Poster design by Rina Reyes (Eden)
Pierce Sinclair
Cyan For Art (2023) – A study of 10 cyanotype knit squares. This work transforms photography into abstraction, showing how we [as queer people] have so many ways of hiding in plain sight. We obscure our faces and don new ones, we are everywhere in ubiquity and we are chameleons. We are also beautiful and tangled up, and we loop under and over and through each other to keep from falling apart. The artist relates gender and queerness with abstraction and obscurity while questioning traditions, especially within the practices of arts and crafts, as well as process and materiality within photography.
Jianing Li
Site Plans (2023) – A photo collage series that consists of printed pictures of the artist’s mother with site plans, inspired by her job of designing factories for their hometown city, sewn over the photos. The artist curated images from her family archive and printed parts of the photos on fabric. Most of the images consist of a portion of her mother’s figure, including her shoulders, arms and hands.
Alize Tamturk
benim gördüklerim (what I have seen), 2023 – An installation that is part of her series, Reclaiming Narratives of Turkish Femininity, a visual exploration that dives into the complex interplay between traditional gender roles and personal experiences within a Turkish cultural context. Through collaged pieces, cyanotype printed onto fabric, upholstered onto a vintage chair, the artist aims to illuminate the multi-layered narratives embedded within her familial tapestry. The installation is a detailed perspective on the enduring impact of a controversial, conservative upbringing. The subtle yet powerful influence of entrenched gender norms are expressed through photography and text within the piece.
Homemaker (2023) – An installation using cyanotype photography on fabric. The artist uses her mother as subject in her work. This installation is part of the artists’ series, “housewives,” which focuses on the traditional gender roles that are put on women to fill the stereotypical domestic role of the housewife that cleans, cooks and caters to her family’s necessities. The housewife’s dream and persona is disregarded as she is seen to be the ‘pleaser’ role in society.
Tanishiqa
Sasural Ghenda Phool (2023) – Digital photo projections that embody the feeling of memory in this piece as the pictures taken by the artist back home interact materially with objects she brought with her to Canada, to go to school at ECUAD. The fabric, a reflective mesh material is her mother’s reception Saree, carrying on the history of that moment in her life through its stains. Marigold flowers are associated with religious ceremonies in Hindu traditions and all these objects carry a piece of home for the artist in this foreign land, kind of like a newly-wed bride.
Andream
Reflecting Portal (2023) - An interactive art installation, a physical structure for people to climb into, to transport to another time and place. This fabric work is the product of a slow (months long) natural dye process, starting as cotton and silk textile waste gathered from strangers on the internet. The fabric was scoured, mordanted, and naturally dyed with marigold flowers, then screen-printed with natural home-made tannin “inks”, re-dipped in marigold dye pots to activate the screen-print, then sewn. The repeat pattern, visible from the inside, is a photo montage of images taken by Andream on nature walks in the otherworld that is Juan de Fuca Provincial Park on Pacheedaht Territory. The intention of reflecting portal is to awaken a piece of childhood, a calming connection to oneself, in the simplicity of intimate solo space.
Allison Kiernan
Archive Series (2023) – A collection of 7 prints featuring layers of the artist’s archival photographs and her drawings, using screen printing as a medium. In these prints, Allison uses family photos as a process for exploring why certain moments are captured and prioritized. Individual prints are guided by her interest in playfulness and change. Photos of herself and family members as children in the process of growing and becoming, represent a relationship of curiosity and experimentation with the world. Allison uses formal qualities like bright and flat colours, collage-like layout, and drawings to explore photography in a non-traditional and playful way.
She is interested in the commonalities between screen print and photography as traditional mediums that can potentially be reprinted endlessly but feel exciting and new in how the artist continues to approach them.
Rina Reyes (Eden)
Vehicles (2023) – (Front): Analogue photographs and edited appropriated stock images of playground flooring digitized and screen printed onto muslin fabric, then quilted. The artist addresses themes of ownership, play, and ownership in the mindset of an adult versus a child.
(Reverse): Appropriated stock photo of rubber playground flooring edited into high-contrast black and white tiles. Numbers applied overtop tiles to create a hopscotch pattern. Screenprinted onto muslin fabric in black and white. Quilted.
VEHICLES I’VE OWNED (I DON’T HAVE A LICENSE) (2023) – Original iteration of Vehicles as an artist’s book.
