Nocturne Team

Nocturne is thrilled to announce Shuvanjan Karmaker(he/him) as Nocturne’s 2024 festival curator, who has selected the theme of Microcosm for the 2024 festival.

Shuvanjan joins the Nocturne team, bringing experience working both as an administrator and performing as an artist in festivals and arts organizations, including Halifax Jazz Festival, Everyseeker, SuddenlyListen, Mayworks Festival, Open Waters Festival, Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival (Fredericton), Evolve Festival (NS & NB), and Inspire Festival (Moncton).

Today, Shuvanjan works as an independent music director, leading both small and large ensembles to showcase music from the local BIPOC community and composing original music and arrangements of his own.

For Nocturne 2023, Shuvanjan was a collaborator on the project IN THIS HOUSE, which explored histories of House Music with Soul, Funk, and Jazz renditions, highlighting the past pioneers who shaped the genre and the new generation of musicians that are pushing the genre forward today.

Before moving to Kjipuktuk/Halifax in 2009 to study International Development at Saint Mary’s University, Shuvanjan grew up on Bengali Classical and in the local DIY music scene playing and promoting underground music and contemporary art; writing for The Independent; and composed and recorded music for documentaries and theatre in his home city of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Informed by both Bangladesh-Indigenous and Canadian immigrant perspectives, Shuvanjan is passionate about representation in the arts community and highlighting shared experiences: “Growing up, I’ve seen my family members who are artists and civil workers fight for their indigenous land rights. Living and working in Kjipuktuk has helped me realize that I am not alone in this journey, and there are many just like me who are forging new paths to protect & share their cultures.”

Shuvanjan has selected the theme of Microcosm as a platform for artists to consider and share stories and to create connections around shared love, experiences, tragedies, and/or responsibilities. Continues Shuvanjan: “I invite artists to start conversations, leading us to their vision and understanding of microcosm-macrocosm analogy, connecting our community members to each other's experience and the cosmos as a whole.”

Nocturne takes place October 17-20, 2024. Submissions for artists to participate will open in early 2024. In the meantime, if you have any questions or would like to send a welcome to Shuvanjan, you can reach him at [email protected]

Stephanie Yee (she/her) is a second-generation Chinese Canadian artist and cultural worker based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), the unceded territory of the Mi’kma’ki. Her education includes a BFA in Intermedia from NSCAD University where she began her exploration into community and identity. With a practice rooted in storytelling, her work manifests as gatherings, performance, writing, installation, video and playing with food. Often beginning with familiar imagery, processes, and materials, Yee playfully interjects as a means of exploring and questioning preconceived notions. She has participated as an artist, facilitator and curator in artist-run centers, festivals, residencies and galleries both locally and internationally.

Lux Habrich (she/they) is a multidisciplinary visual artist, arts facilitator and support worker of mixed Chinese and German heritage, practicing in the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq People. Practicing in K’jipuktuk following an Interdisciplinary BFA from NSCAD University in 2015, she is drawn to the immense storytelling capabilities in tactile processes as a means of unearthing buried intergenerational pain and power. Her interest in ritual objects and commemorative practices center on diasporic experiences of belonging, embodied hybridization in blood and spirit, honouring the untold stories and unspoken legacies that live inside each of us. Committed to developing inclusive creative platforms, and reimagining cultural futures – Lux externalizes intense internal grievances, to open up collective issues and qualities of larger community struggle to allow for shared moments of compassion and insight.

My body is a conduit, a link to past and to future generations.
It takes me back, it takes me forward, it carries the present.
My body is story.

With an eclectic background that has taken her through many performance styles on four different continents, Liliona is a dancer, choreographer, actor, singer, community organizer, and activist. She performs across the country and internationally, creates original works as an independent artist, facilitates community programming, and is the Artistic Director of Kinetic Studio. The scope of Liliona’s artistic work is broad, but is particularly focused on the relationship between art and social justice, on the body’s ability to carry ancestral memory, and on the role the performing arts can play in creating change. Liliona loves to work in collaboration and community, is mom to two wonderful kids, and is thoroughly obsessed with karaoke.

Lindsay Dobbin is a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) - Acadian - Irish artist, musician, curator and educator who lives and works in Kjipuktuk in Mi'kma'ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of Lnu’k (Mi’kmaq). Born in and belonging to the Kennebecasis River Valley, the traditional territory of the Wəlastəkwiyik, Mi’kmaq and Passamaquoddy, Dobbin has lived throughout Wabanaki as well as the Yukon in Kwanlin Dün territory.

As a passionate educator, Dobbin employs traditional and contemporary land-based practices, creativity, play and improvisation as tools for self-awareness, collaboration, experiential learning and community building — revealing that people and the environment are related in dynamic ways. Dobbin is also an active artistic collaborator, and have worked on projects with musicians, sound artists, dancers, visual artists and filmmakers.

