A Toronto hip-hop crew gets animated in living, CMYK colour

When you catch this week's Exhibitionists, try to imagine all those animated interstitials lighting up the Art Gallery of Ontario's Walker Court.

This week's featured artist, Francesca Nocera (a.k.a. Sun Sun) originally created the spots as video projections for November's First Thursday event, a monthly party that turns the museum into Toronto's only nightclub with a Group of Seven collection.

Nocera is the co-founder of 88 Days of Fortune, and the arts/music collective headlined the event.The group's been throwing parties, producing records and cultivating a futuristic, LGBTQ-friendly hip-hop scene in the city since 2009, as our own Amanda Parris wrote earlier this year. And for the set, Nocera animated a few good people from the crew in living, CMYK colour.

That's Lido Pimienta, Witch Prophet and Latasha Alcindor in the clips, shape-shifting and conjuring day-glo magic thanks to a little digital sorcery.

Nocera's a fashion designer, a music producer and a DJ, but when it comes down to it, she considers herself a visual artist. "I think that was probably one of my first loves, animation," she tells CBC Arts.

After I'd created these short animations, it rekindled an old love.- Francesca Nocera, artist

She first picked it up while in university at Parson's School of Design, and over the years she's run animation workshops at Sketch, a local community organization that offers arts education for youth at risk.

"There's less limits in animation. Your imagination can run far," she says. "Putting the work in and getting a result right away, you can see something come alive. I like that."

And yet, it hadn't been her focus for years. "There's this artist I really like who inspired me to get back into animation," she explains. That artist would be L.A. illustrator Robin Eisenberg, who's internet-famous (113K Instagram followers and counting) for her pictures of neon aliens, pop-culture icons and pizza-loving skater babes.

Eisenberg also happened to provide the album art for Witch Prophet's "Architect of HeartBreak," a hypnotic neo-soul track featuring THEESatisfaction's Stas. Nocera's always been a fan of bright colour, she says, but Eisenberg's iPhone-friendly palette served as the jumping point for this series of moving portraits.

"After I'd created these short animations, it rekindled an old love," Nocera explains. "I'm working on some new animation. I want to make a short film. I'm not sure yet what the story is, but there'll definitely be mostly queer, androgynous, of colour-ish characters in it, because I really need to add that. There's not much of that imagery out there. I want to do something to reflect those ideas and people."

Until then, check out some of her work...

Find more from Francesca Nocera on her website and Instagram (@sunsunart503). Watch Exhibitionists online or Sunday at 4:30 (5 p.m. NT) on CBC Television.

Want to see your creations on CBC Arts? Just send us an e-mail! You could be an Exhibitionist in Residence this season.