Artist: Chris Corridore

@chriscorridore

Chris Corridore is a visual artist and designer based in Toronto whose practice explores consciousness, culture, and human nature through the lens of cross-cultural exchange. Over the past two years, Chris has completed artist residencies in Japan, with an upcoming return in March 2026 to manage a residency program and cultivate creative networks between Toronto and Kyoto. Japanese culture has become integral to both his artistic practice and personal identity, informing an ongoing commitment to building bridges between communities through creative collaboration.

His two works for 'Friendship through Culture' reimagine the komainu, traditional guardian lion-dogs found at Japanese shrine entrances as a meeting point between East and West, mythology and modernity. Rendered in contrasting black ink and white acrylic, the pieces face each other as complementary visions: one mystical, composed of symbolic imagery drawn from Western divination and metaphysics; the other mechanical, inspired by Japan's Gundam Factory and the intersection of technology with handmade craft. Together, they embody the duality of fantasy and science fiction that runs through Chris's work, visualizing how traditional forms can hold new hybrid meanings. 

These komainu stand as guardians not of a single threshold, but of the space between cultures; a visual dialogue between Toronto and Kyoto, digital and analog, imagination and innovation.

Artist: Zere Abylgazina

@zereabylgazina

My work explores the connections between people, culture, memory, and the ways in which shared experiences and traditions can bridge distance and difference. As an artist from Kazakhstan living in Canada, I am constantly navigating between cultures, languages, and ways of seeing. This in-between space has taught me that friendship often begins through curiosity and empathy through the willingness to understand another person’s world.

My painting Sisterhood (2025) embodies this idea. It portrays women supporting and caring for one another, reflecting the strength that grows from shared experience and cultural understanding. Sisters are not just biological siblings - they are friends, who support you no matter the family status. People tend to believe the myth that female friendship does not exist, however, in reality, it is the strongest bond. 

The figures, inspired by Kazakh traditions and everyday tenderness, symbolize how friendship transcends language and geography. Through this work, I wanted to express how solidarity and compassion can become universal forms of connection.

“Friendship Through Culture” to me means opening one’s heart to new ways of understanding, and allowing cultural exchange to transform us. My art celebrates that process, the meeting point between heritage and openness, individuality and connection. By sharing my perspective as a Kazakh artist, I hope to encourage cross-cultural friendship and remind viewers that empathy is the most universal language we share.

Artist: Declan Boushy

My three artworks focus on the chaos, order, serendipity, and (in some ways, hidden) infinite potential of Japanese Canadian cultural interaction, discovery, friendship, virtue, and will.

All three of my artworks are intended to emphasize how with Japanese Canadian (and all types of) personal and cultural and creative interaction, there is one centrality and vital primacy which is: honest, self-honest, deep, unconditional, altruistic Will.
A Will which must be: active, diligent, gentle, humble, and truly loving.
Only with such Will as this, has there ever been (and can there ever be) any genuine and lasting good, positive, and upbuilding Japanese Canadian cultural interaction.

Artist: Kentaro Imoto

The artwork shows 3 different scenes to represent how people from many cultures can be friends. The blue picture shows calm feelings, the sunset picture shows happy moments among the birds and the rainbow colors show that everyone is unique but can stay together. 
The art shows that friendship can be bright and beautiful when we share and understand each other.

Artist: Tsutao Machida

@machidatsutao

l have  integrated 
into the fabric 
of our planet
 a joyful sound …
manifesting 
in this textural world 
l created

Artist: Betty Mochizuki

As Japanese Canadian, born in British Columbia forced relocation during WWII to become a self-sufficient family into the interior of McGillivray Falls on the west shore of Anderson Lake, south from the community town of Lillooet. As a school girl, I embraced my surroundings with elements of nature which inspired my reflections through impressionist loose and relaxed watercolours and pencil landscapes to capture the interior of Fraser Canyon. 

