Joanne Tod was born in Montreal in 1953, and completed her studies at the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University) in Toronto. Shortly after graduating, her works were included in the 1982 exhibition YYZ Monumenta that was spread out over six spaces in Toronto’s Queen Street West neighborhood, and the show brought her much critical attention. She is now well known for her high realism and witty social criticism, which are rooted in her interest in Pop art and documentary photography.

Some of her most renowned projects include her series Vanity Fair (2002), in which she portrays individuals from the Torontonian art scene as characters from William Thackeray’s novel of the same name; Kingdom Come (2009), which questions notions of property and moral rights related to museum collections and antiquities; and Oh, Canada – A Lament (2007 – 2011) which consists of a series of portraits of every Canadian soldier that has fallen in Afghanistan, arranged to represent a fragmented Canadian flag.

Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and are held in many important collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Tod teaches in the Visual Studies program at the University of Toronto at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.