Xandra Ibarra, Public Notice, 2019 – Yellow Leather on Canvas
Xandra Ibarra, Public Notice, 2019 – Yellow Leather on Canvas
Xandra Ibarra, Public Notice, 2019 – Yellow Leather on Canvas
Tsohil Bhatia is an artist and homemaker based in Lenapehoking. They work with their body and its ghost to contemplate the latencies of quotidian objects, images and phenomenon revealed in the quietude of their home. They studied Performance Art at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology (Bangalore) and were awarded the Regina and Martin Miller Fellowship to attend an MFA at the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University (2020). Their work has been shown at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC), Bezalel Academy(Jerusalem), Hair+Nails(MN), Phosphor Project Space(PA) and the Andy Warhol Museum (PA). They’ve participated at Franconia Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Residency, Ox Bow School of Art (MI), HH Art Spaces Residency (Goa), Shergill-Sunderam Shanthi Road Residency (Bangalore) and will be at residence at the Chautauqua School of Art and MASS MoCA in 2021. They’re represented by Blueprint12 Gallery (New Delhi).
Tejal Shah’s is a unique practice that consistently challenges the legible by occupying liminal spaces between fact, fiction and poetry. Working across diverse media such as video, photography, performance, sound, installation and educational projects, Shah positions herself at the intersection of queer ecology, feminism and Non-dual Buddhist philosophy. Exploring the notions of “trans-”—with regard to gender and sexuality, but also to national or cultural identity—Shah’s work inhabits the position of the in-between as a means to destabilise the complacency of patriarchy and the “normative phantasms of a compulsory heterosexuality” (Judith Butler). The body as a gendered and sexualised entity is both medium and subject of their work that, though highly theoretically informed, operates on a very physical, performative level, stressing concepts of multiplicity as opposed to duality or singularity. Theirs is an invitation to examine the relationship between power and knowledge, learned social and political behaviour, and the construction of norms.
Preston Buffalo is a Two Spirited, Cree man who lives and loves in the unceded Coastal Salish Territories in British Columbia. His interdisciplinary work uses photography, print making, digital illustration and sculpture to create visual representations of personal Indigenous iconography and symbolism to explore issues such as addiction, mental health and the loss of culture and language , the journey to find connection often meets at the intersection of hyphenated identities.
Pablo Muñoz is a community organizer, designer and artist whose work extends from furniture design, video installation, murals and public art. Arriving in Canada as a young refugee in 2000, Pablo draws inspiration from Colombian magic realism and forced displacement. His work often centres the experience of the LGBTQ2s+ global diaspora as well as the stories of communities resisting war, occupation and western imperialism. Growing up in East Vancouver, he became engaged with immigrant/refugee organizing, advocacy and solidarity efforts with Indigenous communities in Colombia. He made his move to Toronto in 2015, the same year his piece No Walls Between Us won a national call for submissions from the AGO becoming a temporary mural installation at the entrance of the gallery.
He graduated from OCAD University with a degree in Industrial design in 2018. Pieces from his furniture collection Macondo were displayed at the Design Offsite Festival winning “Best of Design Week” by Designlines magazine for two years in a row. His video installation piece, Migrant Restless Syndrome, was featured in the Winter Vernissage of Montreal’s Never Apart Gallery in 2020.
He currently works for the City of Toronto in public engagement where he facilitates collaboration between city officials, designers and architects and communities to create more equitable parks and public spaces.Since the protests erupted in Colombia in May of 2021 he has centered his efforts in bringing to light the unfolding atrocities being committed by the Colombian police. Particularly the dozens of people murdered over the course of one month, hundreds of people disappeared and Canada’s complicity in this injustice through weapon sales and a bilateral police partnership with the RCMP.