Artist: Elaine Hamelin-Mitchell | Rosso Art & Design

@elainehmje | facebook.com/ArtisticRosso

Flowers of Japan — Triptych
Watercolor and gouache on paper

Flowers of Japan is a three-part watercolor triptych inspired by my recent explorations of Japan's gardens: Whispers of Kyoto, Reverie: Sacred Lotus, and Memories of Crape Myrtle. Each painting captures both the delicate beauty of blooms and the meditative, cultural energy of the landscapes they inhabit.

This triptych is a meditation on memory, impermanence, and the quiet dialogue between nature and spirit, inspired by moments encountered in the gardens and temples of Japan. Composed of three intimate works (each 6” × 8”), painted from photographs taken during my travels, the pieces hold fragments of lived experience—where observation becomes feeling.

It reflects on Friendship through Culture by exploring how beauty, memory, and shared experience, in nature, can foster connection across communities. The Sacred Lotus, a symbol of resilience and renewal, mirrors the enduring spirit of Japanese Canadian cultural life. Alongside the Lotus, the Crape Myrtle speaks to endurance and remembrance through cycles of renewal, while the Lantana—shifting in color and form—evokes transformation, layered identity, and the quiet adaptability of memory across time and place. More broadly, the works meditate on nature’s memory—the idea that flowers and gardens quietly witness human presence, observed and appreciated by people from varied cultures and backgrounds.

Through this shared attention, observation becomes connection. Through this triptych, viewers are invited to consider belonging, layered identities, and inter-generational memory, seeing how the shared presence of nature and its quiet witness can bridge cultures, honor memory, and foster new connections.

Artist: Karen Perlmutter

@kperlmutter1

My son lives in Japan. He moved there seven years ago. It was his dream since he was a child. He has come back for brief visits, but he hasn't looked back....only forward. His roots and family are in Canada, but he is now part of a new culture. With that immersion comes new friends and new traditions. This is what brings him comfort.
In the photo, my son is looking out to the horizon on a frigid winter day in Toronto. His feet are planted firmly on the ice but he doesn't look back, only forward where he has carved out a new life for himself. The image is symbolic of this dichotomy.

Artist: Lindsay Erdman

lindsayerdman.com

Friendships can be proven by long stretches of time, but they can also form in the fleeting moments of chance meetings. These small watercolour studies are all painted during times of travel, when our minds are open to new experiences, people and conversations. While it's uncertain how long the friendship will last, it is the moment of friendship that matters most.

Artist: Riki

1、2は自分が好きな風景をデザインして、Tシャツに仕上げました。カナダの思い出になる様に知人に実際に来て貰う事で完成する作品です。3、peruの水彩画はカナダとperuの異なる文化を並べて展示する事で、違いが、対話や共鳴を生み、文化を知る事で、心が繋がり、言葉を超えた友情が生まれる事を伝えたい。

Artist: David Bernhard

@bernharddoc

From childhood, by way of a mother who was passionate about Japanese art, architecture food and performance, I absorbed an appreciation for the Japanese esthetic.
Our home in Michigan was designed by a Japanese 日経 architect.
It was only later in life that I traveled to Japan in preparation for which I attempted to learn to speak the language and learn about Japanese culture.
I hope my photographs reflect Japanese esthetics in some small way.

Artist: Stephen North

@alpha_stevenorth

This is a small glimpse of Canada, through my eyes at our family cottage in the Kawartha area. I created this piece in the Japanese block print style that I admire so much. I think it’s a great blend of traditional Canadiana landscape but with the twist of Japanese block print style. 

Artist: Nancy Hayako Peng

@nancy.peng

In 2024, Nancy Peng joined the Tomoshibi tour (NAJC) to visit the internment sites in BC. A special bond of shared history and community was formed and an unspoken understanding and support amongst the participants of the tour created a safe space to share personal stories.  Friendships were formed in this shared cultural experience. 

Nancy created this artwork as an expression of the journey of her parents as they negotiated a life in internment. Although they endured unimaginable hardships, they found time to form friendships, study and play sports and games. Through her artwork Nancy invites the viewer to question and remember this dark chapter in Canadian history. Through education and memory an appreciation of cultural history is enriched and preserved.

