TAIS 2016-17 MICRORESIDENCY ARTISTS
Stacie Ant
Lee D’Angelo
Amber Williams-King
Stacie Ant
Studio talk: March 15, 7pm
Stacie Ant’s artistic practice combines animation with installation, video, and performance, and focuses on two themes – social issues brought to light through satire, and what she calls the post-internet effect on people’s perception and expectation of reality. Oftentimes, these two themes complement each other. Stacie seek to provoke these themes while at the same time creating work that is inviting, presenting installations people can interact with and be immersed in.
For her time in residency, Stacie will produce a new work in animation consisting of CGI inspired geometric shapes projection mapped onto many large geometric objects of different shapes and sizes. Once installed, this work will present an environment that draws people in, inviting them to explore amongst the objects and become projection surfaces themselves. This installation follows from Stacie’s ongoing interest in the psychological effects of technology on our perception of reality. By treating both objects and people as projection surfaces within her installation, Stacie is suggesting the transformation of reality into abstraction.
Lee D’Angelo
Studio talk: April 19, 7pm
Lee D’Angelo is a multidisciplinary visual artist working off the grid in Toronto as tattoo artist. Lee’s practice is informed by feminist and queer politics, which through this lens interrogates contemporary notions of the body. Often by using normative representations of gender found in pop culture, they dissect and reclaim what it means to identify as a woman.
For the duration of their residency, Lee will be producing a short clay-animation exploring queerness as it relates to notions of wildness and untamable forces of nature like hurricanes and earthquakes which wreak havoc on society. Using Lee Edelmen’s words, “Queerness can never occupy and identity, only disturb one,” as a jumping off point, this animation explores the disruptive force of queerness as a vital catalyst for positive change on normative notions of gender identity. Beginning in a crystal cave, the subjects of this animation follow a trickling stream into day light where the find themselves on the belly of a giant. From there, chaos ensues.
Amber Williams-King
Studio talk: May 24, 7pm *event cancelled
Amber Williams-King is a multi-disciplinary artist working in a variety of mediums including photography, collage, printmaking and animation and sees mixed media as a way of acknowledging the multiplicity of being. Their self-taught practice seeks to challenge notions of a monolithic Black experience; exploring various intersections of identity. Much of Amber’s work starts from a deeply intimate place, and from their experiences as a Black queer femme living with mental illness. To a world that questions the validity of this existence, Amber replies ‘I exist through my artistic envisioning.’
The project that Amber will produce while in residency, tentatively titled ‘dispatches from the underground’, will use stop motion animation techniques, rotoscoping and mixed media to create a short abstract visualization of a Depressive episode. By making links to chemical imbalances and broader issues of oppression and intergenerational trauma, Amber seeks to acknowledge connections between anti-blackness, dehumanization, and disability.
TAIS 2016-17 & 2017-18 programming is presented with the support of the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts
