Welcome to the 2021 Programming Collective!

For our 2021 festival, Images is piloting a new collective programming structure. The Programming Collective consists of three Programmers and one Facilitator, who will be working together to make curatorial decisions informed by consensus-based decision making models. The Programmers are responsible for the festival’s artistic identity, including making programming selections, organizing educational initiatives, and contributing to the ongoing development of our numerous community partnerships. The Facilitator, meanwhile, acts as a neutral source of support for the group. Their role is to guide the group’s deliberation and decision-making process, and are ultimately responsible for upholding the Collective by involving, supporting, and empowering all participants, promoting active listening and honest communication, and helping its members achieve consensus in their decisions.

Welcome to Programmers Alia Ayman, Yasmin Nurming-Por, and Robert Lee and Facilitator Sara Constant!

Alia Ayman is a film and moving image curator living and working between Cairo, New York and Philadelphia. She is a cofounder of the Cairo-based Zawya Cinema, a program advisor for Berlinale Forum, and a co-programmer of the 2020 Flaherty NYC series. Ayman is currently a doctoral candidate at New York University where she is working towards a dissertation on decoloniality, difference and the global circulation of documentary images.

Sara Constant is a musician and arts worker with a background in experimental music. Sara’s performance practice and research focus on ecological theory, cultural identity, and materiality in experimental electronic music. Active as a classical flutist, improviser and ensemble musician, she has performed at festivals/series in Canada, Sweden, Austria, France and the United States, as well as in self-organized projects in Toronto and Montreal. Sara is based in Toronto, where she works as a flutist, writer, and educator. She currently curates a concert series at the Music Gallery focused on early-career experimental artists, and from 2016-2019 co-organized the Toronto Creative Music Lab—a professional development workshop for composers, performers, and ensembles.

Robert Lee is a Toronto-based video artist, writer, translator and programmer.

Yasmin Nurming-Por is a curator and writer based in Ontario. Recent exhibitions include National Museum of Women in the Arts (2020); Alberta Foundation for the Arts (2017); Banff Centre for Art and Creativity (2017); Art Gallery of Guelph (2017); Video Pool (2017); Trinity Square Video (2015); AKA artist-run (2015); and grunt gallery (2015) amongst others. She has held curatorial research positions at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), and the Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff). Her writing has appeared in Canadian Art, c magazine, esse art +opionins and Inuit Art Quarterly. Her research is currently preoccupied by questions of representation in museum art collections.