Fixer°4 came through with a beautiful and remarkable turnout filled with excitement, curiosity, contemplation, nurturance and laughter! This was our first edition in Montréal held at the incredible space @sawahouse_ , and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have made it happen with our wonderful group of artists and guest reviewers.
Between critique, ideas exchange, lived reflections and dinner banter, feelings of abundance and creative energy flowed throughout the day! Once again we share our hearty THANK YOU to our Fixer°4 artists: @millefoisbleu@amedaroche Sarah Madgin @zanne_13 for your generosity with opening up about your work and process, and to our lovely guest reviewers @naakitafk@tamarabdul@lulu_escalona for your gracious insight and provision.
Equal gratitude to the incredible @myv_dam for supporting us in making this edition so seamless and successful!
And finally to @canada.council for supporting Fixer and our accompanying initiatives!
A beautiful portrait with our Fixer°4 family - our hearts and minds (and bellies) are still full! Merci beaucoup Montréal for the warmest welcome via our lovely host space Sawa House @sawahouse_ , and to our talented and insightful artists and reviewers @millefoisbleu@amedaroche Sarah Madgin @zanne_13@tamarabdul@naakitafk@lulu_escalona 🫶🏼 This is truly a special edition, thanks to you all!
More highlights and captures from our critique session coming soon, stay tuned!
📸: @myv_dam
As we are getting ready to start the fourth edition of Fixer, we are equally delighted to launch The Fixer Podcast! This initiative is one of the core extensions to our critique sessions, which enables us the opportunity to carry the conversations forward, and to get to know our participants more intimately as they open up about their personal and artistic journeys.
For our premiere episode, we sit down with Fixer°3 Presenting Artist Magida El-Kassis @magidaelk to discuss her relationship with the darkroom, and how she uses photography to explore family, identity, and womanhood.
Magida El-Kassis (b. 1989) is a photographer residing in Toronto. For more than a decade, she has been exploring the self-portrait; looking closely at every layer that comes to life with each new year of growth. She questions femininity, beauty, and the importance of eternal life.
Available now on Spotify - details in our bio/website.
As we wrap up our Fixer°4 introductions, meet our final reviewer: Tamara Abdul Hadi! @tamarabdul
Tamara Abdul Hadi is an Iraqi photographer and educator investigating the links between photography and representations of culture. Along with being a photographer, Tamara is an educator who has taught in Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, the UAE, Kuwait, Tunisia and Canada. Her work has been published in the mainstream media extensively, though she now prefers to work for more independent entities. Her photographs have been exhibited worldwide.
Abdul Hadi’s debut monograph Picture an Arab Man was published in 2022.
Discover more about Fixer and our °4 lineup by visiting our website.
We’re excited to share that the next reviewer joining us for Fixer°4 is María Andreína Escalona De Abreu! @lulu_escalona
María Andreína Escalona De Abreu is a Venezuelan visual artist, writer, independent curator, and arts worker based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal. She obtained a BFA in Fibres and
Material Practices at Concordia University in 2022 and has since been developing her curatorial practice notably as the Exhibition Coordinator of the FOFA Gallery. Escalona’s practice brings together curation, collaborative initiatives, creative writing, textile installations, and handmade paper as ways of dreaming, confabulating and applying notions of sustainability, community development, and advocacy for equity in the arts.
Escalona’s work is a “tough-love” letter to her Venezuelan roots and Canadian present.
For details on Fixer, head over to our website.
With our presenting artists announced, we’re excited to begin introducing the reviewers contributing to Fixer°4—starting with naakita f.k.! @naakitafk
naakita f.k. is an interdisciplinary artist based between Zhegagoynak/Chicago and Tio’Tia:Ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. Through place-based and site-specific relations, they consider extractivism, including both resource extraction and extractive ideologies that show up in the wake of violence to land. Working through multimedia installation, their research uses hauntology to explore the impacts of the colonial project on built and natural environments, while imagining possible futures that can be contained in a haunted place. This practice is rooted in creating modes of listening to landscapes and the human and other-than-human-beings that inhabit them.
f.k. has shown their work nationally and internationally at institutions such as MoMA PS1, New York, NY (2012); Trinity Square Video, Toronto, ON (2016); Mémoire de l’Avenir, Paris, FR (2019); Videofenster, Cologne, DE (2021); Fonderie Darling, Montreal, QC (2022); Images Festival, Toronto, ON (2023); Centre CLARK, Montreal, QC (2024); and CAFKA, Kitchener, ON (2025).
