MFA Thesis Exhibition

Breanne Jeethan The System is Broken

The System is Broken is a body of work based on the artist's experiences as a worker in the Emergency Department of a hospital. The series represents abstract scenes of the clinical workspace and is a response to the fast-paced, stressful environment that is rife with trauma, high emotions, and anguish. Working between the emergency room and her studio, the artist uses the symbiotic relationship between the two workplaces as a fuel to create her work. By manipulating and distorting found imagery created by various medical technologies, abnormalities in the imagery are created to signal the bureaucratic structures and power imbalances that undermine healthcare. The resulting series speaks to both the artist’s continuous navigating of her state of in-betweenness, but also to the overarching hierarchical nature of the medical system.

Breanne Jeethan (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary artist and healthcare worker based in Mississauga/Toronto, Ontario. Her experience in graphic design has projected her practice in a mix of analog and digital printmaking. Her practice explores themes of the body, medicine, and trauma with the use of internal imagery like X-rays, ultrasound scans, and angiogram brain scans. She has displayed her work at Durham Art Gallery, Durham; Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto; Northern Contemporary Gallery, Toronto; and Small Arms Inspection Building, Mississauga. She is the recipient of the Sylvia Knight Award in Fine Arts (2025).

"The Okanagan" combines sculptural objects and drawing that reflect the emotional impact of separation, distance, and the desire for connection. 

Jordan MacDonald (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist from the unceded territories of the Syilx peoples (Okanagan Valley, British Columbia). She received her BFA in Studio Art from the University of British Columbia in 2023 and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Waterloo, where she is a recipient of the prestigious Shantz International Research Scholarship.

Cree Tylee is an interdisciplinary artist exploring themes of presence and absence investigated through the family archive. "In any way I can" explores the home as a site of memory, investigating loss and identity through material and spatial remembering. Drawing from a personal family archive, the work considers absence and presence, constructing a material dialogue between ‘then’ and ‘now’.