Tori Fleming is a media artist, programmer and curator based in Halifax, NS.. Fleming’s curatorial work focuses on media arts, often centering on the space between media art and filmmaking. Fleming is currently the Director of Programming at the Centre for Art Tapes, a Media Arts based artist-run centre in North End Halifax. Through her independent curatorial practice, Fleming has recently worked with the Anna Leonowens Gallery, The NSCAD Alumni Association and the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival. Fleming works to promote the status of the artist and Canadian cultural institutions through volunteer work as a director on the boards of advocacy groups including Halifax Ink, a Nova Scotia based artists publication non-profit, and as the Atlantic Canadian Representative for both the Artist-Run Centre Association of Canada and the Independent Media Arts Alliance of Canada.

Working primarily with 16mm Celluloid, Tori's artistic practice also includes painting, installation, and animation. Her works have exhibited in Nuit Blanche Toronto, Art in the Open PEI, the Halifax Independent Film Festival, The Atlantic International Film Festival the Bus Stop Theater, the Khyber Centre for the Arts and more. She has been awarded multiple grants and awards including the Starfish Properties Award for Film, the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative Celluloid Grant, and an Arts Nova Scotia Creation Grant.

Raven Davis is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, performer, human rights speaker/advocate and community facilitator from the Anishinaabek Nation in Manitoba. Davis was born and raised in Toronto and currently works and lives between K’jipuktuk (Halifax) and Toronto. A parent of 3 son’s, Davis blends narratives of colonization, race, gender, sexuality, Two-Spirit identity and the Anishinaabemowin language and culture into a variety of contemporary art forms.

anna sprague is a performance artist, creative facilitator, and faculty member at NSCAD University. In tandem with a provocative use of sculptural materials, bizarre props, and outlandish costumes, her art practice explores collaborative performance, public intervention, and site-specific installation as a means of critically engaging with site and history. anna holds degrees in English Literature (Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB) and Fine Arts (Concordia University, Montreal QC) and has a love for lowercase letters and underwhelming coincidences.

Emily is an artist, facilitator, and community organizer. She has curated and coordinated several projects on behalf of arts organizations including Eyelevel Gallery and the PEI Crafts Council. She is currently a member of Eyelevel Gallery’s Engagement Committee, and was a selected artist for the 2017/2018 NSCAD Community Studio Residency at the MacPhee Centre for Creative Learning in Dartmouth NS. Her experiential approach to creating immersive environments, sculpture, and production design hinges on humour, food, and the senses as conduits to the underlying feminist and cultural curiosities that fuels her work.

Michael McCormack is an intermedia artist, curator, and educator of settler ancestry living in unceded territory of the Mi’Kmaq people in K’jiputuk (Halifax). He has worked extensively within the artist-run centre community as Director of Eyelevel Gallery from 2009-2013 and president and representative of the Association of Artist-Run Centres from the Atlantic from 2011-2013. He continues to work as an independent curator for exhibitions, festivals and events, most recently as a guest curator for Nocturne: Art at Night (2016), Flotilla Atlantic (2017), and KIAC's Natural & Manufactured exhibition (2018). Michael completed his MFA at NSCAD University in 2015 and has been steadily exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions since 2003.

Rose Zack is a Calgary-Halifax transplant and an arts and culture doer, dreamer and volunteer. Calling Halifax home since 2007, Rose is currently keeping company with Atlantic Film Festival, as Regional Outreach Manager and on the boards of Centre for Art Tapes and Business for the Arts - ArtsScene. Past involvement includes as public programmer at the Glenbow Museum (Calgary), on the boards of ArtCity (Calgary), Creative Cities Network (National) and as founding Board Member and past Chair of Nocturne: Art at Night (Halifax). Recognition for her contributions include: The Chronical Herald’s Arts & Culture Honour Role (2011), Canadian Progress Club’s Women of Excellence Awards – Arts & Culture (2012), Progress Magazine’s People We Love 2012 and Fusion’s GO Awards – Arts & Culture (2012). As a cultural planner for the past 15 years, Rose’s raison d’étre is to create meaningful connections between artists, their work, and the public.

Eryn Foster is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Born and raised in small-town Ontario, she spent her childhood in the boonies of Bancroft and her youth in Orillia. She has also spent time living and wandering around Montreal, Toronto, Algonquin Park, New England, Vancouver, the Yukon Territory, and Sackville, New Brunswick.

Eleanor King is a Nova Scotian artist based in Brooklyn. She has presented solo exhibitions at A.I.R. Gallery, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, and Diaz Contemporary; and two-person shows at 326 Gallery, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, and Eastern Edge. Her site-specific projects have been shown in venues across Canada and the US including the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, The Peekskill Project, the Spring/Break Art Show and Franklin Street Works, with upcoming works to be presented at Nanaimo Art Gallery, Division Gallery, Dunlop Art Gallery, and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. She has attended residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, SOMA Mexico, and The Banff Centre; she was the 2016 Canadian Artist-in-Residence at Glenfiddich Scotland and recipient of the A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship 2016-17. Her work has been featured in publications including Canadian Art, Art in America and C Magazine. Eleanor is a Fulbright fellow with an MFA from the School of Art+Design at Purchase College, State University of New York, and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She has been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award and has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and Arts Nova Scotia. Eleanor is represented by Diaz Contemporary in Toronto, and her work is held in public, private, and corporate collections. She is Curatorial Manager and Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Art+Design, Purchase College, and was formerly Director, Anna Leonowens Gallery, NSCAD University.