In Conversation: Diego Marcon and Aria Dean

Join contemporary artists Diego Marcon and Aria Dean for a conversation on Marcon's first Canadian solo exhibition, The Bubble Boy. The exhibition presents four films that combine CGI, prosthetics, robotics, and cinematic techniques to create works that feel both artificial, yet strangely alive. Drawing on genres including musicals, horror, cartoons, and Italian opera, Marcon's films invoke emotional ambiguity and the blurred boundary between the humorous and the grotesque. Following Dean’s inclusion of Marcon’s work in Site and Simulation—her curated program for TIFF Wavelengths Presents—the two artists come together at the AGO to discuss the moving image, simulation, and the potential that springs from blurring reality and virtuality.

This event is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario and The Vega Foundation.

Diego Marcon (b. 1985) primarily focuses on the moving image. He has exhibited internationally with solo presentations at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2026); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2026); Consortium Museum, Dijon (2025); the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2025); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2024); and Kunsthalle Basel (2023). Marcon’s solo exhibition, Arrivederci, piggies!, opens at the New Museum, New York in September 2026. His films have screened at the Cannes Film Festival (Directors’ Fortnight), Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montreal, and BFI London Film Festival, among others. Marcon currently lives and works in Italy.

Aria Dean (b. 1993) has created a multi-platform body of work based in trenchant critiques of representational systems. Confounding binaries such as abstraction and figuration, individual and collective, Dean’s sculptures, installations, videos, and essays trouble received ideas of race, power, and form. Recent solo, two-person exhibitions, and performances include a presentation of The Color Scheme at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2026); Performa Biennial, New York (2025); the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2024); The Power Plant, Toronto (2023); The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2023), among others. Her writing has appeared in publications including Artforum, Art in America, e-flux, The New Inquiry, X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, Spike Quarterly, Kaleidoscope Magazine, Texte zur Kunst, and CURA Magazine. A volume of her collected writings, Bad Infinity, was published by Sternberg Press in 2023. Dean lives and works in New York.