Student Affiliate

Elsy Zavarce is a multidisciplinary visual artist, interdisciplinary researcher, and emeritus professor at the University of Zulia. She was born in Canada but lived all her life in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Since 2019 she has been a full-time Ph.D. student in Art Education at Concordia University. Currently, she coordinates ESCOLARTE, an Educational Program of Maczul (Museum of Contemporary Art of Zulia). As a Ph.D. student at Concordia University, she is interested in the artist, educator, and curator’s role in promoting socially engaged art, communities of practice, and the co-creation of urban spaces that unleash the imagination, building a sense of belonging, resilience, and resistance toward a more meaningful living. She has many research publications and several funded research projects; some of them show her interest in the comprehension of contemporary art. Other publications demonstrate her pedagogical approach as the founder of the Graphic Design School.

As an artist, she has explored various means of expression. Her work has been exhibited in Venezuela, Canada, USA, being part of private and public collections as in the Museum of the Americas. She has participated in numerous exhibitions and individual projects: Curará (CEVAZ Gallery 2004), Memory of the Objects – Museum of Contemporary Art of Zulia (MACZUl, 2017), among others. Guest artist in numerous Art Salons stands out: Art in the Era of Discoveries (MACZUL, 2015) invited by L. A. Duque. She has been worthy of academic recognition and distinctions in the arts, such as the Special Mention in the Aragua Art Salon (2012) and the First Prize in three-dimensional work in the Caribbean Art Salon (2000). She has several important artist-curatorial works from Ene Incident (1999-2014), Body in Question (Cuerpo en Cuestión) (MACZUL 2018), and Confined Bodies (Maczul 2020).