Oluseye’s work is a warm embrace of the magnitude and polyvocality of Blackness and of the ways in which it moves across space, place, and time, shaping and shifting the world. Centering Yoruba cultural references in an homage to his heritage, he bends the ancestral with the contemporary and rejects the binary distinction between the traditional and the modern; the physical and the spiritual; the past and the future; what is new and what is old. Imbuing the everyday with the mythic, his work reinforces African rituals and philosophies as living, complex, and valid traditions of Black consciousness. He has exhibited at The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Gallery 151, New York; and Art Twenty-one, Lagos. He is a recipient of the Canada Council for The Arts New Chapter Grant and the 2019 Toronto and Ontario Arts Council Visual Arts Grant.
Born and raised in Ottawa Ontario, Katherine relocated to Vancouver in 1982 in order to be part of a larger gay community. In 1993 she became active in the local artist’s community and went on to graduate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2004. As well as being a founding member of the Pride in Art Society, which hosts the annual Queer Arts Festival in Vancouver, Katherine is also one of a group of local artist who founded the 901 Artist Cooperative and established Portside Artist Studios in 2009.
Katherine’s artwork is both personal and political. One of the driving forces behind her interdisciplinary art practice her desire to better understand the ways in which negative social conditioning, such as sexism, homophobia, colonialism and racism, has caused her thinking and behaviour to be incongruent with her values. As well as serving as a social critique, pointing out social dis-ease, Katherine’s art work critiques her internalization of said social conditioning. Consequently, she often employs representational and/or metaphoric self-portraiture in her art. Coming from a ‘recovery’ perspective, Katherine holds the practice of not asking another person to go into emotionally, mentally, and psychically challenging places she is not willing to go herself. Implicating herself in social critique, then, is necessary. Her art work, then, becomes a confessional. Katherine shares her internal excavation discoveries and intra-personal discord in an effort to create an intimate and empathic connection with the viewer, with the hope of promoting social healing.
Kathleen Ross is a Tsilhqot’in from Yunesit’in. Her Maternal Grandparents are Jack (late) and Lila (late) Elkins, Adopted Maternal Grandparents Otto (late) and Theresa (late) Quilt. She was born to Joanna (late) Elkins, and raised by her Second Generation Irish/Scottish Settler Great Uncle/Father David Ross and Great Aunt/Mother Madeline (late) Myers.
Coming from a cultural upbringing, Ross gives thought to those that are yet to come through creating an archive of imagery of indigenous people that is uplifting and entirely about resurgence. Thriving to leave an archive of knowledge to capture the hearts and minds of indigenous people and to captivate the settler imagination through images of this time and the various facets of indigenous cultures. She seeks to contribute to an already established creative culture and make a mark in the Fine Art world as Deni Artist.
Kali Spitzer is a photographer living on the traditional unceded lands of the Tsleil-Waututh, Skxwú7mesh and Musqueam peoples. The work of Kali embraces the stories of contemporary queer and trans bodies and BIPOC, creating representation that is self determined. Kali’s collaborative process is informed by the desire to rewrite the visual histories of indigenous bodies beyond a colonial lens. Kali is Kaska Dena from Daylu (Lower Post, British Columbia) on her father’s side and Jewish from Transylvania, Romania on her mother’s side. Kali’s heritage deeply influences her work as she focuses on cultural revitalization through her art, whether in the medium of photography, ceramics, tanning hides or hunting.
Kali studied photography at the Santa Fe Community College and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Under the mentorship of Will Wilson, Kali explored alternative practices to photography. She has worked with film in 35 mm, 120 and large format, as well as wet plate collodion process using an 8-by-10 camera. Her work includes portraits, figure studies and photographs of her people, ceremonies, and culture. At the age of 20, Kali moved back north to spend time with her Elders, and to learn how to hunt, fish, trap, tan moose and caribou hides, and bead. Throughout Kali’s career she has documented traditional practices with a sense of urgency, highlighting their vital cultural significance.
Kali’s work has been featured in several exhibitions at galleries and museums internationally including, the National Geographic’s Women: a Century of Change at the National Geographic Museum (2020), and Larger than Memory: Contemporary Art From Indigenous North America at the Heard Museum (2020). In 2017 Kali received a Reveal Indigenous Art Award from Hnatyshyn Foundation.
