Invisible Footprints 0.2 Deep Cuts Artist Talk and Tour

Part of the Community Arts Space: Recent Histories

FREE REGISTRATION

Through an artist talk and tour, learn about the processes and visions of the curator and artists behind Invisible Footprints 0.2: Deep Cuts, an exhibition that aims to visualize and document the lived experiences of Toronto’s queer and trans East and Southeast Asians.

About Invisible Footprints 0.2: Deep Cuts

Invisible Footprints 0.2: Deep Cuts visualizes and documents the lived experiences of Toronto’s queer and trans East and Southeast Asians. Organized by Mezart Daulet, artists Aries Cheung, Heidi Cho, Vince Ha, and Khanh Tudo have developed this multimedia exhibition through community-based intergenerational art making at The 519.

Despite the vibrancy of queer and trans Asian life, these lived experiences are repeatedly sidelined or rendered invisible within the greater local narratives. Indeed, queer and trans Asian life in Toronto has always occupied shapes and circumstances beyond what is documentable.

Invisible Footprints celebrates and preserves these lived experiences. Spawned from ARROW, an art installation by Vince Ha, this ongoing community art and archive project, founded by Rice Roll Productions, revisits the footprints of artists, activists, academics, and groups like Asian Lesbians of Toronto and Gay Asians of Toronto to illuminate marginalized histories.

Following Invisible Footprints 0.1: Art and Archives Exhibition (Open Space Gallery, October 2017), Deep Cuts explores personal micro-stories often hidden deep within our bodies, nightmares, and experiences of pleasure. Over forty community members documented their nuanced lived experiences through clay making and facilitated dialogue.

About the Community Arts Space: Recent Histories

Inspired by the transformative aspects of ceramics, both real and metaphorical, the Community Arts Space is the Gardiner’s incubator for arts-based community projects. In collaboration with local artists, designers, and collectives, the Museum will mount five public projects that examine how cultural knowledge is passed on or performed, and the role of a museum in cultivating the so-called lived and living memory. Learn more

The 519 is committed to the health, happiness, and full participation of the LGBTQ2S community. A City of Toronto agency and a registered charity with an innovative model of Service, Space and Leadership, The 519 strives to make a real difference in people’s lives while working to promote inclusion, understanding, and respect.

In 2017, The 519 provided in-kind space and resources for artistic workshops in support of the development of two process-driven projects, NU_FORuMS and Collecting Personal Archives. For Community Arts Space 2018, The 519 will again provide workshop space for a process-driven project, supporting the delivery of knowledge and skill-sharing serving the LGBTQ2S community in Toronto and beyond.

Akin Collective is a Toronto-based arts organization that provides affordable studio space as well as arts-based programming through its sister non-profit organization, Akin Projects. Akin provides space to nearly 250 visual artists, designers, and creatives in studios that maintain a friendly and inspiring atmosphere where people can work on creative endeavors and entrepreneurial undertakings of all kinds. Akin builds community through monthly art critiques, free or low-cost workshops, open studio events, gallery tours, exhibitions, as well as various other projects. During the Community Arts Space’s inaugural 2016 cycle, Akin Projects mounted Place/Setting, an exhibition hall project delivering all-ages clay-making workshops and community events. For Community Arts Space 2018, Akin will provide six months of free studio time at one of its studios, as well as kiln firing access.

For 25 years, Art Starts programs have benefited thousands of people living in marginalized Toronto neighbourhoods by providing a safe, supportive and inclusive environment for self-expression and creative collaboration. They afford opportunities for vulnerable people of all ages to contribute to the creative ecology of their neighbourhoods, using the arts to help end the negative cycles associated with marginalization and poverty.

Programming Partners

Angry Asian Feminist Gang

Asian Community AIDS Services

Invisible Footprints

Margin of Eras Gallery

Rice Roll Productions

Titiesg Wîcinímintôwak // Bluejays Dancing Together Collective

 

Header: Invisible-Footprints Clay Making and Community Dialogue Workshop. Photo: Tony Wei-Han Chen