Announcing Milieux Institute’s 2024-25 Undergraduate Fellows

We are thrilled to announce the recipient of our 2024-25 undergraduate fellowships! This year’s exceptional cohort represent a dynamic blend of disciplines across seven academic departments (Design, Computation Arts, Studio Arts, Anthropology & Sociology, Contemporary Dance, Marketing and Music)—embodying the Institute’s commitment to interdisciplinary innovation. Our fellows’ groundbreaking projects spans a diverse range of topics and media, from VR game development and Indigenous futurism to environmental anthropology and experimental sound art, each making vital contributions to their respective research clusters: Technology, Art and Games (TAG), Textiles & Materiality, Speculative Life, LePARC, Post Image, and Indigenous Futures Research Centre (IFRC).

In an era marked by environmental challenges and cultural transformation, our fellows are pioneering new forms of creative expression and critical inquiry. Through diverse mediums including digital art, performance, photography, and video games, these emerging researchers are reimagining the intersections of arts, technology, and cultural practice.

The fellowship recognizes exceptional undergraduate students already making significant impacts within their research clusters. Nominated by Milieux’s faculty affiliates, each fellow receives financial support and full access to Milieux’s specialized resources to support their projects throughout the 2024-25 academic year. To welcome these remarkable individuals to the broader Milieux community, we invite you to join us for a special event on January 29th, 2025. We look forward to nurture their innovative spirit and we are proud to support their work as they embark on their research journey at the institute.

 

 

 

The Fellows

 

 

 

Callie Evans (Textiles & Materiality)

Callie Evans is a BFA Design student at Concordia University, in the class of 2025. Their independent research-creation will explore the intersections between sustainability and intergenerational knowledge within socio-cultural narratives that are embedded in traditional textile arts. Having grown up in Harrington Harbour, a small island located in the Basse-Côte-Nord region of Quebec, Callie’s project is inspired by the harsh climate of the region, combining cultural hybridity with established traditions found in local fibre arts. Through this project, Callie will research how traditional textile practices can serve as a medium for intercultural dialogue. Based on their own experiences of wearing handmade clothing during harsh winter activities, their work focuses on the revival of the region’s fibre art traditions. This work will combine techniques, such as knitting, crochet, and sewing, which reflect a hybridity of Indigenous and settler-colonial influences.

 

 

 

Annabel Durr (Speculative Life)

Annabel Durr is an undergraduate student in Anthropology at Concordia University and a member of the Loyola Honours College for Diversity and Sustainability. She is currently working on an honours thesis that demonstrates how urban foraging can cultivate a sense of ecological belonging and environmental responsibility in urban contexts and hold the potential to transform our urban environments into spaces of collaboration. Interested in alternative ethnographic methods, her thesis uses “acoustemology” and creating phytograms to bring nonhuman voices to the forefront.

Annabel has recently been published in Concordia’s Arts and Science Journal. The paper, “Rooted Bonds: Human-Plant Kinship with Indigenous Peoples in the Amazonia,” analyzed harmonious alternative living situations in three indigenous communities. In addition, she presented a paper at the Sustainability Conference at Concordia University. The paper discussed the “pristine wilderness” myth and acknowledged the colonial effects on Indigenous communities’ vast history and relationship to the land. Annabel also took part in the creation of an experimental film that highlighted the importance of water through sound, storytelling and dystopian visuals.

 

 

Sophie Manker (Speculative Life)

Sophie Manker is a fourth year Honours Anthropology student pursuing a minor in English Literature. She has always had many interests, ranging from environmental concerns and the natural sciences to poetry and fine art. While at Milieux, she hopes to combine all of her interests in an interdisciplinary way, as she believes this type of analysis leads to more fruitful research and conversation. Combined with her love of the environment and nature, she is currently writing her Honours thesis on Montreal’s urban infrastructure and its relationship to climate change, with a specific emphasis on hydrology, topography, and ongoing histories of colonialism.

Sophie hopes to pursue further studies in Environmental Anthropology. Outside of academics, she is co-president of Sex and Self Concordia, a club dedicated to providing sexual wellness products and education to the Concordia community. In her free time, she plays guitar, embroiders, reads poetry, and collects vinyl. A lover of the stars, her biggest dream is to study astrophysics.

 

Valentina Plata (LePARC)

Performer, singer, composer, and sound artist Valentina Plata (b. 1997, Mexico·Colombia) is based in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal. Valentina conjures imaginative soundworlds through live improvisation, vocal-processed electronics, and field recordings. She is currently pursuing a degree in Electroacoustic Studies with a specialization in creative practices at Concordia University. Her work explores themes of magic idealism, movement, and personal narrative.

Valentina has contributed to diverse research-creation projects, including RISE Opera (Reflective Iterative Scenario Enactments) by Eldad Tsabary and Meeting Through Materialities, Bodies, and Worlds by Lilia Mestre. She performed alongside the Śabdagatitāra ensemble in Sandeep Bhagwati’s performance-installation How to Inhabit These Different Temporalities?

Through Vaiu, her artistic project, and her multidisciplinary Esse Collective, she develops experimental scores ignited by Bhagwati’s pioneering approach to comprovisation.

Valentina is a member of the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec, the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, and the Concordia Electroacoustic Studies Student Association. She wishes for radiant radical spaces for shared artistic curiosities.

