architectural professional in the United States. Smith moved to Canada in 2015 and became the sole proprietor of Sun Drops Studio the following year. Smith’s artistic journey combines her architectural background with large-scale public art. Her work resonates deeply with themes of connectivity, community and feminist care-based value systems.
Jes Young,
Artist
Jes is a non-binary educator and sculpture artist based in Toronto, Canada. Their practice investigates alternative uses of space after experiencing housing insecurity through creating ceramic multiples inspired by urban infestations. Young received their MFA, BFA, and BEd from York University. They were a guest artist at York University and exhibited in Toronto at Nuit Blanche (2022), The Artist Project Toronto (2023 & 2025), The Clay and Glass Gallery (2025) and The Gladstone House(2023). They have exhibited internationally at PADA Residency in Barreiro, Portugal (2023), and Gracía in Antigua, Guatemala (2023).
Meet the Collaborators
Rui Pimenta,
Independent Curator, Art Nest Advisor
Rui Pimenta practiced as a visual artist from 2000-2014, exhibiting his work extensively in Canada and internationally. Since then his creative focus has shifted towards programming and curatoriation. In 2009 he founded Art Spin, an arts organization now entering its 13th year of presenting site-specific, multidisciplinary programming in unique/alternative spaces and best known for its bicycle art tours. He was the Co-Director for Median Contemporary (2008-10) and has curated projects for the Toronto Artists Project, the Toronto Outdoor Exhibition, Eastern Front Gallery and the Government of Portugal. He has served on various arts council juries, was a member of the City of Toronto’s Public Art Strategy Advisory Committee and currently sits on The Bentway Advisory Committee. His curatorial aspirations are largely motivated by the enthusiastic pursuit of creating engaging and accessible ways to present art in public space.
His curatorial aspirations are largely motivated by the enthusiastic pursuit of creating engaging and accessible ways to present art in public space.
Calder Ross,
Art Nest Technical Director
With 15 years of experience in the execution and production of events and art exhibitions, Calder has found a niche as an expert at executing polished final products based on ambitious artistic visions.
Calder has worked as head stage manager and production designer for Fashion Art Toronto for 12 years. He works with 50 designers and performers a season, weaving their individual visions into a cohesive show.
Calder has designed stages and lighting plots for many events in Toronto. Most notably—Promise Indoor Events/Cherry Beach Sundays (since 2018), Fashion Art Toronto (Since 2012), DOCD (Summer 2023), and Summer Camp (2022). He is excited to bring his production expertise to TOAF, Canada’s largest and longest-running annual contemporary art fair.
Thank You
