top of page

No Collections Here

Sort your projects into collections. Click on "Manage Collections" to get started

Right to Exist

I am a queer femme artist from conservative rural Northern BC. Predominantly working in acrylic on canvas, my work has explored my identity, vulnerably taking up aspects of mental health, sexuality, and gender through portraiture. Right to Exist series (2024) examines contemporary issues around gender expression, specifically around the increasingly violent and hostile tide of conservative rhetoric we are experiencing in North America currently and its social and political implications for gender nonconforming bodies. I work to give people with a spectrum of gender expressions a platform by painting portraits of them; I seek to visually tell their stories and advocate for their need for a safe existence. Through painting portraits of gender nonconforming people I represent their powerful humanity in contrast to a dehumanizing and hateful surge. Advocating for gender expression as a positive and liberatory act I ask audiences to reexamine their preconceptions of gender and their judgments, challenging them to see how they might contribute to change. Ultimately, I want my art to be the representation that I so desperately craved growing up. I am very grateful that this series was funded through a grant from the BC Arts Council as it was immensely important to be created and shown now as it will be directly impactful. The hateful rhetoric against gender non-conforming individuals is spreading into Canada and across BC. I created these works to show that these people are human and need respect, through depictions of sorrow and pain inflicted on them for just needing to exist.

bottom of page