Carmen Ocampo Velázquez (She/They) is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist, curator, and psychologist originally from Colombia. Her experience centres on healing, identity, and social change through collaborative engaged art. Drawing on a clinical psychology background spanning over 30 years, she catalyzes creative processes that foster individual and communitarian resilience and empowerment. Carmen holds a Master’s in Environmental Studies and is the founder of Matiz Project, a transdisciplinary collective harnessing the transformative power of art to deconstruct social narratives and reclaim collective voices. Currently, she serves as an Art & Wellbeing Facilitator and Board Member at Lakeshore Arts (LSA).
My and Our: Black Artists Residency 2025-2026 Exhibition Opening Reception
October 22 @ 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Join us for the opening reception of My and Our, the Black Artist Residency 2025 – 2026 Exhibition, which includes the work of Lakeshore Arts’ Artists-in-residences, A. Hassan, Amara King, and Kiké Otuije. Enjoy light refreshments and see what the Artists-in-residence have created during their time at LSA!
My and Our will be on view from October 13 – December 4, 2026 during LSA’s opening hours (11 AM – 3 PM, Tuesdays and Thursdays).
About My and Our
My and Our is a 2026 exhibition featuring new works completed by artists in Lakeshore Arts’ 2025-2026 Black Artists Residency Program. Through portraiture and photography, the exhibition explores community and belonging, self and identity, and where one might be situated within larger gender, social, and cultural movements.
As emerging and mid-career artists, A. Hassan, Amara King, and Kiké Otuije use a diverse range of new or experimental disciplines to create possibilities for themselves, carving out an artistic practice within a contemporary existence characterized by economic pressure and rapid political and social change.
Lakeshore Arts’ Black Artist Residency invites emerging to mid-career Black Artists to take part in an 8-month residency in our South Etobicoke studios. Selected artists receive a materials stipend and work on self-directed projects, culminating in a featured exhibition.
About the Artists
A. Hassan is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto. Her research focuses on labour struggles and workers’ rights, particularly among refugee and immigrant communities. She is currently developing a film project in partnership with the Toronto and York Region Labour Council.
Amara King is a Toronto lens-based artist whose practice is deeply rooted in analog, experimental, and hands-on alternative processes. She explores memory and the various landscapes of belonging through an interplay of materials and techniques. A 2025 recipient of the Gallery 44 Emerging Artist Award, Amara received her BFA in Photography and a Minor in Printmaking from OCAD University. Through experimentation and conceptual practices, Amara navigates the nuances of being (a)part of the Caribbean diaspora, exploring themes of belonging, identity, history, and storytelling, transforming personal and collective memory into visual narratives. Her work aims to create space for the viewer to engage, feel, and immerse themselves in the physical and cultural landscapes we call home — spaces both familiar and ephemeral.
Kiké Otuije is a Nigerian, Toronto-based emerging multi-disciplinary visual artist whose practice is unfolding through mixed-media portraiture that aims to witness, confront and honor the beauty, relevance and layered complexity of themself and their community. Working primarily in charcoal—both a material and metaphor for resilience and metamorphosis —they use mixed-media portraiture to explore, play and attempt to unravel their inner landscape. As a non-binary artist, Kiké’s work also explores and highlights the fluidity of gender and how that echoes the richness, boundlessness and ever-evolving complexity of the human experience.