Due to Renovations is an installation piece focusing on a transmasculine experience of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). Through several casting techniques, the artist captured their transitioning body at different stages of their HRT. These casts are suspended and framed within a construction zone containing other artifacts from the artist’s transition, including: a video montage of their gender identity experimentation, medical supplies and reports from their HRT and notated anatomy blueprints. Themes explored within the work include westernized concepts of gender expression; gender and body dysphoria; body modification and drag. Due to Renovations is an autobiographical paradox: it attempts to preserve a transition for both the spectator and the artist.

Van Lisa is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on performance. As an AFAB (assigned female at birth) transgender individual, their work aims to conceptualize and challenge westernized ideologies of the transmasculine experience. Van works in Tkaronto as a performer and curator and is a part of the curatorial collective for both the 2020 and 2021 Rhubarb Festival’s at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

CONTENT WARNINGS

Nudity, Mature Language, Sexual Content

Images of the Due to Renovations installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang

Multitude of Fish is an installation consisting of 1000 handmade clay fish. In this piece, the artist touches on layers of meaning through its process and how it’s experienced by the viewer. She explored how things we cannot see like intention, emotions and thoughts, form our reality. This is reflected in the creation process as each mark carved into the clay builds up to the fish and eventually becomes a piece to the overall installation. For the past two years, Jenny worked with the image of water in her drawings which was preliminary work that led up to this installation. In her work, the fish flows through its surrounding space and leads the viewer on a journey reminiscent of the inner realm.

Jenny Chen is a multimedia artist, currently working in watercolor, pen and clay. Her work uses symbols to create otherworldly environments while considering themes of existentialism and spirituality. Her exhibition history includes the Living Arts Centre (group), Toronto Media Arts Centre (group) and United Contemporary (solo). She is a recipient of grants from the Ontario Arts Council (exhibition assistance) and Cue Arts Projects.

Images of the Multitude of Fish installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang

untitled ([not] always like this) is an ongoing artwork created by collecting the artist’s used tissues and dipping them in porcelain, adding worth to an otherwise worthless object. The piece is a response to the society we live in and the importance placed on doing: you must make, you must work, you must grind. Our opinions of ourselves are tied to a quantifiable output rather than how we feel. Instead, we should spend time listening to our bodies, allowing ourselves to take things slow, being intentional with the way we move through the world and giving ourselves permission to heal from the everyday. These tissues hold the memories of going against the grain, of days stuck in sickness and hours lost crying.

Kassandra Walters is a multimedia artist currently practicing in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Her art tackles mental health, all that it encompasses and all that encompasses it. With a strong desire to normalize speaking about the unspeakable, Kassandra’s work is honest and raw. She finds solace in the act of making through repetition.

This artist has an item in the RWM swag bag to go with their piece in the exhibition. All ticket holders will be invited to receive RWM swag bags available for free curbside pickup during festival hours.

Images of the untitled ([not] always like this) installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang

Into the dark of my skin uses a bird’s eye view to look at all possible perspectives, going beyond the corners of the frame. Mutated and shared bodies visually meet in only one spot, never meeting in a second. Their virtual encounter is a need that satisfies and nourishes the fetal and its obsolete memory. This, unfortunately, is a search for impossible love or the cohabitation of two human beings, which is only possible through a visual juxtaposition. The video medium creates a ground that allows a meeting…impossible bodies, different times and places.

Wieslawa Nowicka explores the branches of visual art and its pluralism. As a result, she has liberated herself from a singularity, permitting her to explore the facets of history, anthropology, and psychoanalysis through the plurality of arts – painting, design, performance and video installations.

CONTENT WARNINGS

Nudity

Images of the Into the dark of my skin installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang

The Anatomy of A Home is a multi-media installation exploring a person’s relationship to home. Audiences are invited to walk through a blueprint of a house etched into the floor and observe the artifacts placed within. This is part of a larger performance project that explores Saba’s relationships to home and isolation, in her past and during COVID-19.

Special Thanks: Tijiki Morris & Jules Voderak-Hunter

Saba Akhtar is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto and raised in Houston, Texas. Her arts practice is focused on intergenerational trauma and grief. She exhibits this through multimedia design (installation, video, photo), playwriting and performance. Saba’s education has been heavily influenced by mentorship from peers and elders in her community. She has a deep passion for helping others share their story as well and has established a career in community-engaged arts as a facilitator and mentor in multiple organizations.

CONTENT WARNINGS

Violence

Images of the The Anatomy of a Home installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang

Ectoplasm would leak from psychic mediums during photography sessions as a manifestation of the spirit entering the physical world. Expulsion often caused great pain to the psychic mediums creating it. At times the substance was solid and would take the shape of a face or body parts, while at other times it was fluid and contained imagery of spirits or memories. Ectoplasms is a multi-channel video installation that depicts the decay and dripping of photographs. The images initially seem static, but they begin to move around the viewer in ways that defy gravity and orientation. As the viewer tries to place the imagery, they grapple with its disappearance.

