“I am Demure – mindful after a bath,” Anu Kalra, 2024, Acrylics.

Celebrating Artists Nationwide Montreal Award Winner Julia Asimakopulos

We’re still so proud that artists from far and wide, from every corner of Canada, joined us in person and online this past summer. Seventy artists from outside Ontario in total! That’s quite something.

Julia Asimakopulos, a Montreal-based artist, is the recipient of the Jini Stolk Best of Online Art Fair Award, generously supported by Anonymous Friends of TOAF. This award was judged by Rachel Vincent-Clarke, Director and Curator of Galerie Robertson Arès in Montreal. Julia’s work is about distilling the fleeting nature of life by embedding fragments of found materials into concrete. The result is a series of commanding yet quiet sculptural works. Enjoy learning more about her work here.

You’ve also continued to support our artists by collecting their work through our online platform, connecting art lovers and artists everywhere. Sales have been flowing steadily since the Fair, and we’re thrilled that TOAF.ca remains a vibrant and viable year-round platform for artists.

Today, we’re also shining a spotlight on the artists who received Travel Bursaries, joining us from Québec, the Northwest Territories, Alberta, British Columbia, and Atlantic Canada. We’ve gathered a beautiful collection of their work here in this newsletter.

Keep your love coming.

P.S. TOAF’s Annual Holiday Market is almost here! Join us at 401 Richmond St. W, Suite 262, on November 27 from 5–8 PM. Browse Charms & Treasures, a sneak peak curated collection of our Holiday Market Artists. ❄️✨

Meet Julia

“I create abstract works with the versatile material of concrete that are hybrids between painting and sculpture, reflecting the fragility of life, the passage of time and the experience of loss. My desire to encapsulate fleeting moments despite the transitory nature of life has led me to embed fragments of paper, rusted metal, tar, threads, leaving them visible beneath the material’s surface and within carefully created interstices, sometimes leaving only a trace, like memories or fragments of human journeys.”

Explore Julia’s Work

Hear from Judge Rachel Vincent-Clarke

Vulnerability III, Julia Asimakopulos, 2021, Concrete, rusted metal, paper, dyed cotton thread & pigment.

“Each work feels like a held breath, a moment preserved despite its inevitable erosion. They speak to things that are carried and things that are let go. Her piece Vulnerability III captures this with particular force. It holds its own weight, but it also holds everything that slips through the cracks. The rough and the delicate, woven together without hierarchy. These are not sculptures that insist. They suggest. Asimakopulos’s understanding of human resilience and fragility informs the work at every level. This award recognizes a body of work that is not only materially thoughtful, technically astute, but emotionally precise. Quiet in tone, rich in meaning. With care and vision, Julia Asimakopulos makes concrete soft, porous, and alive.”

— Rachel Vincent-Clarke, Director and Curator of Galerie Robertson Arès in Montreal

TOAF Awards Program

Get to know Julia

Your non-art hobby?

Multiday trekking in rugged mountainous landscapes.

What has been the most unexpected source of inspiration for you?

While jogging along a country road I found some unusual fiber fragments on the roadside and fell in love with their fragility, especially after dyeing them. I have incorporated them in several concrete pieces, and am anxious about running out. They turned out to be from the underside of a car, not where I thought I could find inspiration.

Browse Julia’s Work

Travel Bursary Recipients

Left to right: ART MY WORLD VI, Pascal Normand, 2023, Ink jet print on canvas, spray paint & varnish; Along the Lynn Lines, Samira Sukhatme, 2025, Acrylic, pastels & thread on canvas (with an oak wood floating frame)

Left to right: Happy Trilobites are having fun swimming in the ocean under the sun, Anastasia Tiller, 2025, Variety of fibres on cotton; misshaps, K MacLean, 2023, Piano parts, wire, doll hands & acrylic.