Author: Emil White

Mei Lein Harrison and Emil White were inspired to collaborate having observed their propensity to aid each other in the creation of their respective individual work in the past, as well as possesing a desire to employ their different perspectives in regards to gender dynamics, a topic of sustained interest for them both. They utilize these differing perspectives –  Emil as a cis white man and myself as a coloured, mixed-race, asexual, genderqueer person – to assess past experiences with gender and dynamics of power and control they’d observed in domestic settings. This work has also functioned as a way to reflect on the shift that has occurred in the expression of these values from the each artists’ parents’ generation to their own. The creative exploration of these topics culminated, to some extent, in the installation of the work in Zavitz gallery in mid-November, an exhibition titled help help help. They used diverse aesthetic strategies to aid in the telling of a performed narrative, documenting these gestures in both their houses, as well as the street that connects these personal domestic spaces. Curating vignettes from a collection of lived experiences, they use a combination of subtle and grand, almost comical, gestures to communicate the dance around the line that resides between affection and control. The work put into the performance and the themes played upon in the video are reflected in a more tangible way in Mei Lein and Emil’s soft sculpture. The artists made a decision to only use found materials to fabricate this abstraction of the feminine form, allowing associations with these materials from previous owners, and the worn qualities, to aid in the dissection of the approach to the feminine body as an object for servitude and comfort. This work involved both the construction of parts of the body as well as the violence subjected to it in its display, particularly as all the pieces were hand-stitched onto the mattress.

Sarah Bryant uses found objects and fiber yarns to explore Western gender roles, performance, and queering of gender norms. Sarah builds sculptural pieces to question gender-coding of objects and see what becomes of object associations by skewing their function and environment. Fiber arts have historically been viewed as a feminine-coded; soft, “pretty”, and lesser skilled. Femineity or prettiness is also weaponized as a weakness or deficit. Sarah uses traditional crochet techniques and wrapping to cover or decontextualize typically masculine-coded objects. Softening hard things allows Sarah to probe feelings and sensations related to experiences in the real world as a female presenting human at work, at home, and in shared public spaces. Sarah aims to create tension by twisting or reversing accepted functions of objects to play with performative aspects of gender norms in a safe manner, highlight absurdity, neutralize gendered objects, and subtly touch on some elements of violence inherent in the merging of these materials.

I am a long-time Photoshop avoider and recently a mushroom forager. I did not anticipate the happenstance merging of these domains, nor the number of parallels and metaphors shared between them.
 
My ‘artistic practice’ always involves fumbling. I spawn an idea that incessantly rattles around my skull until I find a road to render it tangible- a process which frequently involves layers of messing up and incidental discoveries. This project was a demonstrable instance of erroring my way towards something grander than my rattling.  
 
I sought to collect mushrooms and make spore prints from their underside, later photographing the spore prints to preserve their configurations. In attempting to render the background of my spore photographs a simple black, I discovered Photoshop’s Content-Aware-Fill Filter and accidently applied data from the spore print towards the negative space surrounding them. This resulted in ethereal, dendric trails of Artificial-Intelligence generated pixels attempting to augment the data from my spore. Yeah, my jaw was on the floor.
 
There exists a rather magical correspondence between Content Aware Fill’s A.I. trajectories and trails made by mycelium (the actual vegetative part of the fungus that mushrooms grow from and spores initiate). Namely- their shared awareness and methods of growth. 
 
For mycelium to produce from spores- kickstarting the web structures of fungus- there must be a minimum of two spores to spur reproduction. Content Aware Fill’s A.I. needs a minimum of two pixels to spur its function; one pixel for the source of visual data you’re drawing from, and one towards which you’re directing its use. Mycelium grows microscopically, one cell at a time, wriggling through the organic matter of its surroundings. Content Aware Filladdresses its movement through an image by analyzing the landscape; one pixel at a time. 
 
In both of these processes, they exhibit a degree of intelligence, insofar as each examine their environment and make informed adjustments regarding how to most fruitfully move through it. Mycelium, aimed at growth in order to persevere opportunities for reproduction, and the A.I. interested in maintaining the composition’s integrity by spawning pixels as it deems most beneficial. I know, pretty meta, right?
 
The analogy between these two entities is not only notable in their congruency to one another, but moreover for their resemblance of microcosmic-to-macrocosmic structures found within the universe at large. The manner in whichinteractions can convert simple inputs into diverse, intelligible outputs- whether that be molecular, organismal, computational, astronomical, or metaphysical- ultimately all echo one another. Each reaching out into negative space and making decisions on how to approach its unknown. 
 
These compositions contain tiny universes expressing their rules, their conduits, of survival and expansion. I am but a gobsmacked conductor, writing an artist statement as though I made these and they did not make me. 

My current practice is deeply influenced by my heritage and investigates themes of cultural identity, acculturation, and intragroup marginalization through the processes of learning and unlearning. As a bi-racial individual of partial Middle Eastern descent and a first generation Canadian, my work evokes an imagined space of my homeland, Palestine. Growing up in an excessively white-dominated society and as one of the very few coloured children in my school, I was exposed to national issues of ethnic identity at a young age. At home I was shielded from the perpetual and undisputed tragedies of Palestinian people, and took on the accultural attitude and behaviours of my mother and her siblings, who immigrated to Canada as very young children. Because of my experiences as a child I tended to lean into my “white-ness” and separated myself from my ethnic origins. Relative to my current studio practice, the methodology of unlearning requires me to step outside of and re-frame the mental paradigm influenced by cultural conditioning. I set into motion my ideas through interdisciplinary experimentation with mediums such as video performance, installation, and photography, and am drawn to the use of culturally-rich material such as visual language and textiles to transcend the boundaries of identity and reflect a multicultural perspective. Recent works incorporate Arabic script and traditional fabric as catalysts in connecting to my cultural roots. In the 2021 exhibition Manifold, my piece “I am Palestinian” aims to share the intensely personable process of discovering and absorbing my Middle Eastern and Palestinian heritage. The repetitive action of writing in arabic script as well as the motion blur of the print portray a sense of urgency in reconstructing my identity. The connection between my identity and skin colour is emphasized through the lack of colour present in the piece exclusive of my skin. In the practice of educating myself and fostering a more diverse modality of thinking, I am also interested in creating space for viewers to locate inherent and unconscious perception biases and recognize the potential for unlearning and relearning. Through these explorations as an artist and individual I am seeking to continue further uncovering my ethnic roots and ultimately reclaiming my identity.

The themes of domestic craft and memories intersect and are literally sewn together through my work titled Memories. I represent memories physically through the medium of quilting. Over time memories distort, they can become difficult to remember, the order of events may shift, some aspects become ingrained and some details are forgotten entirely. 
 
I do this with fabric by materializing a memory by using a collage of photos and drawings transferred to textiles. The fabric is then cut into 2.5 by 44 inch even strips and the strips are sewn together to create one long strip, then the long length of the fabric is folded and cut in half. The two halves are sewed down the edge to decrease the length of the fabric in half while doubling its width . This process of reducing the length is repeated multiple times. Scrambling the image in an unpredictable way, pieces of the photo transfer are lost within the seam allowances, leaving some areas recognizable, while others are distorted beyond recognition, similar to how memory functions. There are parts of the work where an image has been cut and the viewer can only see a corner or uneven edge, akin to stories that are not clean-cut or accounts that do not follow the dominant tropes society expects. This deviation is uncomfortable both visually and mentally. 
 
There is a hypothesis that the body itself can hold memories, memories that can be physically triggered. The work is the colour of my skin because the memories are part of my body in the same way my flesh is. My memories are in my skin, in my mind and in my work. 
 
 I make work as a way to sort through and confront memories and to give courage, comradery and comfort to others that carry the burden of similar memories. I want to make an object that is reminiscent of a young child’s safety blanket, something I pour emotions into and find comfort in. 
 

Colleen Alcorn (she/her) is a queer, non-binary, Guelph based artist who creates work that focuses on tension and the spaces between. Working primarily with wood, metal and fabric in various combinations, her mixed-media sculptural assemblages aim to provoke and bring forth questioning. She desires to create balance through the use of repetition whilst exploring themes of identity, upbringing and the weight of existence. Her piece Girls Camp explores her experience as a queer person growing up in the church and the internal struggles of identity that religious spaces subject her to.