Megan Moore is a Montreal-based media artist. Through the manipulation of personal and public archives, her immersive photo and video installations offer reflections on memory, grief and the photographic medium. Megan has exhibited in Canada (FOFA Gallery, Orillia Museum of Art and History, Toronto Media Arts Centre) and Europe (Maison de la Photographie, France, Ulster Museum, UK.) In 2015 she won the Montreal Emerging Photographer award. Megan holds a BFA in Photography from Concordia University and an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Guelph.

Images of the Ectoplasms installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang

Post-Part is a room within a room installation that draws on the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Barbara Ehrenreich, the modern collage movement and the RGB innovation of Carnovsky. Post-Part re-imagines a 19th century-style brocade wallpaper pattern incorporating “hidden” illustrations, collage elements and sensor-triggered audio, to bring to life the experience of postpartum mood disorders, including postpartum psychosis. Handheld cellophane filters reveal collage compositions hidden within the wallpaper, and the viewer’s proximity to the wall triggers audio recordings of women’s testimony as well as “cures” prescribed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Longernin Collective formed to create the installation work, Post-Part. Drawing on combined experiences in illustration, animation, writing, film, collage and art therapy work, the members’ individual works have been exhibited, published and screened to audiences locally and globally.

Longernin Collective would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Images of the Post-Part installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Franco Pang & Paulina Wiszowata

ThreadBare is an interactive textile installation that centers the voices of survivors of sexual and domestic violence and abuse. The piece features a collection of poetry and prose submitted by survivors, sewn into clothing and fabric and interwoven within the piece. Audiences are invited to observe and interact with the structure, which responds to movement using lighting and sound. This piece was created to elevate the stories and experiences of survivors through the repurposing of fabric and clothing and aims to foster conversation, reflection and a shared sense of solidarity and hope.

Alexandra Caprara is a multidisciplinary artist and writer from Toronto. She is a graduate from York University’s Theatre and Creative Writing programs and has worked internationally as a designer and director.

Raechel E. Kula is a multi-disciplinary artist with a background in software and information technology. She brings a systems approach to the dramaturgy and design of interactive and performative works for live audiences.

CONTENT WARNINGS

Rape and/or Sexual Violence

Images of the ThreadBare installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang

Intolerance of Uncertainty is an installation that combines a single-channel video, Instruction to the Ball Measure and the Ball in a fictional setting that resembles the interior of a psychiatrist therapy session. This participatory work asks an audience to sit as “a testee” to assess the levels of their own anxiety. The audience can grab the red ball placed on the table, which also appears in the video, and follow each gesture of the hands interacting with the ball. It is to measure an individual’s anxiety, especially their intolerance of uncertain future events. The Ball physically channels its participant to the imagined realm of psychiatry, unfolding in the video through its tactility.

Ivetta Sunyoung Kang is an interdisciplinary visual and video artist and writer, currently based in Montreal. She studied film directing in South Korea and earned her MFA in Film Production at Concordia University. She has presented short films and videos at film festivals and galleries around the world, including in South Korea, Canada, Germany and the United States. In 2016, Kang was shortlisted for the Simon Blais Award in Canada. She recently published a poetry book entitled Absent Seats and is a co-founding member of the artist collective Quite Ourselves, and the A/V duo CCVX?.

This artist has interactive materials which will be provided in the first 50 RWM swag bag in order to interact with their virtual content. All ticket holders will be invited to receive RWM swag bags available for free curbside pickup during festival hours.

To purchase this work, please visit our online store. To purchase only the interactive item, click here.

Images of the Intolerance of Uncertainty installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang

This project is a series of fairy tales reinterpreted from a queer perspective and illustrated through shadow projections. It is a re-reading of well known folk and fairy tales that have undertones of queerness, mental health and sexuality that have been intentionally or otherwise suppressed in the versions we know. The form of the installations are large light boxes which project an intricate paper-cut tableau of images relating to the story. The folk style of papercut art is a powerful contrast to the sometimes morbid, raunchy and eerie subtext which these stories contain– themes which the illustrations will be heavily focused on.

Kristine White is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in the realms of puppetry, installation and performance. Kristine’s work is often driven by explorations of myth, folklore and symbology, creating visual metaphors that often result in immersive and site-specific installations and performances.

CONTENT WARNINGS

Nudity, Violence, Sexual Content, Rape and/or Sexual Assault

To purchase pieces from the Mad Fairy Tales series, please contact paulina_wiszowata@workmanarts.com for more info.

Images of the Mad Fairy Tales installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang