Re.Stance Panel: Living Systems
Sunday, May 31 | 1:45 PM - 2:30 PM
$10 | General
$5 | Students & Textile Museum Members
Join us for an afternoon three-part panel series at the Textile Museum of Canada, presented by Re.Stance, exploring textile histories and cultural memory through ancestral knowledge, circular and regenerative design systems in practice, and future material innovation through decolonial thinking and biofabrication.
Panel 2: Living Systems — Circular Design, Regenerative Materials & Tech Innovation
Panelists: Marium Durrani, Laura Cristinzo, Alycia Shanika, & Katie Sullivan
Moderator: Omo Isherhienrhien
Living Systems centers creators as builders of circular futures. Moving beyond theory, the panel explores how regeneration, repair, and reuse show up in daily practice—and how “waste” can be redefined as a resource.
It also considers the role of technology in scaling circularity, alongside the gaps between innovation and infrastructure. The discussion focuses on how artists can shift behavior, extend lifecycles, and bring circular design into the mainstream without losing cultural grounding.
This programming is produced in collaboration with Re:Stance as part of the sustainable fashion symposium Temporality: A Love Letter to Gaia.
Panelist Biographies
Marium Durrani
Dr. Marium Durrani is a fashion anthropologist, educator, and circular fashion advocate whose work focuses on repair, garment longevity, and the social life of clothing. She holds a Ph.D. from Aalto University, where she researched communal repair practices as forms of care and resilience, and an M.Phil. in Environment and Sustainability from the University of Oslo. Based in Toronto, her work bridges academic research and practice, exploring clothing as relational and shaped through care, use, and time.
Laura Cristinzo
Laura Cristinzo is the Circularity Program Manager at Fashion Takes Action, where she leads national initiatives advancing circular fashion systems in Canada, including the Canadian Circular Textiles Consortium. With nearly 20 years of experience in the apparel industry across product development, sourcing, and design, she brings practical expertise alongside systems-level thinking. She is also a co-founder of grassroots initiatives focused on sustainable and ethical fashion.
Alycia Shanika
Alycia Shanika is an urban-cultural planner, artist-designer-researcher, and creative producer working at the intersection of cultural infrastructure, systems change, and diasporic storytelling. She is the creator of Future Diasporas: Culture, Art, Identity, Space, a publication exploring racialized artists navigating migration, displacement, and cultural production within Toronto’s evolving urban landscape. Her work focuses on building more equitable, community-led cultural systems and futures.
Katie Sullivan
Katie Sullivan is a Toronto-based artist, researcher, and educator whose practice spans co-authorship, embodied knowledge, and the relational conditions that make collective creativity possible. With a Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD and a background in dance and social service work, her work asks how communities preserve meaning and build workable systems outside dominant structures. She is founder of CEREMONY and Education & Studio Manager at InterAccess, where her work connects technology critique, storytelling, and participatory design.
Become a Member of the Textile Museum Today
And enjoy unlimited free entry to all the Textile Museum's exhibitions, plus much more.
Join Today