 

 

 

 

 

Rena Adell Evade (LePARC)

Rena Adell Eyamie (she/her) is a queer choreographer, dance, fibre, and material artist located in Tiohtià:ke, Montreal. She is currently studying contemporary dance at Concordia University, having received the James Saya Award in 2024. She has performed her work at the International Ethnographic Film Festival of Quebec (2023), the Art Matters festival (2024), and Nextfest in Edmonton, Alberta (2024). Rena is drawn to explorations of queer epistemologies, lineages of women’s labour, blurry memories of family, the abject, and the symbolism of the everyday. Rena makes bodies. Fabric, flesh or word, her work is porous. It is pulled through time, prone to shedding, prone to change. No matter the medium, her work is gestural. Rena wants her embodiment and body-ing of curated states and realities to be an invitation for audiences to return to their bodies, minds included. Her current research investigates the process of translation between art objects and dance and the process of dancing an archive.

 

 

 

 

 

Mallory Lowe Mpoka (Post Image)

Mallory Lowe Mpoka is a queer Cameroonian-Belgian artist and cultural worker based in Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal). Working across photography, textiles, and ceramics, Mpoka’s practice delves into the intricate intersections of migration, cultural trauma, self-image, memory, and environmental colonialism, engaging with these themes through a deeply personal and political lens.

A recipient of the Malick Sidibé Prize at the African Biennale of Photography (2022) and the New Generation Photography Award from the National Gallery of Canada (2024), Mpoka’s work has been exhibited in both national and international contexts, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Gardiner Museum, Villa Romana in Florence, 1-54 NYC, Savvy Contemporary Berlin, and the Aga Khan Museum, among others.

Her debut artist book, co-published with Clark Center and Pièce Jointe, marks a significant milestone in her practice. In 2025, Mpoka will be a fellow at Black Rock Senegal, where she will continue to expand her artistic inquiry during a prestigious residency.

 

 

Gaëlle Legrand (Post Image)

Gaëlle Legrand is an interdisciplinary artist whose work unfolds through large-scale sculptures and installations. Through observation of the vegetal and mineral realms, she explores the many kinds of selves that make up our world and translates the poetic narratives she senses into physical forms. Composed mostly of wood and metal, her minimal and organic pieces shape the space they inhabit, combining the elusive vitality of movement with the heavy presence of matter. Her practice is guided by a quest to reconnect with our most ancestral origins and our ties to the earth. It seeks to convey that any being, a flower, a tree or a river, is a self with its own way of living and perceiving the world. Gaëlle lives and works between Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada and her native village Magnicourt-en-Comté, in northern France. Currently completing her BFA in Sculpture at Concordia University, she recently exhibited at the Art Mur Gallery (Fresh Paint, July 2024) and with the Soft Square Gallery (Aporia, April 2024).

 

 

 

Milo Puge (Indigenous Futures Research Centre)

Milo Puge (he/him) is a Michif from BC whose family has roots in St-Laurent, Manitoba. Currently, he is pursuing an undergraduate degree in Anthropology at Concordia. He is interested in fandom, Indigenous languages, futurisms, and incorporating his art practice into his academic work. For him, comics are the perfect medium to combine these interests through an anthropological lens. While he’s been interested in comics since childhood, they became part of his academic research after creating Michif comics for the language revitalization program at the Louis Riel Institute (Manitoba). Inspired by this experience, Milo examined Indigenous languages in Indigenous speculative fiction for his Honours Anthropology thesis.

Recently, the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute (Concordia) invited Milo to prepare a conceptual display of images focusing on the intersection of Indigenous art and Indigenous Languages. Additionally, Milo is the acting communications coordinator at the Indigenous Futures Research Centre.

 

 

Aidan Catriel (TAG)

Aidan Catriel is an undergraduate studying Computer Science at Concordia University. He’s the founder of WhySo Studios, Montreal’s newest virtual reality game studio, and works as a storywriter for indie studios. His dream is to watch giant spaceships blow each other up in VR. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quinn Saggio (TAG)

Quinn Saggio is a Marketing Undergrad currently studying at John Molson School of Business. His interests are in the development of video games and how they are used as tools for storytelling, while also pursuing 3D modelling, animation and coding towards building custom experiences in games such as Minecraft. His current work focuses on the development of a Solar Minecraft Project hosted at Milieux with the Minecraft Bloc, under the supervision of Bart Simon and Darren Wershler, performing in the roles of Narrative Design and Map Design.

 
 
Destiny Chescappio (IFRC)

Research Assistant Destiny Chescappio (she/her) is a member of the Naskapi Nation of Kawawachikamach with mixed Algonquin from Kitigan Zibi, and is currently an Undergraduate in the Specialization in Computation Arts program at Concordia University’s Fine Arts Faculty in Montreal, Quebec. She completed her cegep at LaSalle College (2019) and has done an artist in residency at her community’s school, Jimmy Sandy Memorial School in Kawawachikamach. She has also previously worked with the Indigenous production company, Rezolution Pictures. Her artistic mediums such as 3D art, animation, graphic design, and digital painting, explore the themes of Indigenous Futurism combining the complexities of historical, modern, and futuristic topics. She has recently joined IFRC in AbTec to further her practice in digital arts and Indigenous Futurism.

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