VISUAL
As an illustration student at OCADU, Megan Vitug works hard to create art that feels like home to all who view it. Through her art, she wishes to tell her story of struggle and revelation as a queer, Filipino, young adult navigating life without much guidance.
She has specific interest in concept/character design, but still varies in content with her illustrations. In many of her pieces she creates a cohesive look by utilizing her style of bright colour palettes, simple linework, and busy details.
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Megan Vitug
Do I Know
You?
Take Care
Raw Reality
Michael Ward
Sometimes in life, you meet people with a light in them. This light can brighten your day after just one conversation and inspire you to achieve your most courageous dreams. Recently I had the privilege of speaking with Michael Ward, a true light who spoke with me about the many beautiful layers of their identity.
Growing up in Washington, Michael was diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma, a rare type of cancer, at ten years old. They told me that the biggest takeaway from their battle was to “live every day like it’s the last day but [then] really do so.”
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Zion
Greene-Bull
Zion Greene-Bull (they/them) is a mixed Guyanese non-binary person living on Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleilwatuth land (otherwise known as Vancouver). They’ve always been interested in a variety of artistic mediums, mostly watercolor until they got into digital art this year. They’ve been working on a project since July where they create album covers based on how they’re feeling, and the track names generally have something to do with those emotions as well as current events. For them, making the albums has been very cathartic and even constituted as a form of journaling. They also love to dance and sing to carefully curated playlists that act as a soundtrack to their life.
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Leilani Rocha
Leilani Rocha (she/her) is part of RANI’s Editorial & Poetry team. She writes that sometimes we may feel as if we are constantly presenting different versions of ourselves to the people in our life. Finding the ‘real her’ amongst the different identities is something Leilani continues to struggle with, which is the story behind this piece and its complimentary poem. Through this experience, she realized that what matters most is who she wants to be rather than who she is perceived to be. We can all be multifaceted, and that is beautiful.
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I am strong.
that is what they tell me,
'a strong passionate woman’
navigated life through being belittled
and arose as an immense being
capable of inspiration.
I like inspiring others
since as a woman,
it is harder for us to be seen.
and worse enough,
I am coloured.
brown skin, brown eyes,
the target of countless jokes
but how could it get to me?
I have the model intelligence
that would make Indian parents swoon.
I will be so successful one day.
‘your parents must be so proud,’
says every aunty and uncle I meet.
but God help me if they ever find out
I am different.
so tired of being confined to a box
that I make one for myself.
a box so grand
that even my morals get lost within.
I do what i want, when i want
in an attempt to discover something
anything
late nights and reckless thoughts
to distract from the fact that
I am hurting.
insecurity pushes perfection far from me
until it is merely a speck.
perhaps my past is to blame
or perhaps it was the expectations,
but I became fragile.
unable to accept what I am told
and overthink what I am not.
but I hide its effects
because through it all
I am many things
yet none of these sound like me.
Serena Halani
Serena Halani (she/her) is a photographer and creator from Toronto, with a strong interest and passion for fashion photography. She loves taking photos of people, with an editorial style, enhancing natural features by playing with light. As a woman of colour herself, she appreciates showing diversity through her work and is inspired by nature, the looks of others, and her own femininity.
Serena’s piece on identity is a self-portrait, reflecting one viewing oneself in a mirror; reflected back exactly as they are. This represents that while we have an identity, it is ever changing. She wanted to represent her own identity as a woman of colour, an artist, and a self-taught creative, while photographing herself in a simple form, as she sees herself, using the natural light around her. Serena believes identity is a form of our existence, with certain features that attach us to our identity, and others that we create ourselves, based on our environment and interests.
Nikolina Kupcevic
Nikolina Kupcevic (she/her) is a visual artist and graphic designer — she works to create a hypnotic, colourful, and bold visual realm through symbolism, surrealism, and expression. She loves exploring the world of the unseen — the energies, emotions, and self reflections that are untouchable, yet so real. Her hope is to connect to as many people as she can through her art, and to influence them to dive deeper into this realm of the unseen.
The piece she has submitted is part of a larger series where she explores our complex relationship with ourselves. It pictures a woman healing herself — literally. She is sitting in a field of energy, and another version of her is laying in her arms. Behind her are even more versions of her higher self coming from the magical sky. She painted “cloud flames” in the sky to symbolize an intense rush of calm. It is painted in acrylic paint on canvas, and it is 16 x 20 inches in size.
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Simran Kaur
Simran Kaur is a 19-year-old still life, product, and creative portrait photographer based in London. Their submission, entitled Opia, is a sequel to their creative portrait photography project titled Fogged. Fogged related their experience with self-isolation and how lost they felt at the time of creation.
Opia showcases them finally coming back to reality. It still doesn't feel real, it feels like they are still in a dream, but they did realize that this is reality by the slow passing days of January and then the start of February. That dream was their comfort zone and the reality doesn't taste as good to their eyes, ears, and even sense of taste, but they are forced to come back once more in order to fulfill their actual dream, the dream they can live in reality. It is fine to feel lost; it takes time to find your identity.
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Michael Peng
Michael Peng (he/him) is a freshman science nerd who is keenly interested in becoming an orthopedic or plastic surgeon. As a hobby, Michael enjoys drawing and painting realist portraitures. He’s also committed to a morning routine despite the lockdown which includes an intensive exercise.
The girl in Michael’s piece is a personification of the fulfillment of a happy and meaningful life. The baby swan in the bottom left corner symbolizes birth, and each successive swan going from left to right symbolizes each stage of life. The oldest swan reaps the ripe fruit of life as it drifts off into the horizon.
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Katya Shaporenko
Katya Shaporenko (she/her) is a 16-year-old artist in Vancouver. She has been drawing and painting for many years and is learning more about art day by day. She is trying to explore many mediums and a variety of art styles because she wants to find what works best for her. She is currently working on anime and manga drawing techniques and digital realism.
Rikk Lad
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Cam Phipps
Cam Phipps (she/her) is an artist based in Seattle that created this self-portrait as a mirror into her current self as well as a vision board for who she aspires to become. She is surrounded by things from the past that she has incorporated into her identity, and objects and ideas that she hoped to bring into her identity in the future.
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Julia Both
Julia Both (she/her) is a Brazilian artist that moved to Canada in 2016 and has been reconnecting with her culture and learning how to process this separation from her home country since then. Consequently, she found herself as an artist and enrolled at OCADU in the DPXA program.
Origens mimics Julia’s childhood memories in Brazil, and her sense of not belonging to her German and Italian background. To represent the feeling of a memory, she assembled a digital collage from pictures from her childhood to embody Brazilian New Years traditions through white roses in the sea. The second panel contains pictures of two of the most famous churches in Italy and Germany. Julia is at the centre, overwhelmed by those cultures. The images are projected on wood panels to develop a 3D quality. The oil painted figures represent the presence and absence of those cultures within herself. Her work is central to her acceptance of the grief from the physical barrier placed between her and her people and culture upon moving to Canada.
Kylee Smith (she/her) is a first-year student at the University of British Columbia studying agriculture. She’s originally from Ontario but decided she wanted a change of scenery. She loves to hike, document time, plant shop, and watch horror movies. Her Indigenous roots inspired her to fall in love (again and again) with our planet.
Kylee
Smith
She absolutely adores Mother Earth and everything she has to offer. Her camera and she always find their way back to her whenever times are joyous or tough. Her submission encompasses the connection between us and the environment. Humans are a scatterplot of every beautiful view Earth has to offer which is what she wanted to represent. Learning about the identity of new friends and their favourite places in the “wild” inspired her to submit this project.
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