When the performer welcomes their audience into the space of embodied queerness, they normalise the body in a way that is rare in hegemonic North American, straight, thin, white, cis culture. This is where body neutrality comes in.

In the queer space, there are no rules for how the body should look. This is the essence of queerness: rejection of the rules, occupying different shapes and expressions.

I am not going to fall into a trap of ignorance and say that thinness is not privileged, or tha

They are wedged into the corners of neighbourhoods and
city pockets where those in power and their followers
rarely option to travel. Granted as little visibility
as possible in the landscape of a seemingly thriving
metropolis, though the survival of its population
depends on what they stand for. Safe Injection Sites,
they’re formally called, but to their community all
that’s heard is “safe.”

Have you ever noticed those little free library boxes scattered throughout the neighbourhoods as you meander the residential streets of Vancouver? These sweet, often home-made little libraries offer a chance to cultivate anti-consumerist community through the sharing and exchanging of literature, to make books and reading accessible to all without expectation of anything in return, and to recognize our shared desire to feel connected to one another on common ground – the street. People peep thei

During these rainy winter months here in Vancouver, fostering community and connection are essential to our well-being, especially in the midst of a third wave of restrictions and isolations due to the ongoing pandemic reality we are currently facing. As we all navigate yet another series of “stay at home” warnings, finding avenues to remain inspired and engaged both in ourselves and our communities proves to be increasingly challenging, and yet it is as essential to our survival as is clean air

Post-lockdown reality in BC’s arts community has us all craving connection and excuses to get out on the town. For Vancouver, this has meant a clean-slate across the night-life scene as venues and events start to emerge from the harshness of the pandemic, allowing for abundant opportunity for fresh, new happenings to claim space in our city’s cultural landscape. For dancers and performers, this has meant the chance to finally take their art out of the studio and back into the public sphere for t

An exhibit critique from the 2019 photography exhibition "Of Individuals and Places: Photographs from the Lazare Collection", at Montreal's Museum of Fine Arts.

Since their emergence in the 19th century, denim jeans have become among some of the most globally worn clothing in the world. Due to denim’s broad appeal, versatility of application and innovative nature, it is part of the narratives of progress and the American Dream as a clothing “icon linked to particular generations and values.” From the worker’s uniform, to couch upholstery, to formal attire suitable for wear on the Red Carpet (referencing here Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake’s iconic matching denim ensembles from the 2001 American Music Awards), denim has had a consistent presence across two centuries of changing cultural zeitgeists and fashion epochs.

Orlan is both fascinating and dreadful.

This seems to be the consensus among spectators and discourse regarding the French artist Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte, who has made a name for herself as a performance artist and feminist icon since the early 1970s under the name Saint Orlan, claimed by the artist in 1971. With her body of controversial, self-titled Carnal Art that aims both to shock and subvert the art world with unprecedented commitment, Orlan has become most well known for her work with plastic surgery, where the artist physically manipulates and uses her own body as a medium to mirror the features of classical female figures, such as Botticelli’s Venus, as a means of challenging female beauty ideals from an art historical perspective.

Written in admiration of the artistic career of Hannah Wilke, this essay dives into the notion of Vulnerable Realism in feminist art and photography.

Dealing dominantly with imagery of the female form and its manifestations within the cultural climate of a mid-Sexual Revolution America, the mass of Wilke’s artwork drew on a range of prevalent stereotypes surrounding the female body as represented within art history as well as the sexually liberated, contemporary art world in which she worked and experienced life as a woman and an artist. Against an artistic landscape accustomed to female representation centering on passivity and objectification in favor of male spectator-ship, Wilke’s bold, assertive manner of displaying her own body both at times of beauty as well as vulnerability employed a realism which would permeate feminist discourse during her life as well as posthumously. Wilke made sure of this in fact, by ending both her career and her life, with perhaps the most organically realist photography project to her name, Intra-Venus (1991-1993). With the Intra-Venus series, Hannah Wilke presents self-portraiture possessive of such raw honestly in her self-subjectivity, that the series may be recognized as the epitome of both female agency and vulnerable realism, among many other artistic accomplishments.

Literary translations of my experience with an extended viewing exercise. Surrealist self-portraiture, an art student, two hours, unwavering gaze.

When I spotted the cluster of contact-seekers and bystanders on the stairs in front of Place des Arts, I suddenly became conscious of the energy being radiated into the air by this spellbinding event.