Kaya Joan is a multi-disciplinary Afro-Indigenous (Vincentian, Kanien’kehá:ka, Jamaican, settler) artist born, raised in T’karonto, Dish with One Spoon treaty territory, currently based in Prince Edward County. Kaya’s practice explores their relationship to place, storytelling, Black and Indigenous futurity and creation stories-deeply informed by temporal geographies and radical ancestral practices. Kaya has been working in community arts for 7 years as a facilitator and artist, engaging in collective practices of creation and world-building to unpack and explore themes of identity, relationship to place and justice.
Kaya graduated from OCADU’s Indigenous Visual Arts program in 2020, and their thesis show Fugitive Wanderer was the recipient of the INVC medal, Nora E. Vaughan Award and Akin Studio’s Career Launcher grant. In 2021 Kaya received the Grant for New Generation Artists from the Ontario Arts Council, and in 2022 received the Marion McMahon Award from Images Festival.
