#facresidency

What, from your life or experiences, has influenced your work most? What do you hope to achieve in your art?

I have always used my art as a means of dissecting and analyzing my experience, so whatever is going on in my life at any given moment is bound to be reflected in what I create.

For the past several years I’ve mainly been making art that speaks to navigating life with chronic illness. I’ve explored this subject from many different angles in a wide range of media. A zine poking fun at prescription medication labels, a large photographic series confronting the embodied experience of being at the mercy of medical institutions, assemblage sculptures out of prescription medicine bottles, t-shirt designs referencing the spoonie subculture, a community-based art project aiming to de-stigmatize prescription medication use, street art encouraging self-compassion, and many other smaller projects came out of this period of discovering, denying, exploring and finally accepting my limitations. I don’t think that “accepting limitations” is the same as “giving up”. It is more about finding different ways to do things, adjusting one’s expectations, reassessing priorities, or allowing oneself to grieve and move on.

Lately I’ve been going through many different transitions simultaneously, and I’m often finding myself in liminal spaces. Sometimes I am finding it hard to adapt to always being in flux, and I yearn for certainty. At other times, being-not-quite-here-but-not-there-yet-either feels perfectly natural and even a bit exciting. This is why right now I am inspired by change and growth. I want to reconcile myself with my past and let go of the baggage that’s been dragging me down. I’ve been reading a lot about the effect trauma has on our minds and bodies, and how it restricts one’s ability to think clearly, feel pleasure and bond with others. And now, more than ever, I am looking to find a way to heal and become whole. Part of this process involves exposing things that haunt me to light. There is something extremely validating in sharing a part of yourself that makes you feel alone and realizing that, in fact, many others can relate. Another part of healing, the one that I am still struggling with, is imagining a future where things are different. I am still very tentative when it comes to making plans, but I am slowly becoming more confident. I am, once again, in the in-between stage, not stuck in the past all the time yet not fully free of its burdens, still afraid to face the future, but planting seeds in the present that will hopefully thrive.

As for what I hope to achieve in my art… that’s a pretty complex question. I create for primarily selfish reasons; art makes me happy. It gives me a voice. It consoles me when nothing else can. It excites me. I am hoping that it will continue to do all these things for me, and also for others. I tell stories through my art, and if these stories help someone feel more present and connected, even for a moment, it brings me joy. I want my art to open minds, even if it sometimes means making someone feel a bit uncomfortable. Several of my projects exploit discomfort to deliver the message: Please Be Patient, for example, that will be featured in the Exposed exhibit at Scotiabank Festival involved getting my models out of their everyday clothes and into a thin paper hospital gown, making a statement about the depersonalization that occurs when individuals face institutions. I want my art to continue doing what it is doing right now, but to do it better. But most of all I wish to be able to continue creating art. I am worried that I won’t be able to afford my art practice for much longer. I am trying to “sneak” art into my future career, and I am hoping I succeed. This year, I joined Workman Arts, and they have been an amazing support. I got some training, exhibition opportunities, a few gigs, and my first grant through them, and I am incredibly grateful that this organization exists.

Can you speak to the variety of materials and methods you use in your art and why you have chosen them?

When I first imagined becoming an artist, I thought I would draw and paint. That’s pretty much what an average person asks me when I say I’m an artist: “What do you paint?” It was pretty heartbreaking for me to realize that while I am competent at both drawing and painting, I’m not in any way outstanding. At some point I gave up on art entirely because I’ve been taught that I will never be successful unless I’m absolutely amazing. I had a very limited view of what doing art can look like, and it took me a while to question where these assumptions came from, deconstruct them and shift my perspective.

Seeing art as a means of achievement rather than of expression was part of this toxic set of beliefs. Part of the process of embracing art as a way of life was discovering new media. You can use pretty much anything to make art. I have always looked up to artists who appear to effortlessly combine disparate elements and create something greater than the sum of its parts. I am drawn to contrast and reconciling the opposites.

