WIAprojects

A desire for inclusion, understanding, and action (however seemingly insignificant) – especially given the recent political shifts here in North America – sparks this Terminalia “event”. Candace Wilkins (Picton) and Pam Patterson (Toronto)   have recently been enacting a tradition-of-hope. We will repeat this for Terminalia 2025 with a heightened anticipation and awareness. Each will walk from the town parking lot, or a thrift shop, the Giant Tiger, the bookstore, the grocery store, through (in February) snowy streets to sit together on the large grey welcoming couch in front of the fire at the Royal Hotel in Picton, Ontario, Canada.  There is an expectation for both of us of hope…  hope for a moment where we will be joyfully together, supported in who we are as individuals and in our potentials as colleagues and friends. We hope that we will engage and be potentially fulfilled in our ideas, concerns and study. We anticipate good coffee and a conversation that will energi...

113Research, OCAD University, 113 McCaul Street, 5th floor. Curated by Megh Dorward   the works in  constant     :     uncertainty  are lyric constructions & continue my inquiry into the inequity of suffering while articulating the complexity of lives across the categories of human & the more-than-human \ they also indicate the connections of a particular relationship \ in acknowledging the difficult & at times the unbearable my relationship with S provides solace & supports the questions of how to contend with grief \ with loss \ indifference & cruelty 

December 1st 2024, 5:45 PM, meeting at Gallery 1313 (courtyard) and moving to Parkdale Library Auditorium space (space and washrooms are accessible). Masks mandatory inside. Home to Heal, Sunshine Torme Johnson, 2023. Inkjet print on paper In the portal-like space of Gallery 1313’s Window Box Gallery, Sunshine Tormé Johnson’s holistic perspective and wealth of experience takes on the forms of critique, reflective celebration, and images of beyond-medical healing. Creating with a Housing First perspective compounded by personal experience, Sunshine’s work welcomes the viewer into the intimacies of working towards thriving in a disabled body mind within the land-based and infrastructural complexities of Tkaronto. Sunshine Torme Johnson (he/him) is a dynamic facilitator, artist, and community member. As a Black, disabled, gender-diverse and queer individual, he celebrates the uniqueness of his identity by embracing the fluidity that defines him through his art. Sunshine creates transform...

  Sept. 15 2024 to Jan. 15 2025 113Research, 113 McCaul Street, 5th floor Monday-Friday 10-6PM Opening Reception September 30 4.30-6 PM  Pam Patterson &  Mel Rapp "Ocular Occurrences" as exhibition, displays, in the vitrines, digital colour prints (that use eye scans, photographs, and topographical maps) overlayed with Amsler grids, designed to engage the viewer with how Patterson sees and processes images. What, she asks, is the disconnect between medical models and subjective experience? What can a body do to…? The seeming ineffectiveness of this exercise in locating sight is expressed in the accompanying video, Sites of Perception . Optician, designer and writer Mel Rapp exercises his theory of the intersection of observation, memory, and language by responding, in the vitrine, in writing to Patterson’s ironic images. In the two facing photos in the annex lounge, one sees closeup Patterson’s eye framed by one of Rapp’s iconic glassware designs. Here futility is...

Harmeet Rehal’s  Manjas as Mobility Aids, 2023, curated by Mason Smart and Jack Hawk, will run from September 1st 2024-October 30th 2024 at Gallery 1313, 1313 Queen Street West, Toronto.  The Window Box Gallery will be visible from 1pm-5pm Wednesday through Saturday, and from 1pm-4pm on Sundays. A community opening event will take place on September 3rd from 6:30-8:30, at Gallery 1313. All are welcome, and Rehal’s Manjas will be in action at this event.

For this year WIAprojects  will be working with   113Research   and   Gallery 1313   on a Toronto Arts Council funded project,   Transformative Access: Activating Disability Desires . In “Transformative Access: Activating Disability Desires”, the “disabled” bodies we inhabit foreground our concerns as we, emerging and established artists/designers, curators, project leaders, and advisors, take on critical exploratory work. Here the thematic, creative forms, and community practices are embodied with our pain, frustration, confusions, limitations, desires, loves and cares. As “disabled” people, our bodies exist in tension with the normalized expectations of ordered bodies. In "Transformative Access," we examine how our bodies’ experiences remake our worlds. In conversation with ideologies, people, policies, and structures, we ask, how can the "crip" body act, given its creative potential, be centred in these practices, and be resilient to ableism. We ask, “Wh...