A Virtual Exhibition
In-Site, Incite, & Insight

Rather than experience the festival’s exhibition on-site, this year we experience it “in-site” — in a website, in the digital world, in the virtual. The works in the festival this year have been selected with the intention of being experienced virtually.

The artists bring insight to their experiences of the world having changed, how it continues to change and what this change can offer. This includes our growing awareness around mental health, our relationships with both the physical and digital worlds, and how the works can incite us into action. The exhibiting works investigate these themes and more, providing room to engage with the arts in a time when interacting and experiencing work has been significantly impacted. Through these works, we recognize that we are in the moment, in the current, in the site.

Visit the virtual exhibition here:

insite.workmanarts.com

SELF // ISOLATION
Chelsea Watson

Self // Isolation is a collection of digital pieces generated from photographs taken by the artist in her home. One portrait was taken for every month she spent alone in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using code to manipulate the photographs through a process called generative art, the images morph from everyday household objects and scenes of day-to-day life, into indiscernible blurs. Drawing from experience with anxiety and depression, the artist attempts to capture the chaos, fog and distortion, which is often experienced in times of trauma, and acutely felt by most during the pandemic. The project is a comment on the unreliability of memory and the brain’s misperception of reality, and ultimately a reflection on the artist’s progressive mental decline during the lockdown.

Chelsea Watson is an artist from Calgary, Canada currently residing in Toronto. Her unique process, known as generative or computational art, uses creative coding to make computer programs that create art. Chelsea’s work is purposefully random with an appreciation for imperfection. She draws inspiration from tactile art forms, such as paintings, ceramics and textiles to create layered and textured pieces with code as her medium.

Keywords: Addiction | Dispalcement | Harm Reduction | Healthcare | Indigenous rights | Trauma

a note from Oliver Jane, Creator of Jo Don’t Go There

Sometimes the “show must not go on” and that’s ok.

When I made the decision to not move forward with my piece Jo Don’t Go There in Rendezvous with Madness 2020, I was encouraged by my friend and contact at Workman Arts to write a short reflection for all of you in lieu of the show. Here you will find some rambling, musing, and reflecting. Thank you for taking a brief moment to reflect with me.

When I agreed to move forward with the project several months ago, I was excited by the challenge of transferring my live performance pieces to video web content. Unfortunately, I found that meeting the demands of a precarious/always changing pandemic environment made completing the project difficult. I am an artist that lives with chronic pain, Rheumatoid Arthritis, PTSD symptoms, and OCD symptoms. The greatest lesson I have learned from managing all of these is that I should not go beyond my limits. Unfortunately, working in solo-isolation and not having funding to adequately compensate others to do the much-needed-tasks to make this project show-ready was bringing me close to my limits.

Since I made the choice to pause the show, the phrase “the show must go on” has been echoing through my mind. Upon reflecting on the nagging presence of this phrase within my mind, I recall that I have, almost exclusively, operated within creative environments where that sentence is espoused. I have worked in so many creative environments where the expectation to see a show to its completion is demanded of artists, producers, and production teams: no matter the cost. My years training to be an artist and working professionally have been colored by watching many friends and colleagues sacrifice their physical and mental health to see work to its completion. For many years I have wondered if creative communities should let go of the phrase “the show much go on” and refrain from normalizing the practice of sacrificing physical and mental wellness amongst artists. What I have witnessed in theatre schools and amongst theatre makers has made me consciously attempt to avoid working myself beyond my limits so that I do not worsen my already-sometimes-very-challenging health.

So I say once again, to comfort myself and to encourage those who find themselves also facing projects, businesses, and plans that need to be put on pause, closed, or canceled as a result of the pandemic: “the show must not go on” and that’s ok.

I’d like to offer gratitude to the team who has assisted me during this process. Though the show will not be viewed in this festival, I am continuing the reflect on and develop the body of work I have made thus far. I feel I must offer my deep gratitude to all those who gave me their time and talents.

• I am grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with my older brother, a very skilled video editor, who has been a cherished peer, mentor, and teacher (of art and life) for these last several months.
• I am grateful to the handful of talented musician friends who were willing to do some work on this project for free, for very low fees, or for barter.
• I am grateful to Workman Arts for supporting me as I adjusted the show to the changes brought about by the pandemic. This is my second experience working with Workman Arts, and I cannot emphasize enough how much I appreciate the work Kelly, Scott, Cara, Paulina, and the rest of the team working behind the scenes at Workman Arts do to make this really special festival happen. And during a pandemic, no less!
• Finally, I am grateful for organizations like Workman Arts that are actively striving to foster greater diversity of representation within the Ontario and Toronto creative community. I hope you all will continue to support and patronize Workman Arts even after the festival has passed.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the festival, you remember to stay safe, you do what you can to support and aid the most vulnerable in our communities, you donate to groups and organizations that are trying to address the already existing racial and economic inequality within North America that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, and you all focus your energies on taking care of your immunity and your mental health while the world faces global crisis. I know I will!

I send love and gratitude to you all.

-Oliver Jane

Enter the mind of Jo, a nonbinary trauma survivor, video artist and clown. Meet Jo’s consciousness embodied: their performative imaginary friend Oli Oli Ennui, a snarky clown who doesn’t take all this modern art stuff too seriously. If you know Jo’s personal story (hailing from NYC, navigating OCD and PTSD while occupying space in Toronto during the pandemic), do you know Jo? If you hear Oli sing punk-injected cabaret, do you know their soul? Experience Jo’s multimedia happening: a video series, music playlists, Instagram uploads, photo exhibition and a live installation performance at 651 Dufferin Street. This collection of fragments resonates in permanent refrain: Do you know me now?

Founded by Maria Wodzinska and Oliver Jane in 2017, goat(h)owl generates collaboratively devised experiences. Grounded in the body, at the core of every piece is a question. We take flight through our investigation of the thematic territory, of our position to the question, and of our will-to-know. We attempt to affirm the unknowable with proposals — playing in-front-of/with/around an audience. We want to shake up sedimented modalities of meaning and truth-telling with our moving ensemble. We point the eye to the kaleidoscope of forms created. Do we invite the audience to make meaning? Yes. Do we make meaning? Come and see.

CONTENT WARNINGS

Loud Sounds, Mature Language, Nudity, Rape and/or Sexual Violence, Sexual Content, Suicide

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

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

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

Re:Building Resilience features 25 installations that examine all facets of mental health issues. This will be our last festival at 651 Dufferin Street before moving to a brand new facility at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. What better way to say “good-bye” than to animate all 11,000 square feet with performance art, installations, theatre, dance, film and media art?

Tickets and Viewing Options

Tickets for virtual viewing are pay what you wish. Virtual viewing is available throughout the festival. With your ticket, you will have access to a virtual tour that includes a virtual swag bag with extra features from the 25 projects on offer. All ticket holders will also be invited to receive physical RWM swag bags available for free curbside pickup during festival hours.