To learn more about Fixer and our °4 cohort, visit our website.
Introducing our final presenting artist for Fixer°4 : Sarah Madgin!
As a visual artist, Sarah Madgin works with printmaking and alternative photography techniques to recontextualize personal and found archives in exploring memory formation. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Visual and Media Art from the University of Quebec in Montreal, she received the Albert‑Dumouchel Prize, BMO First Art! Prize, and the CALQ Montreal Emerging Artist Award. In 2019, Madgin participated in research‑creation printmaking residencies at Engramme (Quebec) and Zocalo
(Longueuil). Invested in Canada’s collaborative printmaking scene, she has worked with Jillian Ross Print on William Kentridge’s live editions The Greater Yes, The Greater No, and contributed notably to editions by Shuvinai Ashoona, Takao Tanabe, and Rebecca Belmore as a printer assistant at New Leaf Editions in Vancouver. Her work has been showcased in exhibitions across Canada, including La Maison des arts de Laval (2023), UQAM Gallery (2019), and the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery in Toronto (2018).
To discover more about this edition’s featured artists and everything Fixer, visit our
website through the link in bio!
Fixer°4 Presenting Artist: Zanne Vanderlaer @verybrokencameras
Zanne Vanderlaer is a visual artist and final-year Philosophy major at McGill University, with a minor in Psychology. Born to Nepali and Belgian parents, her upbringing spans Switzerland, New York, Nepal, Victoria, and Montreal—an experience that shapes her
perspective and informs her creative approach. Working primarily with analogue photography, her practice is rooted in observation, introspection, and a desire to connect. She is currently exploring ways to merge her passion for visual storytelling with her academic interests in thought, perception, and identity.
To learn more about Fixer, visit our website!
Fixer°4 Presenting Artist: Amed Aroche @amedaroche
Amed Aroche (b. Cuba) is an artist, researcher, and independent curator based in Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal. With a background in Architecture and a Masters in Social Science, his practice merges research, photography, installation, and writing to explore the intersection of politics and poetics in contemporary life. His work has been exhibited in Havana, Montreal, and Vienna. A 2024 démART-Mtl 2024 fellow offered by the Conseil des Arts de Montréal, he is currently part of the team at the Centre d’art et de diffusion CLARK, curating a group exhibition for the summer of 2025.
To learn more about Fixer, visit our website!
Fixer°4 is on the horizon, and we’re excited to kick things off by welcoming our first featured artist: Zaynab Ghaïs-Mortada @millefoisbleu
Zaynab Ghaïs-Mortada is a visual artist from Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal, interested in the questions of time, the ‘uneventful’, memory, opacity and corporeity. Her work has been featured in publications such as Périphérie, What Makes a Lake? Tracing Movement and Macaroni. She is also a farmer with over a decade of experience tending orchards, flower gardens and edible gardens on the island, as well as a researcher whose work lies at the intersections of phenomenology, critical philosophy of race, epistemology, and Québec history and politics.
To learn more about Fixer, visit our website!
Salut Montréal! ☀️
We’re super excited to bring Fixer to your city, with this in mind we’d like to (re)introduce ourselves: we are Leila and Beau, and together we make up halftone collective. We are practicing artists ourselves, and our passion for community organizing and creative exchange are what galvanize us to bring Fixer out in the world!
We love + embrace critique, and our goal is to reframe how critique could exist. In lieu of what has traditionally been hierarchical, prescriptive or transactional, we foreground feedback exchange between peers - whether it’s fellow artists, writers, cultural workers, among other inspiring creatives (which is how we’ve been learning and growing through the years) - one that is communal, experiential, nourishing, and of course fun!🍲🥂💕
If you’re curious to learn more about our collective or our respective practices, check out our About page.
🚨LAST CALL FOR ARTISTS🚨
This is the final weekend to apply for your opportunity to participate in Fixer°4, Montreal edition — submit by March 16!
📢 Open Call for Fixer°4! 📢
We are seeking QTBIPOC lens-based artists in Montréal to participate as presenters for the fourth edition of fixer! If you’re currently developing a project involving photography, film, video, or moving image and are looking for critique and feedback from a community of fellow creatives, we encourage you to apply!
✨ fixer is an intimate gathering of image-makers, creatives, writers, and thinkers, centered around collaborative critique, dialogue, and community-building. The session concludes with a home-cooked feast prepared by halftone collective (@beaugomezx & @localeila ).
📝 Deadline to apply: March 16, 2025
🔗 More details in our bio!