When I am immersed in exploring new techniques and materials I get to reconnect with a sense of wonder I feared I’d lost. I allow myself to play. I feed my curiosity. I rediscover my zest for life. The downside to working in multiple media is that sometimes the learning curve is too steep and I can get frustrated and lose interest. The advantage is that I discover - often by chance - ways to transcend limitations of various media and make something that is needed. I am a synaestete, meaning that my sensory perceptions are sometimes blended: I can taste color, see sounds, etc., so engaging with new concepts and materials can be like cooking, except sometimes I set out to make a steak and discover a new flavour of ice cream.  

I am also an avid collector of oddities. I found Jesus (a baby from a nativity scene) on the sidewalk once. I love beach combing, and going to thrift stores. I see worth in things others consider to be trash, and I am often inspired by things I find littering the sidewalks. I joke that I can relate to discarded objects, because I too am broken and not very useful. Humor makes it easier to cope with the fact that my existence as an artist is directly at odds with capitalist culture, since my art practice has very little commercial value. I tackle subjects that are often quite unpalatable to the general public, and the images I produce are not the kind you’d find displayed in people’s living rooms. The saying about how art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed resonated with me deeply, and I often do just that.

In “Message in a Bottle”, you use pill bottles with anecdotes from individuals living with illnesses or disabilities. Is there a significance to the title of this work? Why do you think these stories are important to tell?

Ever since I read about it as a child, I have been fascinated by the idea of putting a message in a sealed container and releasing it into a body of water, hoping that it would someday be found and read.  I often daydreamed about being mired on a deserted island, and I would weave elaborate narratives about what I would do to survive and ultimately escape - a pastime many misunderstood loners could probably relate to.

When I was in the final year of my Bachelor of Fine Arts, I found myself feeling increasingly isolated - I was reeling from a cancer scare, a recent breakup, and the death of my cat. The results of the 2016 US Presidential election left me feeling absolutely hopeless: as an immigrant, a non-binary person assigned female at birth, a disabled person - I felt afraid and heartbroken for people south of the border whose lives would be negatively impacted by the change of government. I buried myself in schoolwork to cope, I wanted to feel numb but I just felt sore all over, all the time. One day I was cleaning and I came across a dozen of old medication bottles. They were mostly empty, and many were from medications I wish I hadn’t taken. I wanted to do something with them - make them part of a memorial to misdiagnosis, maybe. I didn’t have enough, so I hit up a few of my friends for empties. Then when someone dropped off an unfinished bottle of the same medication that gave me awful side effects, I wondered if they had experienced similar issues. I reached out to them and sure enough, their experience was similar to mine: the doctor had dismissed their concerns and told them to increase their dosage and come back in a few months. I felt angry. I needed to do something. As much as I felt like it, I couldn’t go yell at my doctor, because it wouldn’t change anything.

I remembered that my friend sounded relieved when I reached out to them and shared my own experience. I asked them if they would be comfortable sharing their experience with others, anonymously, via a handwritten note inside the bottle with a partially peeled off label. They said “yes”, and I put a call for submissions out of social media. I thought I would get maybe ten “bites” and use the bottles and the messages as part of my upcoming exhibit on chronic illness. I had an incredible initial response, however, and received about thirty entries in two months. I ended up scanning the bottles and their contents, and the “Message In a Bottle” series was the main work featured in my first solo exhibit titled “Spoonderland”. Throughout the duration of the exhibit, I had many people contact me, saying that they were profoundly affected by reading the messages. I decided I would continue to accept submissions, hoping to eventually exhibit again. Then I realized that if I were to confine my work to a physical space, many of the people who need to see this material the most would be unable to access it. I started Message in A Bottle Blog online, sharing one entry a week. I was aiming to keep it alive indefinitely; however, it has been difficult to collect submissions in the past six months.  I have not shared my own story on the blog yet, because I was hoping to do so on its second anniversary, which is eleven months away.  I’ve tried my best to solicit a diverse pool of respondents, but I found that the project had a few “blind spots”: voices of persons of color (especially men), cancer patients, HIV+ individuals and their partners, and people under eighteen and over sixty were conspicuously absent. I realize that there are many reasons for this, but I feel that the project is incomplete and has room to grow. I would like to continue with Message in A Bottle, but I need help. This project was created to break down stigma and give people a safe platform to share their experiences. I truly believe that sharing one’s stories of prescription medication use: the good the bad, and the ugly, can shift the existing power dynamics between doctors and patients by making people better informed about risks and benefits of certain medications and empowering individuals to advocate for themselves when they are in need of medical treatment.

