The Flavio Belli Curator Award is a mentorship program that gives a student an opportunity to advance their professional development, learn about important issues in the field, share ideas, and develop a working association with a senior gallery curator and other arts professionals. This award is generously sponsored by the Lindy Green Family Charitable Foundation in celebration of our 60th Anniversary, and is thrilled to recognize Flavio Belli, as this year’s mentor.

The Flavio Belli Curator Award merges beautifully the return of TOAF’s popular award: Emerging Artists by Emerging Curator, a professional exhibition opportunity supported by the Propeller Gallery.

About Flavio Belli

Flavio Belli is an artist, curator, art consultant and art collector with a broad range of experience in the Canadian cultural community. He is the current Chair of the Al Green Sculpture Studio and School in Toronto. His artworks have been shown in over 50 solo and group exhibitions and form part of public and private collections including the National Gallery of Canada. Flavio served on the Board of the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition for 10 years and during that time was also a member of the Sculpture Selection Committee for the McMurtry Gardens of Justice. He was appointed by the Governor in Council to the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board in Ottawa from 2005 to 2012. Flavio was Director and Curator of the Carrier Gallery in the Italian community’s Columbus Centre from 1990 to 2005 and during that time he volunteered as an on-camera Arts Reporter on “Toronto Living”, for Rogers Television.

"I am so grateful to the Lindy Green Family Charitable Foundation to be named this year’s mentor. Creating art, producing exhibitions, bringing people together, and collecting art is my life’s passion and joy. It’s an honour to be rewarded for something that brings me such fulfillment, and it is a privilege to be recognized by a Foundation that contributes so much to this city’s cultural landscape. I look forward to working with the award recipient and their selected artists because as civil rights activist Angela Davis said, ‘The most important learning I do at this age in my life is learning from young people.'"

About Abisola Oni

Abisola Oni is an emerging curator and multidisciplinary artist based in the Greater Toronto Area. Through her visual discourse, she investigates visual and cultural criticism from a philosophical perspective. She is interested in current modes of criticism and curatorial practice and plans to pursue a post-graduate degree to explore this field. 

Abisola is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Waterloo with a major in Visual Culture and minor in Studio Practice, with emphasis on performance art. Presently, she is searching for a co-op internship in the Spring of 2022.

Through the Flavio Belli Curator Award, Abisola will receive a $1,500 cash award, and will be mentored by Flavio Belli and supported by the Propeller Gallery team throughout the curatorial and exhibition process. Abisola is putting together the exhibition called BEING+, featuring emerging artists from the current TOAF roster. Opening in January 2022, the exhibition will interrogate the cultural construction of identity in all its forms.

"It is a very exciting and rewarding program TOAF has put together. I am very much looking forward to working with Abisola to bring about an online and in-gallery realization of her curatorial vision... Though I must say, her proposal left me quite speechless – in a good way! It was so complete. I look forward to a creative dialogue."