Asian Heritage Month: Artist Spotlight 2025
May 1 to May 31, 2025
Location: Exterior Digital Billboard
Artists: Jarrod Bai, MONKYI, Amanda Veloso, Aquil Virani
This Asian Heritage Month, we will be spotlighting the work of four artists of Asian descent on our 72″ x 44″ digital display sign, prominently located on the exterior of our building.
Below you’ll find more information about the selected artists. If you’d like to see more of their work and support them further, make sure to follow them on social media!
Featured Artists:
Artist: Jarrod Bai
Photography credit: Christian Martius
Social Media: @jarrodbai
Artist Bio: Jarrod Bai is a Toronto-based visual artist pursuing his BFA at OCAD University. His work has been featured in Art Toronto, Ada Slaight Gallery, NPCC Arts, and Gallery 1313. Jarrod confronts his artistic practice with the belief that a finished artwork holds magic in the way the final image has deviated from its original reference. He approaches his creative pursuit as a process of translation between the original and the created image that infuses intentionality in deciding how closely the work might mimic its source. Jarrod’s work strives to develop an original presence in close relationship to, yet independent from, its source of reference. This pursuit is lifelong; he believes a reference will always call upon the artist to mimic itself. Instead, Jarrod’s practice strives to invoke an original voice from within.
Spotlighted Artwork: The Eunuch at Work
Artist: MONKYI
Social Media: @_monkyi
Artist Bio: MONKYI is a Chinese-Canadian visual artist who specializes in large-scale murals, illustrations, live painting and community-engaged workshops. With a background in anthropology and education, her works are driven by imaginative and conceptual storytelling, often inspired by nature, mythology, and her Chinese heritage. She began painting murals in Cambodia in 2019 after years of living and traveling across Asia. Since then, she has collaborated with stART Street Art Toronto, STEPS Public Art, Mural Routes, and various BIAs and businesses, with clients like Michael Garron Hospital, UHN Network and the TD Bank. She aims to expand her practice globally through projects that inspire and connect communities.
Spotlighted Artwork: Market Days in Chinatown
Artist: Amanda Veloso
Social Media: @mandi.vel_art
Artist Bio: Amanda Veloso is a first-year undergraduate visual studies student at the University of Toronto and a Filipino Canadian multidisciplinary artist currently based in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Through her artistic practice, she employs her personal experience as a lens through which to operate and navigate themes of memory, identity, family, and the human experience—exploring how we understand ourselves and experience the world.
Spotlighted Artwork: Flowers of Heritage
Artist: Aquil Virani (aquil.ca)
Social Media: @aquilvirani
Artist Bio: Aquil Virani’s collaborative art projects combine painting, drawing, filmmaking, writing, graphic design, installation, and participatory art processes. He make work aligned with his political values that explore questions around empathy, intercultural understanding, connection, identity, representation and social change movements. As curator Celine Le Merlus explains, “his approach, which aims not simply to assert a personal point of view on a pressing social issue, but also to facilitate opportunities for others to express themselves freely – to speak and be heard – is characteristic of all of Aquil’s work.” Learn more at aquil.ca.
Spotlighted Artwork: “Iron Horse (After Monkman)”