Final Independent Project

As an independent project, I wanted to explore part of my personal practice as an artist: writing. I’m very interested in the concept of medicine in literature and how writing can be a useful tool to promote growth and healing. Earlier this year I started writing as a way to cope with being raped, I was shocked at how the words just flowed out of me. I never thought I’d have this much to say, I had repressed the memories for five years unable to actually call it what it was because I was in a relationship with the man who assaulted me and I loved him. I’ve always enjoyed writing but I always saw it as separate from my art until I started writing poems about my trauma this semester. I see these works as individual moments in time and vessels for human connection. I couldn’t believe how many people connected with my work when I started sharing it. I framed all of these works individually and I envision them installed on a wall together in a cluster. I think eventually I would also like to turn these into audio works where people could put in headphones and listen to each one individually around the gallery. I can also see these a prologues or prompts for future paintings.

This first one is a story about my best friend growing up and the first time I realized I might be gay, I was 12 and the kids at school were bullying me for having a pixie cut and they were calling me a dyke. When I asked her if she would still love me if I was a Lesbian she told me we could be friends but that we couldn’t have sleepovers anymore because she wouldn’t want me to molest me in her sleep. I didn’t talk about it until I was 20 after that day and I haven’t talked to her in 5 years for a number of reasons.

This is a poem I wrote about being assaulted, it’s called “The First Time I Had Sex”, I felt it was too personal to share with others so I blacked out all of the lines except one and pinned it into a black shadow box with a black mat like you would a moth. I also thought it might be more powerful to just have this one line with no context what so ever, I really enjoy the anonymity of this work because it can mean different things to people.

This work is some recent elections on gender and what it means to be a woman.

This is another line that I took from a different poem about being assaulted, I thought this was powerful on its own because the timeline addresses the man who did it while not getting too graphic. I have a hard time seeing myself as a victim and speaking about these events so I don’t know if I would ever share the full poems to the public.

If being sick was an addiction

anorexia was my drug of choice

Numbing the pain with alcohol, coffee,

and sex with strange men I met on the internet

This last piece is a summary of my late teens and early 20’s. As a way to cope with being abused at the time I threw myself into an eating disorder because it was the only control i had in my life, in a way even though I was hurting myself, being anorexic kept me alive during that time of my life. After the relationship ended I was with a very kind man I went to art school with, when that relationship inevitably crashed and burned I threw myself into a hyper-sexual phase as a coping mechanism for being with the trauma and trying to regain control in my life. I think I was also trying to prove that I was happy being “straight”, I was wrong. There’s something incredible about being able to self-reflect. and heal and look at the past and understand why you did the things you did.

I tried to add the image of all of these works together in the frame but my computer is not letting me.

Take A Stand

Book Project: Work in Progress

I added all the pages of my book but they are not showing up, I might just email you them.

Book Project: Ideas and Research

Originally I was inspired by this book called “Come As You Are” by Emily Nagoski. The book is an excellent read whether you are the owner of a vulva or not. The author confronts sex not as a taboo but as something that should be talked about and answers questions we’ve otherwise been too ashamed to ask. I find it a rather beautiful and powerful approach to sexuality. As someone who isn’t a big reader I don’t own many books, typically the books I do own are about plants or bugs. I bought this book last year when I was really struggling to connect with my partner and be intimate, I was so sure the problem was me and If I could read this book and figure out what was wrong with me maybe I might finally want to have sex with him. Flash forward a year a lot has changed, I am no longer with my partner and tho this has been a very scary and emotional journey I realized that I am not in fact broken, I’m just gay, and the reason for my problems was that I was lying to myself trying to prove that I could be happy and settle down with a man. I think when you’re in the closet or even just denying your truth sex can be really scary, I had made myself numb to the idea of liking girls for years despite knowing my parents were fine with me being a homosexual. It was some sort of overcorrection or overcompensation and I was so confused for so long. It’s not until I’ve truly let myself feel attraction to women and acknowledge these parts of myself that everything in my life has become much clearer. With my book, I wanted to focus on my two primary interests: plants and sexuality. More than that I wanted to challenge the notion of genitals and people’s obsession with how that correlates to gender and sexuality. I wanted to show just how beautiful and natural diverse genders and sexualities are and that genitals aren’t what makes a person a certain “thing”. Rather when I say I’m gay it’s not so black and white as I only date women or I’m only attracted to people with vulvas, rather I’m attracted to feminine and masculine energy in people the the rest doesn’t really matter, I’m just not content being with a cisgender straight man, mainly because I’m tired of being reduced to being a woman in their eyes. I want to be with other queer people who truly see me and not just the superficial parts of me on the outside that most people mistake for “woman”.