Photos from Nancy's father's album capture moments of laughter in the everyday hardships of internment.
“Uprooted" depicts the dispossession of property and forced relocation of Nancy's mother (Masae Okuma) and her grandparents to East Lillooet. Their journey formed lifelong friendships with those in the camp.
“From Road Camp” shows the path of Nancy's father (Takeo Yamada) who was separated from family to work at Solsqua II road camp. The men adopted a deer named Frenchy as a mascot for the camp, helping them find community in this remote site.

“Life in Internment" shows Kaslo where Nancy's father was reunited with his mother and sister. They found some semblance of routine and friendships including time for play.  

Artist: Amy Lee

@persona_artist

晴天 Sunny Day is an animated short film that depicts a multi-generation Chinese Canadian family. The story in my film is inspired by my own family, and culture through language and food.

My film's dialogue is in English and Cantonese to reflect the spoken language of my family in their everyday home life in Toronto where English and Cantonese are blended in speech.

My film is inspired by my childhood memories of my grandma Sunny bringing joy to my day by making me her homemade Chinese egg tarts. (Click the poster below to view)

Work: 028

Title: 晴天 Sunny Day
Medium: 2D Animated Digital Video
Dimensions: 1920 x 1080
Price: NFS

Artist: Mui-Ling Teh

@muilingteh

I am an artist of Japanese and Chinese descent with a primary focus on miniature origami—a practice that began as an online portfolio and has since evolved into a personal journey of Friendship through Culture.

For many years, I rarely met others of Japanese descent in Canada. When I began folding miniature origami, the works initially served as props for my photography and were shared only online. Then, in 2013, I happened upon an upcoming Japanese-themed exhibition and submitted my artwork, “Wish”. This not only marked my first public exhibition, but also led to the discovery of a closely knit Japanese community in Canada.

“Wish” depicts myself blowing a dandelion made of paper cranes, drawing from both Japanese and Western traditions of making wishes. During the exhibition, I befriended a visitor who introduced me to his friends, leading to new connections and opportunities. Since then, “Wish” has taken on deeper meaning, with each flying paper crane now also representing the friendships and paths that have taken flight since its debut.

The following year, I began placing my miniature origami inside small bottles. My recent work, “Seeds of Friendship”, pays tribute to the friends I have gained through art since the debut of “Wish”. This includes fellow artists and Art Committee members at the JCCC Gallery, who continue to be part of my ongoing journey of Friendship through Culture.

Artist: Elena Butkov

@yelenab.art

My work comes from an interest in how cultures connect in everyday life. I’m drawn to simple things—objects on a table, a garden in bloom, small moments that carry memory and feeling. Painting allows me to slow down and explore how what feels familiar and what feels different can exist together.

In works like Still Life with Roses and Japanese Mask and Lilac in Japanese Vase, Japanese cultural objects appear alongside flowers that many people recognize. These pairings reflect how cross-cultural understanding often begins through quiet, everyday encounters—things we notice, live with, or grow to appreciate over time. The objects carry history and tradition, while the flowers suggest care, change, and the passing of seasons. Together, they create a gentle space where cultures meet naturally.

Garden with Japanese Maple continues this idea through landscape. Gardens are shaped by patience and attention, much like relationships between cultures. The maple holds cultural meaning, but it is also widely familiar and easy to connect with. The painting invites viewers in, offering a shared feeling of calm and presence.

I work in an impressionistic style to keep the images open and welcoming. Instead of defining meaning, I leave space for personal interpretation. For me, “friendship through culture” develops slowly—through looking, feeling, and being open to one another. My work invites viewers to stop, think, and look for connections in small, quiet moments.
 

Artist: Mihoko Maeno

@amonetextileprojects

This work reuses old kimonos and allows you to experience culture through fashion. We reconstruct kimono fabrics created by Japanese tradition and techniques into a modern fashion style and create new value. It is based on the concept that memories of the past weave new memories.