Kali would like to extend her gratitude to all who have collaborated with her, she recognizes the trust and vulnerability required to be photographed in such intimate ways.
— Mussi Cho
“Indigenous Femme Queer Photographer Kali Spitzer ignites the spirit of our current unbound human experience with all the complex histories we exist in, passed down through the trauma inflicted/received by our ancestors. Kali’s photographs are intimate and unapologetic and make room for growth and forgiveness while creating a space where we may share the vulnerable and broken parts of our stories which are often overlooked, or not easy to digest for ourselves or society.”
— Ginger Dunnill, Creator and Producer of Broken Boxes Podcast (which features interviews with indigenous and other engaged artists).
Jay Pahre is a queer and trans settler artist, writer and cultural worker currently based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Weaving between drawing, sculpture and writing, his work queries trans and queer nonhuman ecologies as they intersect with the human. Originally from the midwestern US, Pahre has turned his work back toward the shifting ecologies of the Great Lakes and Great Plains regions. Recently, this has been navigated with a focus on the myriad ecologies present on the island of minong or isle royale, an island located in northwestern lake superior. Pulling from personal lived experience of walking the island, shifting geographies, and queer/trans ecologies, he pieces apart the moments when these different trajectories begin to fold in on themselves and open other ways of being, knowing, and moving. The uses of metal, electricity, and heat has been instrumental in his work to think through conductive and transforming ecologies. Leaning on these moments of conductivity and transformation, his work ferrets out alternative formations and futures of what queer and trans ecologies of being might look like while slipping through moments of temporal, embodied, and environmental precarity. He received his BFA in painting and BA in East Asian studies in 2014, and his MA in East Asian studies from the University of Illinois in 2017. He went on to complete his MFA in visual art at the University of British Columbia in 2020. His work has been exhibited across the US and Canada. He was selected for the 2020 Transgender Studies Chair Fellowship at the University of Victoria, as well as the Helen Belkin Memorial Scholarship (2020) and Fred Herzog Award in Visual Art (2019) at the University of British Columbia.
Isaac Murdoch, whose Ojibway name is Manzinapkinegego’anaabe / Bombgiizhik is from the fish clan and is from Serpent River First Nation. Isaac grew up in the traditional setting of hunting, fishing and trapping. Many of these years were spent learning from Elders in the northern regions of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Isaac is well respected as a storyteller and traditional knowledge holder. For many years he has led various workshops and cultural camps that focuses on the transfer of knowledge to youth. Other areas of expertise include: traditional ojibway paint, imagery/symbolism, harvesting, medicine walks, & ceremonial knowledge, cultural camps, Anishinaabeg oral history, birch bark canoe making, birch bark scrolls, Youth & Elders workshops, etc. He has committed his life to the preservation of Anishinaabe cultural practices and has spent years learning directly from Elders.
Asian Crimes Godzilla in Toronto
Beauty Ads of whitening product in the Philippines, China and India
Choice How to wear a hijab
Delicacy Shark fin in the water
Empowerment Heroes and heroines: Son Goku of Dragon Ball, Mulan, Bruce Lee, Astro Boy and Po of Kung Fu Panda
Fresh Off the Boat Luxury car brands
Gourmet Menu of the now closed Master Chef Cafe, Vancouver
Home World map
Invasions Front page, the New York Times, February 25, 1945
Justice Statue in memory of the Comfort Women during WWII, Seoul, South Korea
Kung Fu Found drawings of squatting men
Liberation Air strikes over Vietnam during the American War M.S.G. Movie posters of gangster films from South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia
North Korea Peace poster for North Korea
Orientals Pictorial symbols re-designed or appropriated from the handbook by Rudolf Modley
Patriarchy Portraits on banknotes
Queer European wigs and Chinese hairstyle from past centuries
Rouge Victims of Khmer Rouge, Cambodia
Solidarity Poster for Black Lives Matter
Transformers Magazine and memorabilia of Takarazuka Revue, a Japanese all-female musical theatre troupe
Uprising The Umbrella Movement, Hong Kong (source: the Huffington Post)
Visibility Across appeared on American prime time television
Whiz Kids Words cut out form ads in newspapers
Xenophobia Internment and refugee camps
Yellow Fever Girls’ Generations, a South Korean girl group
Zen A-bomb explosion
Ho Tam was born in Hong Kong, educated in Canada and the U.S. and worked in advertising companies and community psychiatric facilities before turning to art. He practices in multiple disciplines including photography, video, painting and print media. His first video, The Yellow Pages, was commissioned by the public art group PUBLIC ACCESS for an installation/projection at the Union Station of Toronto in 1994/95. Since then Tam has produced over 15 experimental videos. He was included in the traveling exhibition Magnetic North: Canadian Experimental Video by Walker Art Center, Minnesota. His feature documentary film “Books of James” was awarded Outstanding Artistic Achievement (Outfest, LA) and Best Feature Documentary (Tel Aviv LGBT Film Festival). He also publishes several series of artist’s books and zines. Tam is an alumnus of Whitney Museum Independent Studies Program, Bard College (MFA) and recipients of various fellowships and artist’s grants. Since 2019, Tam has been running the Hotam Press Bookshop/Gallery in Vancouver.