Arboretum Video Art

Harvesting Acorns featuring Shanza Yole and Forest Funston

Disclaimer: All materials harvested in the arboretum gene banks were done with permission from the horticultural team and sustainably collected for seed processing. The arboretum is a consumption-free space meaning that you cannot pick or eat anything you find in the arb.

My inspiration for this piece was my chosen family. I think one of the best parts of being queer is the sense of community that you find through shared experience. Working in the arboretum this summer I met some incredible people who are now some of my closest friends. Not having any queer friends since moving to Guelph has been very lonely and isolating, I didn’t realize just how much I was missing until I met three very special people this May across the lunchroom table in the Hilton Center. One of my favorite memories was picking native plums this summer while singing The Greatest Showman song. In an attempt to recreate the queer experience in the arboretum and explore what it means to be gay in the arboretum with my friends. These wonderfully weird and creative souls had never participated in performance/experimental art before and they did amazing, they were such good sports coming to my rescue and putting this video together with me.

Bookstack Nina Katchadourian

One of the first books I picked up was in the philosophy section, how I got there im not sure, the book was titled Kents theory of form. I started comb through the various books, looking at the colours, their spins lined up one by one, withered and dusty. And yet the pages inbetween looked untouched by time. None of the pages had been dogeared, there was no evidence anyone had been there before me. Not a stain or smudge left behind. I myself am not a big reader as I dont have the attention spand for it, my focus for this project was texture, colour, repetition and form. Arguably the best book title I found was the Paradox Of Existence which pretty much sums up my entire life. an interesting play on words that I was experimenting with was:

Critique of Pure Reason

Free to Hate

The Paradox of Existence

Artist Research: Shawna Dempsey

1. Shawna Dempsy is a Canadian performance artist and queer icon, best known for their work with Lorri Millan as The Lesbian Park Rangers. Both artists have collaborated on a number of satiric and lavishly outrageous performative works such as Growing Up Suites, and my personal favorite We’re Talking Vulva. I think what is most appealing about Shawna Dempsy is their ability to reach various groups with their work through comedy and pop culture. So whether you can relate to them as a queer individual or as an objective third-party viewer you’ll probably have a laugh. Dempsy is able to touch on important subjects and voice feminist and LGBTQ+ advocacy. One of the strategies they use is satire. By using satire, Dempsy makes these necessary conversations surrounding the lesbian experience more palatable to viewers. This is an excellent approach because they’re able to shatter stereotypes about feminists/queer women being angry and volatile. Not only are queer women seldom represented outside of the male gaze but there is not always a lot of positive or accurate representation either. I really appreciate how they don’t take themself too seriously, it’s very refreshing just how silly and yet powerful their work is. If I had to summarize their system/task they assigned themselves in a sentence it would be: Abolishing the patriarchy one lesbian at a time.
2. In the Lesiban Park Ranger performance, Dempsy and Millan navigate queer wilderness while flipping stereotypes and gender roles on their heads. They challenge narratives on colonialism, sexism, capitalism, and the heterosexual “ideal” by inserting themselves into the landscape of Banff National Parks, (although they do not directly critique colonialism). This parody of the traditional and machismo role of the park ranger turned lesbian park ranger works very well to frame their message. By inserting themselves into the natural landscape not only are the viewers able to appreciate our natural resources but also identify some more critical issues of our nation, such as the forced displacement and assimilation of our First Nations people. The audience is invited to question the integrity and authority of the park rangers while confusing the audience. However, if you are able to read between the lines you might soon realize that this is much more than just a funny skit. There is a definite correlation between wilderness and queerness in this work which peaks my interest. Perhaps because, like the great outdoors, sexuality can be unpredictable and at times difficult to navigate.