本作品は、古着の着物を再利用し、ファッションを通して文化を体感できる作品です。日本の伝統と技術によって生み出された着物生地を、現代のファッションスタイルに再構築し、新たな価値を創造しています。過去の記憶が、新たな記憶を紡ぎ出すというコンセプトに基づいています。

Artist: Alana Keiko Fleming

@alana.mation

As a mixed Yonsei Japanese, Scottish, and Irish Canadian, I reflect on Friendship through Culture by looking within myself, for there are 3 cultures residing in me. I’ve noticed similarities, like how both Mizuhiki and Celtic knots are endless and interconnected. Japan, Scotland, and Ireland are each known for their rich myths and legends, stories that shape culture and often share overlapping themes.

Interconnected Unity features 3 illustrated folktales from each culture. The composition is the Celtic Trinity/ Mizuhiki Awaji knot, both of which have 3 overlapping and interconnected loops with an open space in the centre, symbolizing an interconnected unity, balance, strong bonds, and a cycle that’s recognized in many stories as the Beginning, middle, and end with creatures who are kind, neutral and evil. I’ve selected 3 tales to help shed light on the similarities and differences between these cultures. Smaller Mizuhiki and Celtic knots decorate the Trinity/Awaji Knot, further emphasising the interconnected unity between these tales. In each of the 3 corners of the knot, you will find the kind Wani, a royal sea dragon from Japan, the neutral Selkie from Ireland, and the evil Kelpie from Scotland. All are sea creatures who can shapeshift into beautiful humans with different intentions.

I want this piece showcase that in the end, we are not all that different. By sharing our stories, we can build bridges and have ‘Friendship through Culture’.

Artist: Queenie Xu

@queeniexceramics

My ceramic work is a practice of building friendship through culture. I create vessels that are more than objects; they are shared containers for emotion and memory. By exploring the simplicity of form found in both Eastern and Western ceramic traditions, I seek a common visual language—a way to understand culture that begins with shared, tactile beauty.

These vessels and installations contemplate the space between people. When arranged in conversation with each other and their environment, they model the interplay of relationship. My work transcends mere function to become a sculptural invitation, proposing that just as a vessel holds substance, a friendship holds shared stories and mutual respect.

Ultimately, I craft ceramics as conduits for connection. By focusing on universal themes of containment, care, and beauty, I aim to create silent, potent bridges. The artwork becomes a quiet mediator, inviting viewers from any background to reflect on the forms that hold our collective human experiences, fostering a profound, wordless sense of kinship.

Artist: Rita Wong

Words and language lie at the heart of culture and connection. They carry meaning, spark understanding, and build bridges between people. Through my calligraphic art, I hope to share the friendship and support the JCCC community has generously given me, and further foster friendship through culture.

Artist: Ken Sugamori

“Friendship Through Culture” conjured many ideas in my head, however, for me it was important to know how the concept was born. Every Culture has a story, stories that were personally passed down from elders to new generations. Hearing the emotional impact from a personal experience, endures longer than reading the same story, from a book. Unfortunately, a conversation with a real person seems to have taken a back seat to remote viewing, which is a real detriment to society.

How I came upon the concept for this project, I can’t remember, however, one thing lead to another and this is the result. While researching, organizing and collecting the material, I was surprised how emotional some of the aspects were. Due to limited space, many pictures were omitted, but, I hope this presentation will give the viewers a glimpse of why the Friendship through Culture means so much to the Japanese Canadian Community. I hope that it motivates people to investigate the whole story in the Heritage Gallery, and illustrates how this story maybe similar to your own culture’s history.

Let us all keep in mind, that the commonalities of all Cultural Histories, far exceeds any differences.

Artist: Tibi Hegyesi

@tibi.hegyesi_visual_artist

I am a Toronto-based visual artist (MFA) with a practice spanning more than four decades. My work is influenced by the Bauhaus and Postmodern Western art movements and has evolved from contemporary figurative through abstraction to an ongoing engagement with Japanese calligraphy. 

