Narcissus (2019), Ink on Paper Series
ABOUT
Justice Walz is an interdisciplinary artist, brand designer, illustrator + maker based in Toronto.
She uses her artistic practice as a way to playfully explore her intersections as a neurodivergent, mad, queer biracial woman of colour. Justice's work toys with notions of intersectional feminism, re-contextualizing / healing from mental and chronic illness, and the reclamation of her identity in a postcolonial postmodern world- using her interdisciplinary practice as a way to navigate and make peace with her experiences.
Balancing the dichotomy of elegance and camp, trauma and healing, beauty and abjection, as well as confrontation and acceptance, Justice uses craft and found objects in a variety of disciplines. She enjoys working with visually and tactually stimulating mediums in a practice that often includes craft clay, resin, and upcycled secondhand materials.
In addition to her art practice, Justice works as the Brand Designer and Creative Director of Bruized - a women run Toronto-start up on a mission to fight food waste with upcycled plant-based snacks. She has taken on both graphic and brand design work for Toronto businesses and organizations including LUCID and Frontline Workers Collective.
Justice has exhibited installations and illustrations that join the discourse of mental and chronic illness, feminism, and healing from trauma. She exhibited her earliest installation work in The Sustenance Rite (2017), curated as part of the 5-circuit exhibition series Take Care. In 2018, she showed her next installation at “MENTAL HEALTH”, as part of the White House Studio Project's In Space program, conceived of by Sandra J. Manilla and co-produced with Stephanie Avery, Leone McComas, and Nathaniel Addison. This exhibition was funded through the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council, and led to her participation as an exhibiting artist speaker at a community roundtable in partnership with the Artists’ Health Alliance.
Justice is currently working on crafting a line of unique handmade jewelry and decor through a mixture of practices including sculpting, resin casting, soft textile crafting, painting, and upcycling found materials.
CV
Education
2013 - 2018
BFA with Distinction, Ryerson University - RTA New Media
Exhibitions
2019 may
2019 february
2018 july
2017 nov. - dec.
2017 april
Identity: Next Chapter, Super Wonder Gallery, Toronto
BNW Show, SADSTAB x Horrible Noise, Toronto
MENTAL HEALTH, White House Studio Project, Toronto
The Sustenance Rite, Blackwood Gallery, Missisauga
META 2017: Immersive Art Experience, Arta Gallery, Toronto
Artist Talks & Panels
2018 july
MENTAL HEALTH, Panel Discussion and Round Table, Artist’s Health Alliance, Toronto
Publications
2020 march
Review - #GetMad: Rendezvous with Madness Festival, C Magazine Issue 145: Criticism, Again
2019 august
Illustration publication -NOW Magazine, accompanying Stories from the Frontline of the Opioid Crisis by Annabelle Bernard. Pub. Aug 13/19
2016 september
Illustration publication - Issue 5: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, HEY LADY zine
2016 may
Ilustration publication - Issue 4: Leonor Fini, HEY LADY zine
Contact Me
416-779-5774