ekphra takes its name from a poem.

At the After Tryst solo exhibition in September 2025 at Laird Art Gallery in Toronto, Young Hee Sung showed not only her paintings but a poem she had written in response to her own work — titled Ekphrasis. That evening, writer and poet Richard Scarsbrook stood before her paintings and read aloud the poems her work had inspired in him. Image and word in the same room, in the same breath.

Ekphrasis is an ancient Greek term — the practice of writing poetry in response to visual art. Young Hee had lived this practice long before she named it — painting and writing side by side, each making the other more complete.

That same evening also marked the launch of Laird Art Link — an Artists & Writers Circle inspired by the salon culture of the French Impressionist era, where artists and writers gather not as separate disciplines, but as one creative community.

In 2026, that circle became Art Meets Word — a juried group exhibition at Etobicoke Civic Centre Art Gallery, organized by Laird Art Gallery and All Seeds Academy.

ekphra grew from all of this. A platform for artists who find opportunity in Toronto and reach further from there. Where Art Meets Word.

ekphra was born from ekphrasis — the ancient practice of writing poetry in response to visual art.

In this time of change, ekphra holds two things together.

We recognise AI collaboration — born from the accumulated density of human language — as a valid art movement of our time. And we believe that work made purely by human hands and spirit deserves to be recorded as human history.

We depend on the honesty of each artist for each work.

Human Made. AI-Collaborative. Each work carries its own record.