My art submission for this exhibition centers on one of the most universal and unifying human expressions: “Kokoro”, heart (Artwork No. 1) and, by extension, “Kokoro wa issho”, meaning hearts, harmony, and peace are one together (Artwork No. 2). Across time and cultures, the heart is universally associated with life, love, compassion, the essential makings in creating and sustaining shared space for understanding, inclusion and connection between cultures and peoples. 

Furthering the concept of Friendship Through Culture that JCCC has championed since its inception, my Artwork No. 2 juxtaposes the Golden Section (or Golden Ratio), a long-standing symbol of Western aesthetic ideals, with the calligraphic expression “Kokoro wa issho”, rendered in Japanese cursive style. Through this deliberate visual interplay, the work reflects mutual understanding and cultural harmony, inviting viewers to consider how distinct cultural symbols can come together in a shared visual language that honors heritage while pointing toward collective futures.

Artist: David Akio

@davidakiogrant

Raised in Scarborough, I was lucky to be exposed to so many cultures from a young age.  A diverse world was my reality, while anything less diverse felt foreign to me.  I drew from that experience to travel the world, learn about cultures, eat street food, and try to understand and connect with the people who co-habit this planet of ours.  

But Toronto centers me, is a grounding location core to who I am.  My goal with photography is to present the world through all its faces, people, moments, landscapes, and more that we encounter every day and try to bring us just a little bit closer together.  If there’s anything I’ve learned, it is that we are all similar just trying to find happiness, love and achieve our goals.

Artist: Zhan Zhang

@zhanswork

For Friendship Through Culture exhibition, I work primarily with traditional handmade paper to explore how cultural connections are formed through subtle, tactile, and enduring gestures. Paper is both fragile and resilient—an everyday material that carries memory, history, and emotion across cultures. Its presence in many traditions allows it to function as a shared, quiet language.

My paper-cut sculptures are informed by the logic of line drawing. By reducing the medium to its smallest unit—the cut—I build forms through repetition, layering, and accumulation, navigating the space between two and three dimensions. This process is a deliberate return to slowness and touch, reasserting the value of hand-based practices within a contemporary environment shaped by information overload.

Rather than representing reality, my work transforms it. Animate and inanimate forms converge, creating unfamiliar yet intimate structures where meaning remains fluid. These distorted forms invite viewers into a moment of stillness, where dreams, memory, loneliness, and uncertainty coexist, gently questioning how reality is perceived and constructed.

Presenting this work at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre is especially meaningful to me. Paper-based practices and handcraft have deep historical roots in East Asian cultures, continually evolving through contemporary interpretation. Through these sculptures, I hope to offer a space for reflection—where cultural difference becomes a site of connection, and friendship emerges through attention, care, and shared experience.

Artist: Ebru Winegard

@ebr.winegard

"Gecekondu" (squatter's house / built overnight) is informal housing in Turkey, built swiftly by migrants with limited means and unlimited hope. Erected quickly and often without permission, these structures embody urgency, survival, and the emotional architecture of people rebuilding their lives in unfamiliar places. In this body of work, Winegard uses Gecekondu as a metaphor for resilience, adaptation, and the persistent dream of home within conditions of displacement.

Water marbling is an ancient Turkish art form created by sprinkling and guiding pigments across a bath of water, using gestures and tools to shape floating forms. This practice closely resonates with Japanese Suminagashi, one of the oldest marbling techniques, which similarly relies on subtle movement, breath, and chance. Though emerging from different cultural contexts, both traditions share water as a site of uncertainty, transformation, and becoming.

Just as no marbling pattern can ever be repeated, no migration story is the same. Each follows its own rhythm—unpredictable, layered, sometimes fragile, yet deeply resilient. The stains and dispersions left behind become lasting imprints of fleeting gestures, echoing how memories, homes, and identities are reshaped through displacement and settlement. Through this work, migration is reflected not only as loss or rupture, but as a continuous act of becoming, where cultures meet, overlap, and generate new forms together.