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Falak Vasa (they/she pronouns, b. 1995) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator currently based in Bhawanipur, Kolkata. They are an MFA candidate in Literary Arts at Brown University, and have attended artist residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and ACRE. Her practice is a decolonizing and queering of oppressive power structures through gesture and language, always filtered through humor. But Falak, you may ask, where is the humor in this bio? Well friend……….good question.
Currently, Falak works as a freelance educator and writer, waters her plants daily, and showers sometimes. Or so she claims.
Duane Isaac is a First Nation Mi’gmaq from Listuguj, QC. He is a contemporary artist who uses the photography medium in combination with his mask making. His work has been featured in multiple online publications, most recently Canadian Art Magazine. He currently resides in Listuguj, QC.
Beric Manywounds is a Two Spirit writer, filmmaker, and intermedia performance artist from the Tsuutina Nation of Treaty 7. Taking a special interest in the genres of fantasy, horror, and magical realism, Beric’s storytelling often reflects an exploration of post trauma consciousness and spiritual transformation. Now soon to be graduating from the Intermedia Cyber Arts program at Concordia University, Beric is now giving shape, form, and voice to their futurist visions of Indigenous resurgence and decolonized gender in new works of cinema, performance, and contemporary dance.
It’s been exhausting to stay afloat in this era that promises a wider gap between the rich and poor. In the past two decades, low-income and of-color communities have struggled to keep their housing in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco and abroad. Many adored queer nightlife venues and other convivial spaces have disappeared and resurfaced as sterile establishments that attract upwardly mobile and affluent demographics. In an effort to resurface the “messy” and “sucio” spirits of queer Latino and lesbian ghosts from gentrified sites in San Francisco, Ibarra led strangers and friends on a bar crawl tour to five former queer Latino and Lesbian bars in San Francisco. Together the group made alters, wrote messages, imprinted their bodies, pleasures and kisses onto the phantom walls of beloved queer venues — Esta Noche (1979 – 2014), La India Bonita (late 70s – 1996), Amelia’s (1978 – 1991), The Lexington (1997- 2015), and Osento (1979 – 2008). Strangers and friends sipped on spirits, danced, made out, and posted counterfeit “Public Notices of Application for Ownership Change” while 1990s footage of queer Latinos and Lesbians in the former bars was projected onto walls.
The term wicked can signify something morally wrong or it could mean excellent. These two images of headless bodies plays a role in which searches for directions. The orientation of these images have been flipped to something not to the norm, that in itself can show something wicked in the way the images are presented. Is there a proper orientation of how an image is to present itself?
In our self-created worlds, we have the freedom to make self-definitions, disrupting the images and lessons contained in all the stories and codes that have shaped us. By subverting and perverting accepted meanings, we attempt to re-tell tales truly. By making people laugh, we open them up to thinking differently. For us, art making is a means to perform our realities into existence.
Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan