Neuroelastic is a self-activated artistic performance. Taking a cue from the well-known concept of Dr. Norman Doidge’s neuroplasticity, it is inspiring that the mind can adapt in new ways. The artist imagined an idea; by wrapping oneself in streams of coloured synaptic “bandages” this symbolic act can allow thoughts and feelings to show on the outside. Using photography as documentation, a capture of the moment reveals what is hidden. This artwork of self-permission reflects on not only the unseen being seen, but that it can be changed. This collection of images I hope can read as a zany family album of the mind. Neuroelastic is an interior selfie and an invitation to an altered way of being.

Laura Shintani is a Toronto-based multimedia artist who creates work in order to provoke questions in artistic forms. Shintani represents a hybrid of work, art making, study and teaching. She is interested in seeing people embrace the cycle of creativity: playing, problem solving and reflecting. Raised in small-town Ontario, Shintani later studied fashion design at Ryerson University and received a degree from the University of Toronto. After personal discovery she made art a vocation and earned a Master of Fine Art from the University of Windsor. Shintani’s most significant exhibition was at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2019.

This artist has interactive materials which will be provided in the 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.

Images of the Neuroelastic 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

A colourful video projection onto a soft surface, marks the entrance to the installations – a suggestion that the guest, following the arrows, is entering a carnival fun house. A series of drifter dance documentations using hand motions and body movements to respond to and amplify the patterns of found carpets. Taken in the semi-public passageways of hotels— it explores the interpolation of class and the end of conference culture. An act of resiliency, and taking nothing for granted: watching a sunset from a goldfish bowl, spun on a ride at a carnival, your body stays still below, by becoming a blizzard, in an inside out forest. The project celebrates itinerancy of artists, mad folks and other portable persons.

Grey Muldoon (they/them) is a movement artist working primarily out of Toronto / Tkaronto and Halifax / Kjipuktuk. Grey is disciplined in performance and puppetry arts and makes immersive sculptural installations. A proud Workman Arts member, Grey is interested in close observation, picking things up and carrying them gently, and collaborating with clear-voicing and shout-noisilying. Their experience of rare cognitive relational vibrance, a.k.a. Autism, of survival system sensitivity and subtle time injuries, a.k.a complex PTSD, and the discovery of practical imagination technologies via crisises, a.k.a Madness, allows them to make their work.

Images of the Mad Carpets – Hotel Carpet Dance Projections installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Paulina Wiszowata

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

Join multidisciplinary artist and creative writer, Hanan Hazime, for an online poetry workshop and art installation. Instead of psychiatric medicine, participants  of “The Mad Poetry Apothecary” will be prescribed creative prompts that encourage mental wellness. Participants will be guided through the creation of mixed-media poetry postcards and given the opportunity to virtually showcase their work. Those who would like to participate in the virtual art installation but cannot attend the online workshops have the option of submitting their poetry postcard via email. All levels of writing and artistic skills are welcome. Folks with lived experience of mental health and/or addiction issues are highly encouraged to contribute their voices to this project.

Click here to view the virtual Mad Poetry installation.

Hanan Hazime is a multidisciplinary artist, creative writer, community arts educator and writing instructor living in Tkaronto/Toronto. She also identifies as a Lebanese-Canadian Muslimah Feminist and Mad Pride Activist. Through her intersectional and interdisciplinary artwork, Hanan aims to push boundaries, question arbitrary binaries, dispel stigmas and shatter stereotypes. Her primary mission as an arts educator is to provide accessible arts education to marginalized communities with a special focus on crafting safe, empowered spaces for Muslims, individuals with mental health challenges, folks with disabilities and BIPOC youth to discover and enhance their writing and art skills.

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