Tosca Teran, aka Nanotopia, is a Toronto based multidisciplinary artist. Born in San Francisco, California, Tosca relocated to Canada in 2001. Working with metals, computer coding, and animation since the mid-eighties, Tosca was introduced to glass as an artistic medium in 2004. Through developing bodies of work incorporating metal, glass, and electronics, Tosca has been awarded scholarships at The Corning Museum of Glass, Pilchuck Glass School and The Penland School of Crafts. Her work has been featured at SOFA New York, Culture Canada, Metalsmith Magazine, The Toronto Design Exchange, and the Memphis Metal Museum. Most recently, Tosca has been awarded residencies at Gullkistan Centre for Creativity, Nes artist residency Iceland, The Association of Icelandic Visual Artists and the Ayatana SciArt Research Program in Ottawa.  Tosca founded nanopod: Hybrid Studio maker space in 2005. Continually exploring new materials and tools, Tosca started collaborating artistically with Algae, Physarum polycephalum, and Mycelium in 2016, translating biodata from non-human organisms into music. 

Handmade Portraits: Nanopod from Etsy on Vimeo.

Life and how we as Human beings interact with it and respond to it, has always fascinated me. Through my own representational language, be it obvious or obscure, I wish to engage the psyche. By employing that which may be real or imagined, I am suggesting a believable structure, yet one not necessarily rational.

Increasingly my practice employs temporal and narrative explorations of self/identity. Continually exploring new materials and tools alongside my metal-smithing, glass and coding background.
Narrative allows me to show imagined futures, reconstructed or mediated pasts that conjecture the implications technology, science and politics have on self/identity, our shared environment through a multi-disciplinary approach, often combining tactile, sculptural forms, and audio.

Creating immersive environments, unnatural History Dioramas, and performative, wearable structures. My one of a kind ‘jewelry’  often serve as maquettes and experiments towards larger sculptural work.

If we can say that the world of science is synonymous with truth and the world of art with that of fiction, I want to tread a middle ground that is unusual and seemingly beyond belief, yet also familiar.

Toronto studio: www.nanopod.tv

Studio/Gallery: www.babayagacollective.ca

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nanotopia

Mycelium Network Podcast: https://goo.gl/95PdBe