Artists

中文版本

I am Natasha Cecily Bacchus. I am an athlete and performing artist, passionate about deaf advocacy, fitness and physical expression. Throughout my life, I have nurtured my passion for fitness competing as a professional athlete and securing medal positions in the Deaf Olympics, Pan Am Olympics and many other competitive sporting events. As an actress, I have participated in numerous theatre and film productions and have a strong desire to continue to grow and develop as a performing artist, expanding representation to include differently-abled persons and empowering Black Deaf women in Canada to shine on and off the stage.

Artist Instagram: instagram.com/100courage
Artist Twitter: twitter.com/couragebacchus

Artist Statement

During the COVID pandemic, systems have presented barriers in accessibility. The BLM movement has also caused me to look inward and examine who I am.

The video I made, and the four images at the end of it, are significant as they reflect my identity as black, deaf, queer, woman. My lived experiences of these layers of identity overlap and intersect one another.

The image of my reflection in the mirror is important because the mirror offers me a chance to look at the present and who I am. To see myself as pretty, as an amazing person, and to be able to see the value in my identity, strength, and the space and location of where I am.

Society and systems have caused trauma in my life, and the image of looking at myself in the mirror invites me to reflect not only on my past traumatic experiences, but also to look ahead to what is possible through positive changes. Changes within systems and society that allow for empowerment, collaborative unity and respect for my identity in all of it.

Experience Natasha “Courage” Bacchus’ Project, Reflection of Me

中文版本

Lena Chen is a Chinese American writer and artist creating performances and socially engaged art in live and virtual contexts. Awarded the Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award and “Best Emerging Talent” at B3 Biennial of the Moving Image (Frankfurt), she has exhibited and performed at Transmediale (Berlin), Die Digitale (Düsseldorf), Färgfabriken (Stockholm), and Baltimore Museum of Art, among others. She earned a B.A. in sociology from Harvard University and is currently completing an MFA at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art. She has spoken at Oxford, Yale, Stanford, SXSW, HOPE, and re:publica. She has been awarded grants and residencies from Millay Colony for the Arts, Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Office of Public Art, Burning Man Global Arts Fund, Civic Media Lab, and Women’s Media Center. She is currently a Freshworks artist-in-residence at Kelly Strayhorn Theater, developing an interactive game about social media censorship and de-platforming of sex workers.

Artist Website: lenachen.com
Artist Instagram: instagram.com/elleperil
Artist Twitter: twitter.com/lenachen

Presentation Description

Since the 2018 passage of FOSTA/SESTA in the US, sex workers and erotic content producers have been systematically marginalized by mainstream social media and payment processors while increasingly becoming the subject of surveillance through facial recognition and data-scraping software. Numerous sites have shut down, disconnecting sex workers from clients and peer support communities and further exposing them to danger by forcing them to work in isolation.

In the game OnlyBans, the player assumes the character of a sex worker establishing their online brand and dreaming of lucrative paydays while living in fear of cyber creeps and account deletion by Big Tech platforms. As the player attempts to evade censorship and surveillance, the game reveals how “free” the Internet really is when you are engaged in stigmatized labour subject to policing and criminalization. Finally, the game offers a vision of how marginalized communities might band together to protest these unjust policies and create better alternatives.

Made on the Twine platform in collaboration with Maggie Oates and Goofy Toof, OnlyBans is inspired by the aesthetics of everyday digital platforms and devices. Incorporated into the gameplay are real images and videos sourced by open call and contributed by sex workers and erotic content producers that have been censored on social media.

Project Website: OnlyBansGame.com

Lena Chen will be speaking at Feminist Craft of Care for Times of Crisis, a presentation panel on May 13, 2021 from 6:30PM to 8:00PM PDT.

中文版本

Mallory Donen is a multidisciplinary artist residing in Vancouver, exploring processes rooted in traditional craft passed down by generations of women in her family. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of the Fraser Valley, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba. Within her practice, she challenges notions of labour, productivity, and the value of art in relation to craft and women’s work.

In 2019, she was an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center. In 2020, she received an Honorable mention in the virtual exhibition Threaded II, Envision Art Show. She is a 2021 recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts, Research and Creation Grant.  

Recent exhibitions include: Art on Demand 4.4, the Reach Gallery & Museum, I Come From a Long Line of Machines, Ranger Station Art Gallery, Seeking the Periphery, Paul H. Cocker Gallery, Uncompressed, Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery.

Artist Website: mallorydonen.com
Artist Instagram: instagram.com/mallorydonen

Presentation Description

Mallory Donen will present works from the past several years which investigate notions of labour, productivity, and the value of art in relation to craft and women’s work. Instead of becoming reliant on computers and other advanced technologies that are accelerating the speeds of production and consumption alike, she chooses to look back to centuries-old practices that have been passed down through generations of women. She explores the parallel between repetitive processes and computer programming by taking on the role of a machine.

By embracing time-consuming processes such as hand-stitching, she emphasizes the importance and value of women’s labour. As a female artist, her labour is feminized and inherently connected to women’s domestic work. She challenges expectations of traditional craft by introducing conceptual layers and experimentation with new media. Throughout her artist talk, she will bring awareness to the value of feminine art forms and the connection between craft and fine art.

Mallory Donen will be speaking at Feminist Craft of Care for Times of Crisis, a presentation panel on May 13, 2021, from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM PDT.

中文版本

Margaret Dragu

Margaret Dragu works in video, installation, digital and analogue publication, and performance. Spanning relational, durational, interventionist, and community-based practices, she has shown in Canada, the US and Europe. Dragu is celebrating her 50^th year as a working artist. Her favourite art-making material is still the body despite, or because of, her bionic status as a grateful owner of two recent hip replacements. She was the recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2012, Éminence Grise (2012) for 7a*11d, and the first artist in FADO’s publication series Canadian Performance Art Legends (2000).

Artist Website: margaretdragu.com
Artist Instagram: instagram.com/ladragu

Justine A. Chambers

Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaɬ Nations. Her movement-based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation and the body as a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with dances that are already there — the social choreographies present in the everyday. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.

Artist Website: justineachambers.com
Artist Instagram: instagram.com/justine.a.chambers

Artist Statement

I am mapping my experience of moving through the public sphere as a person with a mobility issue. I utilize collaboration, humour, sound and movement to look critically at ableism, the process of aging; while also envisioning the city as a location for spatial justice.

For over three years, I have been working with artist Justine A. Chambers on a project called NEW NORMAL: an embodied novel. It is an immersive installation that explores the social architecture of ability through video, performance, music and text. It also asks the question “can performance be a form of publishing?”

While working on this “13 chapter novel” we also made some “extra chapters” for performances, exhibitions and publishing that are all called chapter 4. We have made 3 chapter fours so far. This is one of them.

Experience Margaret Dragu and Justine A. Chamber’s Project, New Normal: An Embodied Novel

中文版本

Rye is a perennial grass that grows to 1.8 meters or taller. It is well-suited to establish roots in cosmopolitan environments and is a disease-resistant crop, which is cherished for its high-energy dancing and unique stage presence. When in human form, Rye is an intersex genderqueer performer who uses acrobatic contemporary moves to tell sentimental stories. 

Rye has performed on Toronto’s best and queerest stages, bartops and park benches. In these digital times, they have entered the First Annual Burlesque Festival and the Mx. Meltdown Pageant. Rye always brings a full production and irresistible seduction, with their edgy mix of drag and burlesque.

Rye will be speaking at Workroom: Drag, gender, and the challenges of being seen in digital and analog spaces on May 7, 2021, from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM PDT.