You can find the Message In A Bottle Project Blog here: https://messageinabottleproject.tumblr.com

Message in A Bottle Project is still accepting submissions: https://messageinabottleproject.tumblr.com/guidelines2sub

How has your feminism evolved over time? How has this affected your artistic expression?

I was in my early teens and then early 20's during 2nd wave feminism. However, I was totally unaware of this as I married very young and immediately had my first child. Feminism was not something that seemed to touch the average Australian woman. At least not anyone I knew. I was aware of how unequal treatment of women in the workforce was though. I remember working in a bookshop in Sydney in my first trimester when pregnant with my first child. I had to leave that job as soon as it was evident that I was pregnant. Back then it was considered an affront to the customers. As I became older I was  aware of the discrimination of women, particularly in the work force, but I seemed powerless to do anything about it. It was not until I commenced my undergrad four years ago that I came to realise just how poorly women have and are still being treated. By my second undergrad year I had started to make feminist work and I became more and more convinced that there is a lot still to be said. I had always thought I would be a painting major, however, it became clear to me that sculpture was going to enable me to speak about the feminist issues that interest me.

In your artist statement, you say that you "occupy an intersectional space where the issues affecting young women feminists collide with those affecting aging women". Can you explain what you mean by this?

Young feminists have gained traction, and rightly so, as it appears that many issues post feminists thought were sorted out are still very present. Issues of gender inequality in wages and work opportunities, lack of safety (domestic violence, attacks on women in public places) and a sense that a woman is imperfect and must do all she can to ensure her looks are acceptable to ... men! These issues do not go away as a woman ages. We have a new wave of feminism that is occupied by young women and we have older women with many of the same issues as young women. The only problem is that older women are largely invisible and it appears we are meant to fade quietly into the background. I contest that our issues intersect with those of young women, many are the same, however, there are other problems, for example; aging women who either divorced or widowed are in danger of becoming homeless, cruelty which ranges from derision to violence and on top of that we are exhorted to deny aging at all costs. This denies our rich histories and wisdom. Our problems intersect with young feminists, however, we each also have age specific issues.

Can you speak to the invisibility of aging women and the "grab bag of isms" affecting women? How do you explore this in your art?

There is a plethora of news items, blogs and such written by older women who all complain they have become invisible. This is a form of ageism and  discrimination and sexism (older men appear to gain traction not loose it). Our invisibility can be simply that we are not served in a store, we are walked into, not listened to, we do not see ourselves represented truthfully in the media and the list goes on. I chose to explore this in my art by using a fluorescent palette. This is currently most known for its use in safety wear and building supplies, at least in Australia. I have co-opted this palette and the use of the building supplies to give women visibility and by feminising these materials, this becomes a metaphor for subsuming male dominance. Additionally, when making my work I use sewing, knitting and weaving to further disrupt the materiality of these products.

What draws you to film and photography? How does it allow you to explore your feminism?

I was drawn to film and photography as a young child because I think it made me feel like it gave me a sense of agency and control over my environment. To this day I feel very much protected by having a camera in my hands. It allows me to look rather than be looked at. In this way, I think it naturally aids my exploration of feminism because it helps me define my own feminine gaze and look critically at the gaze of others. The more I explore and support other female artists the more I am able to hear and define my own voice. It's like that saying if we don't see ourselves in society, in media, then do we exist?

In “Voicemails” you use voicemails left by your mother played to footage of yourself, which conjures a sense of distance and of loss. What is your creative process in how you tell a story through a short film? What role do sceneries, subjects, and audio play to tell a story?

