The artists other artists are excited about for 2025

We asked artists and curators from across Canada which artists they think are due for a breakout year in 2025. We got, not surprisingly, a slew of excellent answers, but a few of them stood out.

Lotus L. Kang

A Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based artist who works with changeable materials like film and photo paper, Lotus L. Kang has already exhibited at big international shows, and curator Florence-Agathe Dubé-Moreau thinks even bigger things are on the horizon for her in 2025.

"In the last few years, [Kang] has had a string of exhibitions at prestigious museums and events — such as the New Museum's Triennial in 2021 and the Whitney Biennial earlier this year," says Dubé-Moreau. "We can also see that her work is starting to shine more and more on the international scene.… She is slowly moving from exhibitions with cutting-edge galleries — such as Pangée in Montreal and Franz Kaka, who represents her in Toronto — to associations with galleries that have solid respect in the art market and institutional milieu, such as Catriona Jeffries in Vancouver, Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles and the finely curated 52 Walker in New York coming up in April 2025."  

"Finally," Dubé-Moreau adds, "I'm really excited to see where her most recent explorations of 35-millimetre film and kinetic installation will take her practice and poetic subtext. As a curator, I think an artist who takes risks and is willing to take her practice in new directions is often a promising sign."

Slash Need 

A Slash Need show is always a weird time — a good time, but a weird one. Sure, there are fog machines and strobe lights (pretty normal), but there's also a lot of fetish gear and a whole gang of dancers in very unsettling masks. And if there's one thing the Toronto-based techno-industrial duo knows how to do, it's move a crowd. 

"Slash Need is incredibly entertaining and energizes everyone to move their bodies and dance!" says artist Maya Fuhr. "I need some more dancing in my life in 2025."

Slash Need may be the strange party we need for the strange times we're living in.

Lucy Tulugarjuk

Actor, director, and throat singer Lucy Tulugarjuk already has a pretty extensive resumé. She's appeared in the films Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner and directed Tia and Piujuq and is executive director of the Nunavut Independent Television Network.

That doesn't sound like someone who is poised for a breakout year so much as someone who has already well and truly broken out — except for the fact that, as director Sonya Ballantyne points out, Tulugarjuk will be appearing alongside Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise in the next Mission Impossible movie.

"Here's hoping for an action movie set in the Arctic," says Ballantyne.

Annie Briard

Working mostly in photo and video, Annie Briard focuses on our sense of perception. According to curator Mónica Reyes, whose Vancouver-based gallery represents Briard, the artist is poised to reach new levels of success in 2025.
"Briard has a solo exhibition in Los Angeles with Royale Projects, the gallery that represents Ken Lum — the artist behind the East Van cross in Vancouver, a major landmark in the city," says Reyes. She says it signals Briard's landing in the American market.

"Not only that, but the artist is also sharing the spotlight with some impressive female artists in [a group exhibition at the Kelowna Art Gallery in B.C.] in early February 2025. These two major exhibitions are meant to have a ripple effect that is bound to take her career to the next level," she adds.

Delali Cofie

He might have just graduated from Toronto's OCAD University this year, but photographer Delali Cofie is already making a name for himself, showing at galleries like Patel Brown Toronto and appearing in the Contact Photography Festival.

"It's going to be a big year for Delali Cofie," says Fuhr. "As a Ghanaian-Nigerian, he has an interesting perspective, and his storytelling has a [sense of] nostalgia for where he's from — and is expanding with his experience in Toronto.… His work is important, and I'm looking forward to seeing his gaze evolve."