negotiating: sticky sites of affection & infection, influence & inheritance, obligation & commitment, encounter & entanglement, dreaming & waking, inside & outside, you & me, us & we

riding: the breath of that common wind

thinking: about recent or upcoming projects & sustained conversations with artists: Leeay Aikawa, Amanda Boulos, Helen Cho, Derek Coulombe, Patrick Cruz, Liza Eurich, Brendan Flanagan, FASTWÜRMS, Stefana Fratila, Maggie Groat, Jessica Groome, KikoSounds, Faith La Rocque, Katie Lyle, Colin Miner, Tegan Moore, Sarah Nasby, Claudia Rick, Erica Stocking, Ella Tetrault, Dustin Wilson; curators/writers: John Goodwin, Jacqueline Mabey, Lillian O’Brien Davis, Daniella Sanader, Sunny Kerr

working: on Moire--a digital artist-run publisher--at our own, unhurried pace

teaching: as artistic practice to radically reimagine relation and communication via play, thought-experiments, (witch)craft, dreams, sustained mentorship, study/writing-groups, and collaborations that generate collectivist modes of participation

living: in Saskatoon on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis. I recognize the violence that makes my presence on these lands possible, while feeling thankful for the refuge my Slavic ancestors found here. Within these words, I pronounce my personal responsibility to confront the enduring impacts of colonialism and that a statement like this is never enough

reflecting: upon how I was raised an hour from the city recently-named Vancouver on the unceded territories of Coast Salish Peoples-specifically the Kwantlen|qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓, Katzie|q̓ic̓əy̓, Semiahmoo|SEMYOME, and Tsawwassen|sc̓əwaθən məsteyəxʷ Nations

rangling: miwwi & mooni

Links:
edm.garden
Professional CV 
Moire.ca
Mystictruths.org

Their writing has been published by numerous outlets (esse magazine, CMagazine, Public Journal, Momus, among others) and their work has been exhibited across Canada, the United States, China, the Philippines, and Europe, having been shaped by residencies in Tambopata National Reserve, Peru; Bergen, Norway; Berlin, Germany; Banff, Alberta (Treaty 7 Territory); and Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec. Alongside Liza Eurich and Colin Miner, they co-edit the publishing project Moire.ca and serve on the board of directors for Peripheral Review.

I was raised within a community whose practices of existence (ontology) and systems of knowledge (epistemology) were made possible through material curiosity, technical ingenuity, physical labour, and persistent bindings of communal obligations through acts of giving and receiving care—craftspeople. Their tools are my tools. Their craft, my craft. Their art, my art. Their attention, my survival.

In this image, I come to teaching as a core component of artistic practice that enables an exchange of understanding and experience. Not just as a method for sharing knowledge and skills, although this is a critical component—but more, as a radical space to reconceptualize relations and communication. For this aim, I use imagination, gamified activities, sustained mentorship, and collaboration to nourish collectivist modes of participation in conjunction with an extensive vocabulary in critical theory, curatorial-studies, studio-practice, and art-history—all of which I work to expand beyond a Western cultural frame.

As an interdisciplinary artist and educator, I urge students to explore how meaning is given and received through both form and action. My primary ambition for students is to motivate a sense of critical curiosity—to become deeply interested in the world’s material details, while understanding how this interest is shaped and expressed. With every activity, I work to facilitate students transition from passive learners to active participants who are intrinsically driven, rather than extrinsically motivated. My teaching style draws upon the students’ and my own multifaceted subject positions. This provides a horizontal, student-centered learning environment that establishes adaptable learning objectives which encompass specified capacity and experience. By designing challenging, yet supportive curriculum, I have found that learners are able to move to more complex forms of thinking that synthesize various knowledge systems.

My teaching philosophy is guided by Sol Lewitt’s “First Sentence on Conceptual Art… 

Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.

Elizabeth Grosz’ description of concepts in “The Future of Feminist Theory: Dreams for New Knowledges”… 

We need concepts in order to think our way in a world of forces we do not control. Concepts are not a means of control, but forms of address that carve out for us a space and time in which we may become capable of responding to the indeterminate particularity of events. Concepts are thus a way of addressing the future, and in this sense are the conditions under which a future different from the present—the very goal of every radical politics—becomes possible. Concepts are not premonitions, ways of predicting what will be; on the contrary, they are modes of enactment of new forces; they are themselves the making of the new.

& Paul Chan’s explanation of Art in his essay, “A Time Apart”… 

Art is art when what is made unmakes itself in the making, and realizes, in barely recognizable form, the discordant truth of living life.

Imagine a relay runner handing a baton to another runner then another and yet another. Instantly, the feeling of grasping a thing and the tangibility of sweat and chalk is given and received. Object and subject rub against one another, conferring awareness, meaning, and knowledge. As she runs, she breathes heavy and deep, inhaling the world—grass, exhaust, humidity—while exhaling her own damp interiority. Over and over, she turns inside-out and outside-in. The runner is engaged in an emergent process, a sensational affair, an accrued composition that enables becoming-with. Likewise, my practice pursues relays as assemblies of contact and exchange through sculptural processes capable of making and unmaking malleable materials.

PhD, Visual Arts, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, York University (2023)

MFA, School of Fine Art & Music, University of Guelph (2013)

BFA, Art History/Visual Art Department, University of British Columbia (2007)