Catalyst 2023 Speaker Series: Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Rodney Diverlus

The Creative School Catalyst Speaker Series presents Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Rodney Diverlus for a discussion surrounding strategies situating Blackness and queerness as starting points to look at cultural practices from the ground up.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982, San Bernardino, CA) is a Los Angeles-based artist working in photography. His work is in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Getty and Guggenheim Museums, the Hammer Museum, LACMA, MoCA Los Angeles, MoMA, SFMoMA, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Tate, and the Whitney Museum, among others. His work has been covered in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Art in America, The Nation, and The Guardian, and was featured on the cover of ARTFORUM’s March 2019 issue. Recent museum exhibitions include those at the Barbican Centre, the Guggenheim Museum, the Getty Museum, and a project for the 2019 Whitney Biennial. A survey of work from 2006-2018 was presented at CAM St. Louis and Blaffer Art Museum, accompanied by a monograph published by CAM St. Louis and Aperture Foundation.

Rodney Diverlus (They/Them) is a Haitian-Canadian multi-hyphenate artmaker, artivist and community activator whose work spans a breadth of worlds; of live performance (dance, theatre, opera), media (television, film, and digital production), and community activations. Their artivism imagines large-scale public installations that blur the lines of protest, art, and performance. They are a founder of Black Lives Matter – Canada, and the Wildseed Centre for Art & Activism. They use body, voice, and the pen to weave diasporic and queer narratives of life and freedom and are the author of Canadian bestseller “Until We are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada."

The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University

The Creative School is a dynamic faculty that is making a difference in new, unexplored ways. Made up of Canada’s top professional schools and transdisciplinary hubs in media, communication, design and cultural industries, The Creative School offers students an unparalleled global experience in the heart of downtown Toronto.