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Art/Research/Teaching

Driving by Curiosity, Guided by Empathy

BIO

Kathy H. Zhou is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose work explores identity, power, and imagination through the politics and poetics of touch. Her research spans participatory design, critical game worlds, and arts-based methods to examine how personal and collective narratives are shaped, felt, and transformed across media, systems, and institutions.

Zhou’s practice investigates the emotional and structural conditions of othering, alienation, and marginalization while exploring how creative acts of reaching—both metaphorically and materially—can generate new forms of connection, care, and community. Through immersive storytelling, speculative design, and collaborative inquiry, she uses creativity to critique dominant systems and prototype alternate futures grounded in empathy and relational knowledge.

In her work, touch becomes a method—a way of sensing injustice, navigating trauma, and building shared meaning. Her projects ask what it means to come into contact with one another, with memory, and with place and how such contact might become a foundation for resistance, recognition, and reimagining belonging.

Based in Toronto, Zhou is an emerging artist whose work has been recognized by the 2017 OCAD Career Launcher Prize. As a multi-time recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, her scholarly research was awarded Best Paper in Technology Innovation by the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) in 2023.

CV

EDUCATION

2021 - Curr    Ph.D. Student,  University of Toronto 

2018 -2020    MA, University of Toronto 

2014 -2017    BFA, OCAD University

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2024    Wasteland, Prometheus Art Gallery, Oakville, Canada

2024    Wanderers' Whispers/浮乡手信,  Toronto,  Canada

2024    Mid Summer, Todmorden Mills Gallery, Toronto History Museums, Toronto, Canada

2024    All You Can Eat, Northern Contemporary Gallery, Toronto, Canada

2023    Heterotopia Garden, OCAD University Graduate Gallery, Toronto, Canada

2023    A Room of One’s Own, Toronto, Canada

2023    E. W. S. N. Intersectionalism, Toronto, Canada

2020    Covid-19 Portraits, Gallery1313Toronto, Canada

2018    Attachment & Detachment: Emerging Young Artist (Toronto, Canada)

2017    Art Toronto 2017, Toronto, Canada

2017  Gradex 102, OCAD University, Toronto, Canada

2017  Forward Motion Screening, Ostello Tasso Theator, Florence, Italy

2017  Una Piccola Scintilla, On Art Gallery, Florence, Italy

2016    Across the Ocean, film and video exhibition, New York City, US

2016    Art of Leverage: Group Exhibition, Toronto, Canada

2015    Futura: Art and Technology Experimental Exhibition, Daniels Spectrum, Toronto, Canada

2014    Awenda Inspired Exhibition, Toronto, Canada Green Winter, group exhibition at OCAD

University, Toronto, Canada

2014    Breakout, Toronto Subway Billboard Project, Toronto, Canada

2012    Drawing, House of Memory Gallery, Toronto, Canada

2009   Portrait of a Woman, Permanent Collection, SNUC, Visual Art Museum, Chengdu, China

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS

2025    Zhou, K. H., Pullen, C., & Slotta, J. D. (2025) Public Sphere in Dystopia: a Game-based Youth Participatory Action Research,  College of Art Association, 113th Annual Conference, New York City

2024 Zhou, K. H., Fong, C., Pullen, C., & Slotta, J. D. (2024) From Youth Participatory Art to Vision and Action: A  Framework for Game-based Research-Creation, a short paper at the 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ICLS 2024, International Society of the Learning Sciences.

2024 Zhou, K. H., Pullen, C., & Slotta, J. D. (2024) Digging the Abandoned Feelings Out of the Wasteland:  Raising Trouble Makers through A Dystopian Critical Action Game, a poster at the 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ISLS 2024, International Society of the Learning Sciences.

2024 Zhou, K. H., Pullen, C., & Slotta, J. D. (2024) A Critical Action Game: Fall of Artica Investigating new forms of collective inquiry for critical action, Roundtable Session titled “Engaging Our Students & Ourselves: Teaching in New Dimensions and Contexts”, Division C - Learning and Instruction/Division C - Section 1b: Humanities, Social Sciences, Fine Arts at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

2023 Zhou, K. H., Pullen, C., Holmes, J., & Slotta, J. D. (2023). Supporting Collective Inquiry in a Critical Action Game: A Role for Open AI Conversational Agents. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning-CSCL 2023, pp. 428-431. International Society of the Learning Sciences.

2023 Zhou, K. H., & Slotta, J. D. (2023). A Dystopian Game for Change: Building Asynchronous Learning Network Through Co-Design Partnerships Across Disciplines. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ICLS 2023, pp. 2169-2170. International Society of the Learning Sciences.

2023 Zhou, K.H., Slotta, J. D. (2023) A Dystopian Game for Change: Co-Design Partnerships In English, STEM, and Arts. Presented at a Poster Session titled “SIG-LS Poster Session 1: Games, Embodiment, Design, and Computational Thinking” at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). 10.3102/IP.23.2017258

2022 Zhou, K.H. (2022). FALL OF ARTICA: A DYSTOPIAN GAME FOR CHANGE(Master Thesis, University of Toronto).

2021    Raman, P., Carvalho, R., Ghasempour, E., Zhou, K.H, Slotta, J. (2021). Supporting Students’ Critical Action within a Cultural Context: A Role for Arts-based Pedagogy in a Community of Learners. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ICLS 2022. International Society of the Learning Sciences.

PRESS

2024    Article, Critical Action Games: Examples of Critical Action Games Fall of Artica ( FoA Game) — ISLS 2023 tech innovation award, Critical Action Learning Exchange, Canada

2024    Article, THE LEARNING FLOWS BOTH WAYS IN LONGSTANDING OISE-UTS PARTNERSHIP: Brining in New Teaching Methods, University of Toronto Schools, Canada

2023    Interview, Artist introduction for Artivition Projects, 105.6 radio, Canada  

2023    Interview, Kathy H. Zhou’s Artist-ResearcherJourney in Canada, University of Toronto Chinese Alumni Association

2023    Interview, Giving back to the local art community as an AGO Curator Circle Patron, Magazine for Members of the Art Gallery of Ontario   

2022   Artist interview, Shinning Female Artrepreneur #BreakTheBias, Buick Canada 

2019    Interview, Artist introduction of 2116: Art Of Leverage, OMNI TV Exhibition (Toronto, Canada)

2018    Artist Interview, Kathy H. Zhou, Fairchild TV, Canada

2017    Interview, Numeroventi Artist Residency, Florence, Italy Film Screening,  “Florence, Genuine Leather, Made in Italy,” Foreigners in Florence, Italy

2016    Artist Interview, Kathy H. Zhou, OMNI TV, Canada 

AWARD

2023  

Outstanding Tech Innovation Award, Internation Society of Learning Sciences

2023  

Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral) 

2022  

Ontario Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral)

2021  

University of Toronto OISE Ph.D. Fellowship

2019  

University of Toronto NEST Program Fellowship

2017  

OCAD University Florence Program Fellowship

2017  

OCAD University Career Launcher Prize Winner (Drawing & Painting)