2026 Artwork Contest Winners
Future at Hand (Winner)
Artist Bio
Elena Tran (Hong Le Tran) is a lecturer with over fifteen years of experience teaching language and communication, including the National University of Vietnam, Niagara College Toronto, Sheridan College, Trent University, Conestoga College, and the Toronto Catholic District School Board. She is currently a full-time EdD student in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto’s Ƶ. Her research focuses on social justice education and systemic discrimination. She uses oil painting as a form of visual meditation to cultivate healing and hope.
Ƶ the Artwork
“Future at Hand” is a visual meditation on generative hope during periods of contraction, uncertainty, and diminished light. I painted oil painting during an especially difficult period in my life as a college professor, when my career stability and personal well-being were threatened by abrupt federal policy changes limiting international student enrollment, alongside institutional budget cuts. Winter 2025 closed many professional doors; however, it also opened a necessary space for healing and redirected my attention toward researching educator and student well-being. I created The Future at Hand as a reminder that hope, like light during winter’s shortened days, is fragile yet actively cultivable. If we choose to look for light, we can still find it. This painting process allowed me to draw on critical traditions of hope articulated by Paulo Freire and bell hooks’ engaged pedagogy, which emphasizes academic work grounded in wholeness—a union of mind, body, and spirit. Winter becomes both a literal and metaphorical landscape: a time when futures feel compressed by structural constraints, precarity, and exhaustion, yet are not extinguished. The sunlight that remains is thin, refracted, and conditional—but real. In this sense, The Future at Hand speaks to generative hope in education research as a practice of locating possibility within difficulty, rather than postponing hope until conditions improve. The artwork invites viewers—particularly educators and researchers navigating ongoing crises—to reconsider where hope is sought and how it is sustained. Even in the shortest days, light persists. The future, while uncertain, remains within reach.
Lens of Possibilities (Runner-Up)
Artist Bio
Naz Hagos (she/her) is a first-year master's student at the University of Toronto, Ƶ, in the department of Social Justice Education. She has a B.Sc. with a specialization in Legal Studies and Criminology from the University of Waterloo. Her interests are in digital and community-based activism, and she aims to bridge the gap between academia and praxis.
Ƶ the Artwork
My collage art “Lens of Possibilities” recognizes the starkness of current reality and reflects on the possibilities made available when equipped with the right tools. The background image is dull and bleak with no life or growth meant to reflect the violence and harm we see in this world. The glasses provide an alternate view filled with vibrancy, health, nature and beauty. Written on the frames are values that disrupt hegemonic powers: knowledge, growth, generosity, history, art, care, patience, love, and kindness. This piece is not meant to encourage one to ignore the problems we face, but to suggest that individuals can find solutions and hope through their own actions and values. It is meant to encourage reflection and ask the critical question: What tools do you require to make a positive impact in this world and create what you envision for our collective future?
