Art Creates Change: Bonnie Devine

Bonnie Devine, The Gift – Lake Ontario, 2022

OCAD University’s Faculty of Art presents:
Art Creates Change
The Kim Pruesse Speakers Series

Bonnie Devine

Artist Talk & Reception: Thursday, September 24, 2026, 7pm
OCAD University Auditorium (Room 190), Toronto
◦  Free to the public
◦  Wheelchair accessible

Bonnie Devine’s work examines colonial legacies, offers counter narratives, and proposes an animate mapping of the Great Lakes and Woodland region of North America. Her cross-disciplinary practice engages various media, from painting to sculpture to video to writing, giving voice to the lands, waters, and histories on which she works and from which her art emerges. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and an Ontario Lieutenant Governor’s Heritage Award. Her art has been exhibited nationally and internationally, is in a number of institutional collections, and this year is included in the 2026 Biennales in both Venice and Toronto. Bonnie is a member of the Genaabaajing Serpent River Anishinaabe First Nation, and is the Founding Chair of OCAD University’s Indigenous Visual Culture program.

Bonnie Devine, courtesy of the artist.

Art Creates Change is a long-running lecture series, now in its 20th year, sponsored by the Faculty of Art at OCAD University. The series focuses on artists whose work engages and challenges the conventions of creative practice and political imperatives, and their various locations of agency. Events are often co-sponsored with programs and organizations both within and beyond the university.

This year, in recognition of OCAD University’s 150th anniversary, we are focusing on three faculty members: Bonnie Devine, Richard Fung and Lillian Allen, three artists whose work has helped shape not only OCAD, but also the larger culture and political conversations of our time. Their creative, academic and political work organically engages urgent public conversations about representation, justice, equity and relational power, and embodies OCAD’s vision of “a vibrant community of bold, curious and compassionate artists, designers and scholars imagining a creative, joyful, equitable and sustainable world.”

Events are often co-sponsored with programs and organizations both within and beyond the university. Each event includes an artist presentation, Q&A, and a following reception. The events are free and open to the public and university communities.

Bonnie Devine, Battle for the Woodlands, 2015

The Art Creates Change 2026 is supported by:
◦  Onsite Gallery
◦  OCAD U Art & Social Change
◦  INTM: LIFE STUDIES SPECIALIZATION in the Faculty of Art through a generous donation of the Joan and Clifford Hatch Foundation.

OCAD University
Auditorium, Level 1, Room 190
100 McCaul Street
Toronto, ON M5T 1W1
Contact: madgeyao@ocadu.ca
Follow OCAD U Faculty of Art on Instagram

2026 Co-programmers: b.h. Yael & Min Sook Lee