My creative process definitely varies depending on the project. In the case of Voicemails, I very randomly listened to all listened to the messages my mom had left that I had been ignoring. For some reason, I felt compelled to record these recordings so I flipped on my MacBook camera and sat there listening to her. It wasn't that she was saying anything particularly important -- in fact, she was saying everything but the important stuff -- but at that moment I really missed her. My process is kind of messy and usually involves an emotion striking me and then hours and hours of me unpacking and sitting with this emotion as I edit. My mom has become a big part of my work because we have a complicated relationship since she was very in and out of my life. She influences who I am today both in her absence and her presence. Much of my work points back to that push and pull between us.

In terms of sceneries and subjects, I don't know... I think I try to reveal to others what I might see in an environment. I listen closely to what I feel drawn to emotionally or visually, and then I show it. I wish I had more of a formula to give, but it's all based on feeling. I can be a pretty uncertain person, but when it comes to images, I know what I'm drawn to and that's what I work with. I am a visual person, but I think audio plays a major role in my work and I would like for it to become a bigger part of it. For me, audio is a huge part of what makes a film, as a visual medium, unique. It's one of the most powerful tools in invoking emotions particularly of discomfort or anxiety, and I love to play with that -- to see a beautiful image but to hear queues of something unsettling in the background. I think sound kind of keeps us in our head sometimes, and it can trick us because we can't always see what we hear. I hope to call attention to that in my work.

You mention that you have been dissecting your upbringing and striving to challenge your views and inherent privileges. Why is it important for you to do this? How is this reflected in your work?

This question is very difficult for me... I've always been an empathetic person. I was ultra sensitive to things particularly if I thought them to be unjust. I was the type of kid who cried when you killed a spider because it wasn't fair that they didn't have a choice in their death. My father was always very political and very vocal. We lived in a conservative area and politics was a part of my day to day conversation with him. And I liked that, to be honest. I liked to have an opinion, and I enjoyed out-arguing people. This became a big part of my identity. People often told me I should be an activist. They said I was the most feminist person they knew -- in a bad way often. I still get that when I go to Texas. It was sort of like why are you like this, why are you like this?

The truth is that I don't know why, but I do know that I really love to learn. The more I'm exposed to things the more I am able to challenge the ideologies of my upbringing and my insulated environment. I discovered that a lot of the views I thought were so much better than my conservative peers are cut of the same cloth. So right now I've decided I'm in a state of listening. Because I've spent most of my teen and young adult life speaking but not always hearing from the women who have a different experience than my own.

Your art speaks to the role of technology and the internet as emotional and interpersonal tools. You explore how “digitized mourning” has impacted rituals of grief. What do you mean by that?

The internet and social media have changed so many aspects of our society, so it’s no surprise that mourning ritual has found a form online. Though mourning can be very personal, there is often an aspect of community that forms around a loss. This is one way we validate our grief, find people to commiserate with us and participate in the memorialization of someone’s identity through multiple people’s stories and memories. We do this at funerals, but we also do this online on people’s facebook profiles and manifest community in other ways digitally. I’m interested in how we can repurpose social technology to perform very significant rituals around grief, and how every now and then some realization of mortality finds its way in between vacation photos. 2) ŁŒRĘM ÎPŠŪM speaks to how the internet enables us to archive ourselves in ways that were not possible in the past. How do you think this ability to self-publish and archive our images and experiences online will affect the art world? I think the mass collection of data on each and every one of us is going to be a kind of funny equalizer. In regards to art history, and all history with a more white-male-dominated canon there is a consistent inavailability to diversify and equally represent the art and creation of a time period. This is usually due to structural bias, but even when we know better we still lack access to the work that contributed to the canon of art history because it wasn’t valued in its time, and wasn’t considered worth preserving.Now however, we will have access to the entire life work of countless artists when it's time to historicize this time in art history. This means that when we look back on art from this era, everyone’s work and influence will be forever burned into the internet, not just the people benefiting from privilege and visibility in their time. When everyone has access to represent themselves and their life digitally it will not be up to archivists and curators to decide what should be preserved, and that’s very interesting to me.

