Ella cooper biography
Ella Cooper (she/her) is an award winning independent producer, multimedia artist, educator, programmer, writer, director, and cultural leader based in Toronto, Ontario. Her artwork explores themes centered on representation and reclamation of Black female bodies when it comes to dominant visual culture and Western art. Including diaspora, positive representations of the Black body in the Canadian landscape, new representations of motherhood, equity and arts for social change, community storytelling, contemporary dance, oral traditions, and hybrid identities through a multi-racial feminist lens.
She has served as Interim Director of Arts Management at the University of Scarborough. She is best known as a photo-video artist, but she also engages with vocal work, theatre, dance and drawing in her practice or while facilitating groups. Cooper designs and facilitates transformative leadership, anti-oppression and arts empowerment programs for diverse communities, youth and not-for-profit organizations across Canada, USA, Europe, Caribbean and South Africa.
Cooper is the founder of Black Women Film! Canada, a leadership initiative that supports the development of Black women filmmakers. She is the founder and owner of Brown Rabbit Studios, a creative production house focused on content creation for television and film, workshops and the development of Black women in film and media.
She has received several awards and nominations celebrating her film and tv productions. In 2020, Ella received the Tiffany’s Hometown Hero Award and was recognized by Chatelaine Magazine as ‘30 Black Women Making Change Now.’ In 2019, she was nominated for a Mayor’s Arts Cultural Leadership Award. In 2017, Ella was selected as one of Toronto Arts Council’s Cultural Leader Fellows. In 2015, her documentary film Black Men Loving successfully won Best Canadian Film at the International Caribbean Tales Film Festival. She also received Best Canadian Presentation for her work with independent film producer and director Alison Duke on the Akua Benjamin Legacy Project tv series; a work that celebrates 50 years of Black activism in Toronto.
Image: Embodied Land Ecstatic, Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Print, 2017.