performance: crash pad – cindy baker & closing night reception for off-centre: queer contemporary art in the prairies

CRASH PAD – CINDY BAKER

In Crash Pad, I explore performance in which the artist’s “failing,” disabled, or otherwise socially taboo body is a part of the work. As an artist whose body “fails” more and more each day, I want to be able to understand how to best make performance within this body that respects it. The performance of the work responds to my body’s functional abilities on any given day, and will allow me to be at rest during the performance as much as is required by the needs of my body. Central to Crash Pad is a large sculptural object which functions as a bed, modeled after a single-pill blister pack. The precarious balance offered by this pseudo-resting place exaggerates the difficulty in going to bed and getting up and the unease of finding a comfortable resting position, and makes up the main element of this quiet performance.

OFF-CENTRE: QUEER CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE PRAIRIES aims to destabilize urban/rural and centre/margin binaries by presenting engaging and politically relevant work by queer artists from and/or currently living in the Canadian Prairies. The exhibition addresses issues of gender, sexuality and regionalism through an intersectional lens, and investigates the possibility of queering the “Prairie Gothic” aesthetic by presenting fantastical, playful, imaginary and surreal representations of the human form.

Artists in exhibition – Cindy Baker, Daniel Barrow, Rosalie Favell, Nik Forrest, Kablusiak, Zachari Logan, Daniel Cardinal McCartney, melannie monoceros, Megan Morman, Lasha Mowchun, Sheri Nault, Phomohobes, and Adrian Stimson.

Off-Centre: Queer Contemporary Art in the Prairies curated by Blair Fornwald and Gary Varro.