Guided Grieving Session, still

Can you tell us a little about ASMR and why it has found its way in your work?

ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, and it is essentially a feeling of low-grade euphoria caused by various audio and visual triggers. The feeling is usually accompanied by a tingling sensation starting at the top of the head and traveling through the body, a feeling of relaxation is common, many people watch ASMR videos to fall asleep. The ASMR video genre is huge on Youtube and Instagram, and takes many different forms, but there are lots of common “triggers” and content that creators employ in the videos. Whispering, soft speaking, pleasing sounds like the crinkling of fabric or a gentle touch directly on a microphone are very regularly used triggers, but they can be much more complicated or involved like roleplaying someone giving you a haircut, or cooking a meal. Not everyone enjoys ASMR, but it can be very resonant with some people and I find the approach in recording the audio fascinating, because it breaks a lot of rules. To me, ASMR online is an example of the human craving for intimate and visceral experiences in digital spaces. I think that’s super significant, and a great starting point in considering how we can think about creating engaging and emotional experiences with digital media. How do you approach creating these interpersonal, or intimate experiences with digital mediums that are often disconnected from the physical?

The human element has to be present to be truly emotional and evocative for me, and I think that is possible in digital media. I think ASMR is a great example of how the desire to create a feeling of digital intimacy came to fruition online. The ASMR genre is huge because so many people find comfort in this human element being performed on the internet. Though new technology and social media has brought us closer, there is still a craving for care and intimacy that isn’t being met. I’m playing around with ideas to fill this void. I do this because I think it’s an interesting experiment, but also because I find there is a growing loneliness in our digital spaces and we may need to do something about it at some point.

In your artist statement, you explain that "themes of visibility/invisibility, land, place and displacement are central to my practice". Can you elaborate for our readers on this?

I think for me there is no way to escape the idea of partial visibility as it impedes every aspect of my life and who I am. As a photographer, an artist, a mixed-race, white presenting, Indigenous woman who suffers from mental illness, every aspect of my life is about what others can see or not see when they look at me and how I feel my identity and those who share similar identities become invisible in a capitalist patriarchal ableist white supremacist colonial (etcetera) society.

In the past a lot of my work has been created because of a formal, aesthetic and historical interest in photography as the “truth teller” medium in the art world. Since its inception it has been seen as a way to mirror what physically exists within the world in a way that painting, sculpture and other mediums could not. However, the power to decide what existed as the truth was in the hands of the artist or photographer.

Interestingly, the more I become comfortable in my own skin as an Indigenous woman, the more I feel the ideas of invisibility slowly leaving my work. I usually try to make things hard to see or partially hide meaning. In the piece I am currently working on at the residency I decided to scrap that and make the text I am writing bold. I am beading text onto a sculptural element and originally thought to hide or obscure the text and then I thought “f*** that. I am tired of hiding things”, which is a big leap for me.

I think that place and land is always important for me. For instance, this residency I came to work on one series and then once I was on the land, some of those ideas changed. I am still working on my original idea (which is very connect to land and place as well) but I am also creating a piece in response to the land and history of Toronto Island (which I learned this week was originally called Hiawatha Island after one of our Iroquois leaders).

"As defined by" series

You use nature, water, land, words, and your body in your work to tell a story and create meaning. How are these important to your work? Can you speak to their interplay?

The land that I am on is important to me because it is my connection to my family, ancestors and the past. For many people who live in Canada, the land that they’re from is across the world from where they are living. I feel that I have a privilege and responsibility to be so close to my ancestral lands.

I use my body in the landscape to simply reinsert humans into what was thought to be empty lands and therefore open for exploration and exploitation. In many landscape paintings, this land is shown as empty but it never was. I also put my body back into the land, especially in Tyendinaga, for my grandmother who is no longer here and died too young. I think sometimes I try to rewrite her into existence.

The interplay of text with images is usually to create layers of meaning, often that contradict or question each other. I like that someone can have a first reaction and then upon reading can be further informed into what the work is. I am also trying to reconcile forms of communication that are seen as more legitimate than others.

