Profile
Justine Woods is a garment artist, creative scholar, educator and curator whose research and creative practice explores epistemological, ontological and material complexities in expansive, loving and caring ways. Stretching across fields of study, including but not limited to, fashion studies, performance and embodiment, and research-creation, Justine's work passionately situates fashion as a pluriversal phenomenon.
Justine holds a Bachelor of Design in Fashion Design from Toronto Metropolitan University, a Master of Design in Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design from the Ontartio College of Art and Design (OCAD) University and is currently a PhD Candidate in Media and Design Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University. Centering garment making as a practice-based method of inquiry, her dissertation explores place-based fashion knowledges and their role in re-stitching Indigenous ontologies and bodies to place.
Justine's work has been included in both solo and group exhibitions across Canada and in Australia hosted by the Art Gallery of Guelph, MacLaren Arts Centre, FINA Gallery, Fifty Fifty Arts Collective, DesignTO and UTS Gallery & Art Collection. Her writing has been published in a variety of scholarly journals including Fashion Studies, Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education and Scene, and in edited volumes published by Palgrave Macmillan and Rizzoli. To learn more about Justine and her work, please visit her website linked below.
Degrees Held
PhD (ABD/in-progress) Media and Design Innovation, Toronto Metropolitan University
MDes Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design, OCAD University
BDes Fashion Design, Toronto Metropolitan University
Recent Publications
Woods, J. (2026) Fringe, Florals, and Buckskin: Indigenous Aesthetic Influence in Plains Cowboy Fashion in E. Semmelhack, A History of the Cowboy Boot. Rizzoli Electa.
Woods, J. (2025). Indigenous Fashion: A Genealogy of Material Brilliance. Unravelling Fashion Narratives, special issue of Fashion Studies, 5(1), 1-20.
Woods, J., Granados, F-F., Gauntlett, D. (2023). Reframing, embodying, and in-betweening: A conversation about experiences of doing practice-based research and research-creation in N. Alvarez and G. Sporton (eds.) The Art of Making: Methods that Work for Art-making as Research Enquiry. Scene.
Woods, J. (2023). Breathing Universe: A decolonial pedagogical praxis toward ethical eco-systems of knowledge. Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education, Special Issue: Learning Through the More-Than-Human, Part 1.
Mills, P. & Woods, J. (2023). Beading Is Medicine: Beading as Therapeutic and Decolonial Practice in R. Filippello and I. Parkins (eds.) Fashion and Feeling. Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Woods, J. (2022). “I Love You as Much as all the Beads in the Universe: A Garment-Based Inquiry into Re- Stitching Alternative Worlds of Love.” Fashioning Resurgence, special issue of Fashion Studies, 1(1), 1-26.
Performances and Appearances
2026 No place for mannequins: Remaking the fashion archive curated by Dr. Todd Robinson and Dr. Ricarda Bigolin, UTS Gallery, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, Australia (Group Exhibition)
2026 circling back, (work about working) curated by Casper Sutton-Fosman, Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Group Exhibition)
2025 ita kaa kwaapikayhk / Watering Place curated by Jason Baerg, Graduate Gallery, Ontario College of Art and Design University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Group Exhibition)
2025 Troubling Times: Traces, Portals and Groundings curated by Tania Willard, FINA Gallery, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada (Group Exhibition)
2024 Labours of Love curated by Rachel Deiterding, MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie, Ontario, Canada (Group Exhibition)
2023 parafutures storying between the fragments curated by Nina Bakan, Fifty Fifty Arts Collective, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (Group Exhibition)
2022 I love you as much as all the beads in the universe, self-curated, Quest Art Gallery, Midland, Ontario, Canada (Solo Exhibition)
2022 Homecoming curated by Erin Szikora, Art Gallery of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada (Group Exhibition)
2022 Across time, across the table, across the bay curated by Alexander Rondeau, Between Pheasants Contemporary, Kerns Township, Ontario, Canada (Solo Exhibition)
2022 Shared Terrain curated by DesignTO, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Group Exhibition)
2021 The Crow and Salmon Live Everywhere curated by Peter Morin and Ayumi Goto, Trinity Square Video, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Group Exhibition)
Research Interests
Indigenous fashion, garment-based inquiry, world-building, place-based knowledges, research-creation, embodiment, Indigenous methodologies, decolonial design
Portfolio
www.justinewoods.com