MEDIATIONS: ART + ACTIVISM
June 14, 2017 – November 5, 2017
MEDIATIONS: ART + ACTIVISM is a screening and dialogue series that highlights contemporary artists whose practices expand along activist lines. The series foregrounds that art is not made in a vacuum and that injustice often incites artistic labour, highlighting activism as an intrinsic modality in contemporary praxis.
Over summer and fall of 2017 MEDIATIONS featured artists from the region and beyond whose works call attention to the might of artistic production, not only in its role as a mirror to reflect the times but in its power to act as catalyst for change. In pairs, participants discussed their practices and individual approaches to social justice and institutional critique, intersecting with Palestinean liberation, disability rights, spatial governance and autonomy, as well as queer and trans representation.
Contributors include: Kami Chisholm, Jamelie Hassan, Angelo Madsen Minax, Rehab Nazzal, Lynx Saint-Marie, and jes sachse
The conception of this series was developed by Troy Ouellette and later curated by Christine Negus
Lynx Sainte-Marie, Afro+Goth Poet, is a multimedium artist, activist and educator of the Jamaican diaspora, with ancestral roots indigenous to Africa and the British Isles. A disabled/chronically ill, non-binary/genderfluid person, they currently reside in what’s commonly known as the Greater Toronto Area, stolen land of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississaugas of New Credit, Petun and Seneca peoples. A poet across mediums, Lynx utilizes multiple art forms – writing, performance, visual art, storytelling, multimedia art installation and song – to engage audiences around issues of identity, oppression, liberation, resiliency and survival at the intersection. As a public speaker, Lynx has presented, lectured and served as a keynote speaker at several colleges, universities, conferences and symposiums at the national and international level. As a workshop facilitator and consultant, they have trained a plethora of individuals and organizations on various issues related to marginalized communities including but not limited to intersectionality, anti-oppression, sexuality, disability and accessibility, gender diversity, anti-Blackness and decolonization. Lynx's work has appeared in Black Girl Dangerous, OCHUN: Watah Poetry Anthology Book I, Plenitude Magazine, The Peak Magazine and The Deaf Poets Society, words and art informed by their chosen families, Black feminisms, social justice, disability justice, healing justice movements and collective community love.
jes sachse is at the forefront of a renewal of disability art, justice and culture in Canada. Presently living in Toronto, jes is an artist, writer and performer whose work focuses on disability culture in ways that refuse to reduce or bracket out the messy complexities of difference. Their work & writing has appeared inNOW Magazine, The Peak, CV2 -The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing, Mobilizing Metaphor: Art, Culture and Disability Activism in Canada, and the 40th Anniversary Edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Rehab Nazzal is a Palestinian-born multidisciplinary artist and doctoral candidate at Western University. Her work deals with representations of colonial violence and critically questions the absence of the embodied experience of the oppressed and colonized populations and their resistance within contemporary art practices. Nazzal’s video, photography and sound works have been shown in Canada and internationally, in both group and solo exhibitions, including Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto; Karsh-Masson Art Gallery, Ottawa; Khalil Sakakini Center, Ramallah; Art Gallery of Mississauga; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Nazzal holds an MFA from Ryerson University in Toronto, and a BFA from the University of Ottawa. She has received awards and scholarships from Western University, Ryerson University, and the University of Ottawa, as well as grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the City of Ottawa. She also is a recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral award.
Madsen Minax makes film, video and sound projects inspired by the collective socio-politics and the individual bio-politics of belonging, and considers where fantasy, desire and embodiment interfere. Madsen’s participation in LGBT, sex workers’ and BDSM communities inform his projects immensely. Works have shown at Anthology Film Archives (NYC), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), REDCAT (LA), the British Film Institute (London), the European Media Art Festival, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Yale University’s Green Gallery, and numerous film and video festivals around the world. Madsen received an MFA from Northwestern University, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2014), The Core Program (2012-2014), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (2015), and the Berlinale DOC Station (2016). He is currently an Edes Foundation Fellow and a Queer Arts Mentorship fellow.
Kami Chisholm is a queer, disabled, activist filmmaker and arts curator whose work focuses on dismantling white supremacy, ending settler colonialism, and the quest for justice for those commonly denied access to the means to live and thrive. Chisholm has been making films for more than 20 years, since beginning her BA in Film Production and English from Loyola Marymount University. She also holds a PhD in History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA in Film Production from York University. Her most recently completed documentary, Pride Denied (released in 2016 and distributed by Media Education Foundation and Vtape), explores topics such as homonationalism and pinkwashing in the context of the 2014 World Pride festival in Toronto.