Artist: Deniz Yilmaz

@awsum_sauce3
 

Deniz is a Toronto-based artist and researcher interested in exploring place and selfhood as a series of hauntings. Inspired by gothic art, traditional motifs from Mongolia, and the experience of growing up in Toronto, her work is an invitation to view both utopian and decaying realities in a singular landscape.

Artist: Deborah Hatanaka

@toru_ceramics

My practice is experimental by nature, grounded in a background in textiles and graphic design and extending into slow labour and cross-disciplinary craft. I draw inspiration from the natural world, reimagining landscapes that hold personal meaning.

My processes are influenced by cultural exchanges and friendships that have developed over time in collaborative studios, travels, and creative spaces. Approaches such as Nerikomi are more than just theoretical concepts; they are vibrant practices shaped by connections.  Working alongside others has shaped my understanding of belonging as relational and provisional—crafted through care, attentiveness, and shared labour rather than fixed identity. Materials serve as a medium for dialogue, embodying traces of place and human connections.

My recent works involve layering and cutting pigmented clay to form Nerikomi blocks. My experience in fashion design fostered an interest in how things are constructed; I think of Nerikomi as a fabric from which I can cut and assemble, similar to garment creation. I am fascinated by how its infinite pattern-making possibilities create a conversation between control and chance, where the material holds moments of transformation.

I document experiences—geological formations, patterns of water and sky, and interplays of light and colour. By eliminating horizon lines and grand panoramas, which mark dominant landscape conventions, I aim to reveal intimate and ever-shifting details of the natural world.

Artist: Jerrold Tanaka

@jerrold.tanaka

I don't know???!!! A heart represents Love. Friendship is Love. Love is universal in all cultures.

Artist: Ryo Yonekawa

@ryo.yonekawa

I am downstream of multiple cultures, but upstream of none.
The work remains deliberately unresolved, holding space between inherited structures rather than choosing a fixed position.

Coming to North America at the age of six or seven, I am what is informally called a “1.5 generation” immigrant. Rather than presenting a clear narrative or offering a single meaning, the work is designed to remain open to interpretation. This reflects my relationship to the cultures that shape me: one of ongoing negotiation rather than resolution.

In this sense, “unresolvedness” functions not as ambiguity, but as a method: one that resists resolution as a form of closure.

In other words, the work operates in liminal conditions, where transition is expected but structurally denied.

Artist: Ruth A. Mora Izturriaga

@r_atsumo_art

THE COLOURS ARE INSIDE 
Kaveh, just five years old, proudly shows me the painting he made during his home class. Tempera strokes cover the page, every inch washed in deep black. I smile and ask, “But Kaveh, where are the colours?” He looks at me, eyes wide with certainty. “Don’t you see? The colours are inside.” It was the middle of COVID-19, and that reply stroke me as a revelation

Years later, while researching this project, I realized the phrase spoke to me on a deeply personal level—about resilience, adaptation, and inner strength. Ultimately, it captured the essence of what I hoped this work would convey.

‘The Colours Are Inside’ draws inspiration from Meiji-period kimonos, created during a time of rapid Westernization in Japan, when long-held traditions were subtly reshaped under external influence. In response, some formal garments adopted restrained exteriors, concealing vibrant ornamentation within their linings—embellishments hidden from view, visible only to those closest. This discreet interplay between concealed traditions and imposed emerging influences became a quiet act of resistance, a way of carrying cultural memory inward while outwardly adapting to change.

These works reflect on culture as something held, reshaped, and shared through care and closeness. As immigrants, we navigate new landscapes while quietly carrying our histories, languages, and symbols within.

Through friendship culture becomes a meeting ground—an invitation rather than a boundary—where layers are revealed through trust, and shared experiences.

Through material, process, and image, they explore identity as layered, fluid, and relational—shaped less by borders than by the bonds we form when what is held within is shared, within circles of care and trust.
 

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