Concordia University, Faculty of Fine Arts

09/02/2026

Two galleries. Three exhibitions. One night to celebrate the start of the fall season. 🎨 🍂

La Rentrée Concordia 2026 is happening September 10, bringing together Concordia’s arts community for an evening of exhibitions, artists, conversation and discovery.

📍 FOFA Gallery + Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery
🗓️ September 10 | 4:30–7 p.m.

At FOFA Gallery, two new exhibitions invite us to think differently about place, memory, land and technology:

🌲 Kandis Friesen — Where you have not first of all to uproot a whole forest
Wood carving, photography and video explore histories and traces of exile, incarceration and displacement in the region of the former Karlag gulag in Kazakhstan.

🌎 The Earth We Carry, curated by Hanss Lujan Torres
Six Indigenous artists explore the entanglements of land, body and technology through practices ranging from AI and machinima to hide tanning and song.

Over at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, FOODWAYS, curated by Zoë Chan, will bring together 12 artists exploring food as a site of culture, identity, memory, community and knowledge.

Three exhibitions, three very different ways of seeing — and one great opportunity to experience what’s happening across Concordia’s galleries this fall.

Join us September 10 to meet artists, explore the exhibitions and celebrate the start of a new season of art and ideas. 👀

🎨 Deux galeries. Trois expositions. Une soirée pour célébrer la rentrée!

Le 10 septembre, joignez-vous à nous pour La Rentrée Concordia 2026, une soirée d’expositions, de rencontres et de découvertes.

Learn more through this story: https://www.concordia.ca/news/stories/2026/08/31/la-rentree-concordia-2026-two-galleries-three-exhibitions-one-night-to-celebrate.html

Image 1: If Time Had Listened, by Taylor McArthur, 2025. | AR, unity, blender, digital print.
Image 2: Photograph From the Personal Archive of Saule Bultrikova, by Kandis Friesen, 2023.

FOFA Gallery

09/01/2026

Meet Tam Khoa Vu, BFA Design, 17! 🎨✏️🛠️

“I love making things happen, I love when people are excited about seeing their ideas and projects come to life and I love being in control of my time. I've always been happiest while creating and I'm thankful this business allows me to do it.”

Tam took a somewhat winding path through Concordia—from English and History to Religions and Cultures and Marketing—before eventually finding his place in Design.

Today, he runs an apparel production management studio in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Looking back, Tam says the long nights in the studio and at the Centre for Digital Arts taught him perseverance. Working alongside others also showed him how ideas can grow through collaboration, discussion and critique.

And his advice to his younger self?

“Try to enjoy it all!” 🫶

Un parcours qui rappelle que les chemins créatifs ne sont pas toujours linéaires.

Read Tam’s full story → https://www.concordia.ca/profiles/finearts/dcart/alumni/tam-khoa-vu.html

Concordia Alumni

08/31/2026

This Fall, prof Eldad Tsabary will guide students in exploring this complex relationship between music and AI, through Vibe Coding (EAST 398/498), a new interdisciplinary course in intuitive programming that will enable them to take control of AI-powered coding agents themselves — with no prior programming experience required.

What does it mean for artists to be in control of the technologies they use to create? That’s one of the questions at the heart of the course.

Tsabary’s approach will invite students to design and build their own creative tools — from digital instruments and interactive interfaces to systems for sound experimentation and live performance.

The course also places a strong emphasis on artistic agency, authorship and ethics. As Tsabary puts it, creators should be “in the driver’s seat” — using technology to serve their ideas rather than adapting their creative practice to whatever commercial tools already exist.

Les étudiantes et étudiants apprendront à utiliser des agents de programmation pour concevoir et développer des logiciels sur mesure destinés à l’expérimentation sonore et à la création musicale.

📖 En savoir plus / Read the story: https://www.concordia.ca/fr/actualites/nouvelles/2026/08/27/un-nouveau-cours-offert-a-lecole-des-arts-vivants-enseigne-la-confection-doutils-musicaux-a-laide-de-lia.html

08/28/2026

✨ Bravo! Concordia University, Faculty of Fine Arts alumna Tiana McLaughlan, BComm 19, aka honeydrip, is featured in La Presse as one of the artists to watch at this year’s MUTEK Montréal.

Today, the Montréal DJ and producer will premiere v i b r a t i o n at the Société des arts technologiques [SAT]. With a minor in Electroacoustic Studies, she returned to her alma mater earlier this year as a guest artist for The Wheels of Steel, a Communication Studies course on DJing and music production.

🎶 À MUTEK, Tiana présentera une nouvelle performance après des résidences à Moment Factory et à la Place des Arts.

🔗 Learn more about Tiana at Concordia:



Photo Credits: Fournie Par MUTEK

08/27/2026

Join us in congratulating Margot Klingender on her appointment to an Extended-Term Appointment (ETA) faculty position in the Painting and Drawing program in Concordia University’s Department of Studio Arts! 🎉

Based in Tiohtià | Montréal, Klingender is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores perception, memory and the instability of the visual through drawing, sculpture and installation.

Half-blind since childhood, her work considers how we construct and experience visual worlds, playing with scale, material and perspective. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et de Montréal.

Her exhibition The Whole World Began With A Yes opens at Diagonale Centre des arts on September 11.

We look forward to welcoming Margot to the Fine Arts community and to the creativity and perspectives she’ll bring to our students and studios!

Félicitations, Margot! 🎨

Discover the Department of Studio Arts: https://www.concordia.ca/finearts/studio-arts.html

08/26/2026

🤖 What can games and persistent AI worlds reveal about being human?

Join Eldad Tsabary and Scott DeJong for CTRL + AI: Playing with Intelligence, a free participatory conversation exploring AI, games, simulated worlds, trust, memory, identity and what makes an interaction feel human, or strangely alien.

The conversation will include audience prompts and game elements, inviting participants to think critically about AI beyond the hype or rejection.

📅 September 15, 3–5 p.m.
📍 4TH SPACE + online
🎟️ Free

Une conversation participative sur l’IA, les jeux et les questions que les technologies émergentes rélèvent sur l’intelligence humaine...

Learn more and register: https://bit.ly/4zW3HMz

Photos: Scott DeJong , Eldad Tsabary, and an image from Tsabary's Village.

Concordia University Concordia Alumni

08/25/2026

Congratulations to Kelly Norah Drukker, recipient of the 2026–27 Susan Jeanne Briscoe Fellowship! 🎉

The recent Concordia PhD in Humanities graduate has received $35,000 to develop her award-winning research-creation dissertation, Naming the Traces: (Re)Constructing an Irish-Canadian Family Narrative of Emigration, Place-Making, and Return, into a book.

Blending creative nonfiction, oral history, archival research and place-based writing, Drukker’s project traces four generations of her maternal family between County Mayo, Ireland, and Montreal, exploring family, memory, migration and the ways stories are carried across generations.

During her fellowship year, she’ll expand and revise the manuscript, conduct additional research and gather new oral history testimony from family members.

We’re thrilled to celebrate Kelly and look forward to seeing where this important work takes her. 📚✨

La nouvelle diplômée d’un doctorat en lettres et sciences humaines reçoit 35 000 $ pour mener à bien son projet de littérature non fictionnelle sur la famille, la mémoire et la migration

Read the full story: https://www.concordia.ca/ucactualites/beauxarts/2026/08/kelly-norah-drukker-bourse-susan-Jeanne-Briscoe-2026-2027.html

FAS - Concordia's Faculty of Arts and Science
Concordia Alumni

08/20/2026

Dans un nouveau portrait publié par Québec Science, Hannah Claus, professeure au Département des arts visuels de Concordia et titulaire de la Chaire de recherche de l’Université Concordia en Onkwehonwené:ha (méthodologie autochtone), revient sur sa pratique artistique et son approche de la recherche-création.

À travers ses œuvres, elle propose notamment de décentrer le regard et de réfléchir à notre relation avec le monde qui nous entoure, en s’appuyant sur des perspectives et méthodologies autochtones.

L’article comprend également une entrevue avec Rémi Quirion, scientifique en chef sortant du Québec.

🎨 Studio Arts professor and Concordia Research Chair in Onkwehonwené:ha (Indigenous Methodology) Hannah Claus is featured in a new Québec Science article exploring how her research-creation practice offers different ways of seeing and understanding the world through Indigenous perspectives.

Her practice also challenges dominant approaches to art, research and knowledge in the university, emphasizing relationality, Indigenous methodologies and ways of knowing.

In the interview with Rémi Quirion, Québec’s outgoing chief scientist, Hannah Claus reflects on her academic journey, the challenges she has encountered as an Indigenous researcher, and the advice she would offer to the next generation. 💬

👉 À lire dans Québec Science : https://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/societe/hannah-claus-recits-dominants/

Concordia University

08/20/2026

08/19/2026

🎵 A full-circle moment for Charlotte Cornfield!

From her early days playing Montreal’s indie scene to the national stage, Concordia alumna Charlotte Cornfield, BFA 10 is now shortlisted for the 2026 Polaris Music Prize for her deeply personal album Hurts Like Hell. 💫

Charlotte moved to Montreal to study jazz drumming at Concordia — and quickly found herself immersed in the city’s music scene. She credits her Concordia teachers and fellow musicians with helping shape the songwriter and musician she would become.

Now based in Toronto, she’ll perform at the Polaris Music Prize ceremony on September 22 before heading back to Montreal to headline POP Montreal on September 24 — a festival where she first performed back in 2008.

From Concordia to the Polaris shortlist, and back to Montreal. ❤️

De Concordia à la liste des finalistes du Prix Polaris! Félicitations à Charlotte Cornfield pour cette belle reconnaissance de son album Hurts Like Hell.

Read the full story to hear Charlotte reflect on her Concordia years, her creative journey and Hurts Like Hell. 👇
https://bit.ly/46ePKLG

Photo by Colin Medley

Concordia University
Polaris Music Prize