Connor Yuzwenko-Martin, Ebony R. Gooden, Kim Fullerton, Olivia Brouwer, Salima Punjani, and Willy Le Maitre

Sensorial Plurality: positioning access as a generative force 

Connor Yuzwenko-Martin (he/him, they/them) is a Deaf performance artist, producer, and playwright based in Edmonton, Alberta. His work focuses on creating performance rooted in Deaf culture, sign languages, and inclusive practice.

Connor is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Invisible Practice (TIP), a Deaf arts organization dedicated to developing Deaf-centric creativity through any genre and medium that Deaf artists choose to inhabit. His artistic practice challenges traditional performance structures and expands access in the arts toward meaningful inclusion. Recent major work includes two live productions, After Faust and CARBON MOVEMENTS, the latter of which is currently embarking on national tour. Other notable work includes a digitally edited and streamed performance piece, also named The Invisible Practice, which reflects his commitment to blending theatre, language, tactile embodiment, and innovative accessibility techniques.

Beyond his creative practice, Connor is widely recognized for his leadership in accessibility and intersectional justice. His North Star is a vibrant arts ecology that embraces and uplifts Deaf creatives and audiences, and where Deaf-centric stories emerge to be shared across the land.

Find more of his work online at @the_invisible_practice & @temporalways.

Ebony R. Gooden is a filmmaker, director, and changemaker dedicated to reimagining accessibility through bold storytelling and immersive art. As the founder of Deafinitely Digital (to be renamed Silent Soul Studio), she creates platforms that amplify BIPOC Deaf voices across film, theatre, and digital media. Ebony currently serves as the Marketing Coordinator at Inside Out Theatre, where she supports inclusive arts initiatives. 

She was featured in SHADES Season 2 by Humainologie and has developed short films through the CSIF and Storyhive programs. Her works have received support from the Calgary of the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts, including the production of a new short animation. 

Ebony has directed and produced numerous projects, including Miscommunication In Our Language, Expression Unmasked and His Hands, His Art, blending artistic vision with accessibility innovation. Her work challenges traditional forms and creates space for underrepresented communities to be seen, heard, and celebrated.

Find more of her work online at @BlackNotIvory and Deafinitely Digital Inc.

Kim Fullerton is a Toronto-based visual artist, arts promoter, and accessibility advocate whose career spans more than four decades in Canada’s contemporary art sector. Beginning her work as an artist and curator in the early 1980s, Kim later founded Akimbo Art Promotions in 1998, a groundbreaking national platform that supported artists, galleries, and cultural organizations by amplifying exhibitions, events, and emerging talent across the country. Through Akimbo, she played a pivotal role in shaping how Canadian art is communicated, promoted, and experienced.

Since stepping away from Akimbo in 2021, Kim has returned to her own multidisciplinary practice, creating work in drawing, animation, video, and mixed media. Her lived experience as a wheelchair user deeply informs both her art and her advocacy, positioning her as a prominent voice for accessibility, disability justice, and inclusive design within arts institutions. Kim’s leadership continues to influence conversations about equity and meaningful access across Canada’s cultural landscape.

Find more of her work online at @kim_m_ful.

Olivia Brouwer is a multidisciplinary artist based in Cambridge, Ontario, whose work explores blindness, perception, and the complexities of visual culture. A graduate of the University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College’s Art & Art History program, she works across painting, printmaking, sculpture, sound, and multisensory installation.

As a partially blind artist, Olivia draws on her lived experience to investigate how knowledge, vision, and meaning are constructed, often inviting audiences to engage with her work through touch, sound, and embodied movement. Her practice combines organic and geometric abstraction, referencing natural organisms, spiritual symbolism, and metaphors of sight and non-sight.

Olivia has exhibited across Southern Ontario, including at Tangled Art + Disability, the Art Gallery of Mississauga, Blackwood Gallery, and Centre[3]. She has participated in multiple residencies and received support from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Waterloo Region Arts Fund. Her work contributes to advancing accessible, sensory-diverse approaches within contemporary art.

Find more of her work online at @olivetreeonthemount and Olivia Brouwer.

Salima Punjani is a Montréal-based multisensory artist whose work explores connection, care, and sensory accessibility through immersive sound, touch, and interactive installation. With a background in social work, her practice blends art and relational ethics, transforming biological and everyday sensory data — such as heartbeats, brainwaves, or domestic soundscapes — into environments that invite rest, empathy, and shared experience.

Her projects, including Will You Pass the Salt? (PHI Foundation) and The Cost of Entry is a Heartbeat (Spatial Sound Institute, Budapest), consider multiple sensory entry points for people to experience the work. Working across sound, vibration, soft sculptures, multimedia and participatory storytelling, Salima creates spaces that challenge traditional sensory hierarchies, contributing to contemporary conversations on accessibility, intimacy, and multisensory artistic practice.

Find more of her work online at @picturesalima.

Willy Le Maitre is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist whose work in immersive media engages participants in perceptual experiences conjured through generative imagery, virtual and extended reality environments, and experimental sound. For over two decades, he has been recognized for a pioneering approach — creating artworks that challenge how audiences see, hear, and inhabit digital and physical space. Working at the intersection of art and technology, his practice investigates the fluid boundaries between virtuality and embodiment, deploying 3D imaging, spatialized sound, and sensory interventions to heighten perceptual awareness. 

His installations and media works have been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries, festivals, and research-driven art contexts. Le Maitre has collaborated with artists, designers, and scientists on projects that explore simulation, cognition, and the expanded field of sensory experience. Known for his inventive visual language and technical experimentation, he continues to influence Canada’s media-arts landscape. At the Haptic Horizons Art Symposium, he will share his insights into immersive environments, perception, and multisensory creative practice.

Find more of his work online at @really_le_maitre and Willy Le Maitre.