Meet the Students of the Faculty of Fine Arts

Concordia’s senior photographer, Lisa Graves, teamed up with undergraduate students Renée Edmona Mathews, Isabela Markus Nafarrate and Inka Kennepohl to document their journey through the Faculty of Fine Arts. 

From taking immersive studio courses to getting involved with extracurricular activities, each of these students has carved out a unique path that reflects their artistic passions. 

A major part of their experience has been organizing the Art Matters Festival, North America’s largest student-run fine arts festival, held annually in the spring. This year’s edition kicks off on February 27.  

This year marks the festival’s 25th anniversary. Renée, Isabela, Inka and the rest of their team have been working hard to make sure it’s a memorable one.

The fact that the festival was founded, and continues to thrive, thanks to students makes it extra special.

Renée Edmona Mathews

Renée Edmona Mathews 

Studio Arts (Drawing)  
Communications coordinator, Art Matters Festival  
Board member, VAV Gallery

As the communications coordinator, my job is to spread the word about the festival and build relationships within and beyond Concordia. Internally, I oversee a team of five people: an archivist, a graphic designer, a social media manager, a copy editor/translator and a photographer. I’m also responsible for major projects throughout the year, such as the website and program.

Art Matters is one of the best experiential learning opportunities I’ve seen at any academic institution, and the fact that it was founded, and continues to thrive, thanks to students makes it extra special. I’ve tried to be involved every year that I could, but with my upcoming graduation, I made it a priority to take on a coordinator role this year.

DRAW 400, is a core course, but I was particularly excited to have Patrick Traer as a professor. I’m a fan of his work and his openness to different approaches. The Faculty is also lucky to have Deanna Bowen, so I made sure to enrol in her ARTX course as soon as I could.

We’ve been running wild with the festival’s silver anniversary theme.

Isabela Markus Nafarrate

Isabela Markus Nafarrate 

Studio Arts, History 
Programming coordinator, Art Matters Festival

I participated in Art Matters as an artist in 2024, and after witnessing the energy and excitement surrounding the festival, I was inspired to get more involved. My role involves coordinating with venues and facilitators, helping bring their visions to life alongside the technical team.

We’ve been having a lot of fun running wild with the silver anniversary theme. We collectively decided to paint our nails silver and frantically scrambled to get it done while getting ready before the finissage of the archive show!

I find going to dance class very grounding. I love dancing, and having a ballet class on campus makes it easy to incorporate it into my routine after classes and meetings. I can forget about essays and emails and instead focus on my turnout and the placement of my arms very intently for an hour. 

This semester, I took a painting class to develop a cohesive body of work that merges my painting practice with historical research. My current series explores my experience as a Mexican immigrant through a mix of pop culture and historical references. 

Being in Canada, I often learn about my heritage from a foreign perspective and interact with the Latin American community differently than I would in Mexico.  

I collect visuals that bring up those complicated feelings — such as Olmec artifacts sketched at Montreal museums, illustrations from history textbooks, my “Latin” dance shoes, and grocery store price tags — and then add them to my paintings. I use motifs from pop art because I’m interested in how material culture and consumerism impact immigrant identities.  

We see the festival as an opportunity to build community above all.

Inka Kennepohl

Inka Kennepohl

Studio Arts 
General coordinator, Art Matters Festival  
Board member, Fine Arts Reading Room

The Fine Arts Reading Room is a resource I only stumbled upon this year, but it's been invaluable to me as a place to find art books. I go there to get sources for art history papers, look at pictures for inspiration in my own work, or just to read zines. So, when I saw their board callout, I jumped at the chance to get involved.

We try to build organic connections between the different Fine Arts organizations — I think it's part of the fabric of student life. 

In the ceramics studio I usually have several projects on the go at once. Clay is still a pretty new medium for me, but I love how tactile it is! I'm happy to just play around and experiment with the different materials and treatments.

At Art Matters, I oversee the festival's budget, employee contracts, grants, sponsorships and other organizational tasks to make sure the festival runs smoothly behind the scenes.

The festival will be great no matter what, but making sure participants are getting the support and connections they need, that's something we have to consciously strive for. 

We see the festival as an opportunity to build community above all, and we try to keep that in mind even when we’re working with each other. 

I trust the other Art Matters coordinators so much. Of course, running an art festival is a huge challenge, but Renée and Isabela and I try to have each other's backs as much as possible.  

We were on a big time crunch all day preparing for the vernissage for our archivist show, our first show this year. 

We ordered a pizza to eat before the event started, but it took nearly an hour for the pizza to arrive! We were running around hanging decorations, setting up snacks, and welcoming attendees into the show with pizza slices in our hands. Just pure chaos!  

The event ended up being a lot of fun, but we definitely will build in more prep time for our next vernissages. 

At the show, we got to meet some of the people involved in the first Art Matters festival, back in 2000. That was amazing, I think it gave us a sense of the roots of the festival, and a perspective on how much students organizing can achieve.