VOLUME 11 of the INSTITUT experiment. Every week, a different hypothesis. Underground at 620 Spadina Ave — around the back, through the lot to the steel doors, down the stairs, past the mechanical room, through the swinging wood laminate door.
5:30 PM | PANEL | TANGO, FEVER, PAINT — NATALKA HUSAR x OKSANA HAWRYLAK
A conversation between SVI’s creative director and a Ukrainian-Canadian visual artist on distance, the ineffable, and circling the point.
A conversation between SVI's creative director and an infamous Ukrainian-Canadian visual artist about long distance relationships, expressing the ineffable, and dancing around the point.
NATALKA HUSAR was born in New Jersey in 1951 to Ukrainian immigrant parents and has been based in Toronto since 1973. Her work is represented in major public collections including the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario, where her painting Torn Heart (1994) is currently on display. Her ceramics are on permanent display at the Gardiner Museum. Her practice draws on Ukrainian culture and history, the émigré experience, and femininity. Most recently, It Takes Three to Tango (Rodovid, 2024) compiles over 550 illustrated letters between a young Husar and Lviv artist Ivan Ostafiychuk — a staged romance that evolved into a layered exchange blurring fiction and reality, offering a portrait of an era and the imagination as a bridge across borders.
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OKSANA HAWRYLAK is the Creative Director of St. Volodymyr Institute, responsible for its artistic vision and co-conceiver of INSTITUT together with Mark Marczyk. She led the project from vision to reality — shaping the space, the identity, and the community that makes it possible. As part of the team behind SVI's broader development project, she is building a new Ukrainian Canadian cultural hub in Toronto. INSTITUT is both a chapter of that future and proof that it's already underway.
RSVP
7:30 PM | CONCERT | TOLEDANO (NS)
Moroccan-Sephardic cello-looping with intimate voice notes tracking a woman's journey through confusion, lust, grief, birth and death.
TOLEDANO is the immersive solo project of Moroccan-Canadian composer and multi-instrumentalist Blanche Israël, known for her award-winning collaborations with Jeremy Dutcher (JUNO Award, NPR Tiny Desk Concert, Polaris Prize). Rooted in Judeo-Spanish languages and songs, the project reimagines ancestral melodies through cello, electronics, and archival voice recordings. Drawing on deeply personal recordings alongside voices from her family — including her 105-year-old grandmother and her young daughter — TOLEDANO unfolds as a meditation on love, autonomy, motherhood, and the quiet labour of breaking cycles without severing lineage.
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9 PM | CONCERT | SONIC MIRAGE (UA)
Ukrainian folk traditions refracted through improvisation, drone, and electronic psych-groove. A closer look at the flute not as accompaniment, but as pulse, texture, and unstable signal.
SONIC MIRAGE is the solo project of Toronto-based flutist and improviser Artur Safronov (INSOMNIA). Moving between Ukrainian folk music, free improvisation, and contemporary electronic genres, the project blends acoustic performance with trance, psych-groove, and meditative repetition. Drawing from classical and early Baroque traditions as much as from underground electronic music, Safronov approaches the flute as a live, reactive instrument — something capable of carrying rhythm, atmosphere, and raw emotional movement simultaneously. Each set unfolds differently: layered, intuitive, and shaped entirely in the moment.
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11:00 PM | VINTAGE VINYL | JUANA GO-GÓ
Eclectic vinyl-rooted selections of Latin and global sounds connecting memory, diaspora and movement, presented by Sonic Sancocho
Latin funk, soul, cumbia, salsa and global rhythms — sonic journeys that connect memory, diaspora and movement.
JUANA GO-GÓ is a Toronto-based DJ, vinyl selector and cultural curator known for crafting immersive dance floor experiences rooted in Latin and global sounds. Her sets move as travesías sonoras — sonic journeys that connect memory, diaspora and movement — weaving together Latin funk, soul, cumbia, salsa and global rhythms into dynamic, genre-fluid sets. She is the co-founder of Sonic Sancocho, a hybrid platform and radio show that brings together live music, DJ culture and community ritual. Whether behind the decks or on the airwaves, Juana Go-Gó is driven by a belief in music as a tool for connection — bridging cultures, generations and geographies through rhythm and shared experience.
SONIC SANCOCHO is a Toronto-based cultural platform and radio show founded in 2024 by Olasconola & Juana Go-Gó, rooted in the spirit of Sancocho, a rich, shared Latin American stew. Like the dish, it's layered, collective, and made to bring people together — blending vinyl DJ culture, live performance, and global sounds into immersive, ritual-like gatherings.