Mixed Feelings

DIRECTIONS: Tangled Art Gallery is located on the main floor on the 401 Richmond Building. The event will take place at the Tangled Vitrines, Studio 30, in the basement level of the building. The closest accessible subway station is at Union Station. The gallery is also accessible by the Spadina streetcar (Queen Street stop going south from Spadina Station, Richmond Street stop north from Union Station), which is intermittently accessible. Due to limited space, the exhibition venue may become crowded.

Tangled Vitrines: Studio 30 (Basement Level), 401 Richmond Street West, Toronto, ON

ACCESS: Exhibition will feature audio description which will be available through our website and at the venue, and attempt to always include tactile, touchable artwork. The artwork will be hung at an accessible level. Event is in a barrier-free location. There is an accessible washroom on the 4th floor of 401 Richmond. Attendant care will be present at the event. All service animals are welcome in. Please help us in making this a scent-free environment.

DIRECTIONS & ACCESS

Set in a gallery space, this show allows audience members engage with the artist and participate in the works. There will also be a communal mural and a confession booth where audience members may share their own stories of perseverance through painting, writing, and spoken word. We believe that this shared art-making promotes inclusion and shared investment in each other's stories and work.

29

6:00pm - 9:00pm

Tangled Vitrines

401 Richmond St W

Toronto, ON

Pay-what-you-can

Suggested donation is $5

APRIL 2017

MIXED FEELINGS

MEET THE ARTISTS

An interactive show highlighting

perseverance and inclusivity

DIRECTIONS

& ACCESS

Wy Joung Kou

About the Artist

Wy Joung Kou is an emerging queer multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto. Their practice includes work in performance, writing, visual art, community based art, and disability art. As a chronically ill youth involved in intergenerational artist and activism platforms Kou has spoken on panels and delivered keynotes about disability Justice and youth activism at various conferences, these subjects being intrinsically linked to their identity as an artist and the work they produce. They have been self-employed as a queer community barber and hair artist for the past 3 years, have been a self-taught jewellery maker since their early teens and have worked as an assistant artist on various public art projects with Red Dress Productions since 2015, learning ceramic and glass mosaic work in the context of participatory community art. Kou has exhibited visual/tactile installation art pieces in group shows such as Project Creative Users’ CRIP INTERIORS in winter 2015 and in the second edition of the show which was featured in Nuit Blanche Toronto 2015 programming. They were recently awarded the Ontario Art Council’s Access and Career Development Grant to pursue a year long internship with Red Dress Productions as they take part in the production and mounting of Drift Seeds, a community-engaged performance piece set to be performed in June 2017.

Artwork 1: Off The Chain

This work reflects the feelings that come with having our own stories seized and re-written by the powers that seek to diminish us and dictate what we should believe, feel and desire. Off The Chain plays with the questioning of authenticity… Are the precious stone beads used in this piece crafted from real precious stones? Does their authenticity even matter as long as they look and feel real? Does it matter to you? When the trauma of having your truths denied and suppressed makes you question their very integrity and your own sanity, does the truth really matter? Or is all that matters what you choose to believe?

Artwork 2: Out Of Frame

These mosaic pieces were created as a sequel to Off The Chain mixed media works. Mosaic building can be quite a meditative practice and if Off The Chain was about asking hard questions and sitting with difficult realities, Out Of Frame is about healing. It is about the labour intensive work of piecing our selves back together after (and through ongoing) trauma, oppression, illness and loss… It is about gathering all of the fractured pieces floating around in disarray, taking a deep breath, and putting them back together in whichever ways we believe makethe most sense and enable the deep healing we want and need.

Out Of Frame will make its premiere at Mixed Feelings.

Amber Williams-King

About the Artist

Amber Williams-King is a multi-disciplinary Antiguan artist living and practicing in Tkaronto. Working in a variety of mediums including photography, collage, printmaking and animation, she sees mixed media as a way of acknowledging the multiplicity and fluidity of being. This self-taught practice seeks to challenge notions of a monolithic Black experience; exploring sexuality, gender, race, representation and the intersections of identity. She uses found texts and images to interrogate socio-political landscapes in an effort to excavate new possibilities and future imaginings. Much of this work starts from a deeply intimate place drawing from Amber's experiences as a Black queer femme living with chronic illness in a world that says she should not exist; she exists through her artistic envisioning. Amber has exhibited in spaces across Toronto including the Art Gallery of Ontario and has upcoming exhibitions in Montreal and the Caribbean.

Artwork: Arrival/Return

Arrival/Return uses mixed-media and stop motion techniques to visualize the hopes, anxieties and longing of the immigrant experience. It illuminates the nowhere space that exists between borders and the search for home in an ever shifting Diaspora.