My experience is a constant negotiation of space as I move under, in and through. I produce works based on my experience as a person with anxiety and physical limitations. I was recently moved to encounter this language from Louise Bourgeois, about useful creation; “I think that to realize an anxiety attack and to resolve it is the highest form of existence […] it is a useful ‘creation.’ useful in the sense that I make progress […]” I interpret this as being useful in that you go through something, you move forward by existing, by listening, with patience. Not useful in aesthetic terms per se. This has made me ask how I can be honest, how I gain and let go of control, how I can move forward by listening to my intuition, as it knows what needs my energy. I am looking at artists who respond to their urban landscape and derive abstract shapes, like Jen Aitken. I am writing more. Trying not to feel so secretive about my fears and behaviours, as this breeds shame. Divulging my thoughts to paper, to an empty room. I write about how it feels to need to escape. I am thinking about the social model of disability and how disabling institutional spaces can be. The social model of disability de-centers the individual, de-centers me, and re-centers the environment. As I bring awareness to the micro adaptations I make, I am tending to my body and my mind. In my recent works, I have developed a visual vocabulary that includes the whole truth of my experience, that brings visibility to my invisible disability. The abstractions of feeling that appear as expressive mark making and globular forms, as well as the rationality of the square building that produces images of buildings and houses. My thoughts, just like houses, stairs, and forms are constructed. In obsessing over this imagery, I am beginning to de-construct it, as well. To de-mystify what aches to be understood, and to accept that it need not be understood. As I have started giving myself permission to experiment and trust, this work emerged in three-dimensional form. In a state of flight, I created something that’s grounded and simultaneously emerging from the ground. Not perfectly straight but real and raw, “under, in, and through” negotiates its verticality. Verticality does not need to parallel that of a building. My rising can fall and rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall and rise. It can take time. Just as I sit and wait for the glue between the wooden frame to dry, for each layer of paper maché and plaster to harden, for spray paint to set. My materials teach me that to wait is worthwhile and this is part of useful creation. Colour is celebrated in direct contradiction to the sterility of institutional spaces, and as a source of comfort – a hopeful adaptation. This hopeful adaptation emerges from the ground, interrupting its spatial context, interrupting emptiness. Its colours and shine scream to you, for me. Newspaper torn apart, chicken wire poking through its skin, it stands as it reveals, it is strong and it is vulnerable. It is dialectical, you can have both. It is during the act of creation when I harness my ability to make candidly and give rise to objects that are vibrant and childish in demeanor. This hopeful creation reimagines my being in the world. “under, in, and through” moves me around it, moves me to my knees, and forces me to climb. 

My artistic practice is research-creational and my most recent project, emerged from the question “ Who is this?”  It is a question with no singular or conclusive answer. Instead my work shares many layers of abstract storytelling – raising multiple conversations about a single identity.

Inspired by the relationship I have with vintage photography, I am drawn to representations of femininity, in which women wear obvious masks that present a theatrical self.
When encountering such archival images, I ask; What is She hiding?  What social pressures has She conformed to?  If She could speak…

Photography in all its forms is used often to create and archive identity.  It documents, traces and even memorializes.  When I study a photograph of Her, I try to understand who and what is being preserved .  Can I get to know Her temperament, humor, ambition…?  Was She abused, rejected, denied…?  

Fanny is a complex woman who I have invented from a found Victorian image.  Using a tableau vivant as my easel, I have chipped away at finding pieces of Her, modeling a fragmented personality that is motionless and stagnant but has a history of being.
This installation probes the enigmatic image of a woman I want to explore using multiple mediums with creative technologies – merging, layering, cutting and molding the parts of a perceived identity into a hybrid personality.  Many hypothetical elements of Her are arranged in a collection that coheres into a conceptual portrait.

During my intimate time with Fanny, She has shared a strong connection to domestic life, with many parts of the installation clearly representative of what are often necessary but mundane acts of household maintenance.  Pondering why Fanny wanted me to know this, I realize that subconsciously Fanny has become a self portrait.  My definition of home as domesticity is shifting.

Creatively, I am interested in integrating mixed methods of design and art-making to create work in new, meaningful, and emotionally impactful ways.  My research pushes me to explore the problems that arise from what sometimes are limitations and disconnects discovered when building layers that impact surfaces, production, and fabrication.  Problems can be solved only to discover another problem.  And so the techniques that enable me to work with many materials and combined media, provide a dialogue with layering and shifting, leading to visual integration.

My ideas incorporate feminist perspectives and history.  I constantly seek to redefine female imagery from the building blocks influenced by immediate and past events, environments, traditions, and cultural legacies leading to a conceptual and programmatic model for equality and control of Her destinies.

My installations have been called shrines and I embrace this.  But my artwork is not a holy relic in need of worship.  It is a way for me to capture and document not only the physical conditions of womanhood, but to construct a sense of who She is as a person. This is a narrative with a beginning, but no end. Her experiences are not over – the photograph merely opens the door for me to solve the puzzle, but there will always be a missing piece to Her identity.

My mission with my art is Her survival, which, in turn, yields my survival.