"you're not here" series

Why have you chosen to explore water as a theme in your work? What significance does it hold for you and your indigeneity?

I have always felt a pull to water. I grew up on lake Ontario, my mom grew up on the same waters. My grandma and great grandmother grew up on the reserve next to a bay fed from the lake. Our ancestors lived in the Mohawk valley along rivers and travelled north landing on the shores where they live now in Tyendinaga.

I am interested in exploring my relationship to water as something that’s in my dna passed down from ancestors. It’s my blood memory. Often when we talk about blood memory and Indigenous people, the conversation is framed around intergenerational trauma, which is a conversation that also needs to happen, but I think it’s important to explore the positive aspects that also get passed down through our blood. Having never met my maternal grandmother, I want to know what she passed onto me without needing to contact me in this world.

Water is significant for all people. We all need it. I wouldn’t say that water is more significant for Indigenous women but I think that we take time to recognize that relationship more. We know that we are greatly influenced by the moon and the water. Men and women exist in balance (no hierarchy), as do all things. In stories men are represented by trees (wood) and women are water. When the fire burns, women can put it out. Our water drum shows everything in creation represented in an object. Again, the men are the wood and the women are the water.

I am influenced by the work of many indigenous writers, scholars and artists. A question I’ve especially been thinking about lately is one that Robin Wall Kimmerer, Potawatomi botanist, asks. She would ask her students if they love the earth and they would unanimously agree but in asking the question “does the earth love you back?” people don’t know what to say. In that way, we see ourselves acting on the natural world but forget the natural world gives to us and acts upon us as well. We forget that water is her own autonomous being which takes care of us and teaches us. Robin says that knowing this creates a reciprocal relationship that gives us a great responsibility, like we have when caring for anyone we love.

I have been working on creating a physical representation of my relationship with water, through spending close, intimate time with her and always thinking, “am I a good partner in this relationship?” My process involves going into the darkroom and putting my face up to the water and speaking and breathing with her. I breathe, she breathes back.

water project that I am currently working on

In your artist statement, you say that you explore the relationship between materiality and immateriality through notions of “self” and “other.” Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

“Other” only exist in relation to a definition of “self.” “Self” is materially determined by “other.” There are no clear lines, but lines are always drawn. My work attempts to explore this relationship from whatever perspective is available. My current project attempts to formulate an understanding of a desired future (“other”) through present material conditions and experiences of the body.

from a touch of history, 5 x 6 inches, jpg, 2018

Your work touches on many concepts and speaks to many societal issues. What do you want for your reader to experience? What do you hope to achieve?

It’s difficult for me to not constantly be drawing connections to historical and systemic determinants of everyday situations, interactions, feelings, etc. So if I write about anything, I’m always addressing everything, and I guess I either want my readers to also read situations in this way, or I have no choice.

from a touch of history, 5 x 6 inches, jpg, 2018

In your artist statement, you say that you want to focus your upcoming project “on moments of sense-experience, into which [you] will incorporate affective experience of dislocation, wage-labour, alienation resulting from displacement and precarity, and displaced mourning in times of natural and economic disaster”. Can you explain what you mean by this? Why is this an important exploration, at this point in time, or any time?

Each of us lives in a world defined by our senses. Sense-experience is our most immediate way of relating to the world. It is the earliest point at which we draw a line between “self” and “other.” We are “affected” by things outside of our “selves,” from which our interpreting apparati formulate our understanding of what we are, how we feel, and thus how we interact with what is not “us.”

This is important now because we are at a point in time at which we are constantly disoriented by our own interactions with technology, fake news, and climate change, it is a way of going back to the basics of human experience. The disorientation of the rational often reduces us to the basics of immediate reaction, when we are overcome with feeling. By beginning with immediate sense-experience, we can look at the micro as a way of understanding the macro. We can better ground the “big” feeling (e.g. alienation resulting from displacement and precarity, etc.) by looking at the “little” feeling.