Join us for a CAA-organized special offsite exhibition presented by the Services to Artists Committee at at the Sotheby's Institute of Art, a short 15 minute walk offsite. RSVP required for access to exhibition at least 24 hours in advance. Performance will be held Thursday, 3-6-p.m. RSVP HERE.
Tessellation emerges from collective engagement and critique of institutional systems. As an arts administrator, I navigate structures deeply rooted in colonial histories, which serve as barriers and pathways. These systems inconsistently apply equity and diversity frameworks despite their formal inclusion in mission statements and academic plans. As a racialized, gendered participant, I find myself in simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility. Using full-body self-portrait photographs transformed into large-scale origami, my work explores resistance and agency of marginalized bodies in the face of these systems. The oversized photographs feature tessellated patterns, created through an algorithmically determined system of folds and curves, which I then fold by hand. This process distorts the image of my body but leaves it uncannily recognizable. The geometric tessellation imposes an external structure on the body, creating a hybrid form that merges image and fold. Wrestling with the paper mirrors the act of contorting both my image and my body. Playing with subject/ object reversals, and self-portraiture allows me to metaphorically grapple with my limitations and find humour in the funhouse mirror distortions that the social and political space of the institution can create out of one’s sense of self.