Artist panel | pain subjects: artists on illness
How do you visualize invisibilized illness as an artist, and should you? What is the place for patient narratives in the arts? What words need to be invented to talk to your doctor? Is there disability without capitalism? What makes someone the ideal medical test subject?听听
Artists Yuki Tam, Emily Sirota, and Jessica Bebenek, in conversation with Osler artist-in-residence Ev Ricky, will convene to talk about how illness, access, and disability figure in their multidisciplinary art practices, spanning video art, sculpture, performance, textiles, poetry, artist books, print art and more. Each artist will present a selection of their work and discuss the urgencies of disability in the arts in 2025.听
This panel will be followed by听 "pain objects" exhibit vernissage 15 h 30 - 17 h 00 .
Participants bios:听
Ev Ricky听
Once described as 鈥減ert鈥� and 鈥測oung鈥� by Vaginal Creme Davis, Ev Ricky (they/them/theirs, xe/xyr/xyrs) is a multidisciplinary visual and literary artist, cultural worker, agender and TME dyke, and white settler. Agender, immunocompromised, and chronically ill with an invisibilized disability, Ev is interested in using bodily forms and processes in their work to tangle with the poetics of access and the non-consensus reality of being in a sick body as a fundamentally unknowable, inarticulable position. Xyr artistic and curatorial work has been presented at Centaur Theatre, Ada X, Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, CV2, Entrails Magazine, the FOFA Gallery, the Isabel Bader Centre for Performing Arts, and in the award-winning anthology of transgender comic art 鈥淲e鈥檙e Still Here鈥�.听 Alongside their current work for the Mich猫le Larose-Osler Library artist residency, xe is听working on a comic art manuscript entitled I Wouldn鈥檛 Lie to You. You can follow their work at evricky.com or @ev.r_icky on Instagram.听
Jessica Bebenek听
Jessica Bebenek (she/her) is a queer interdisciplinary poet, bookmaker, and educator鈥痩iving between Tiohti脿:ke (Montreal) and an off-grid shack on unceded Anishinaabe territory.鈥疊ebenek鈥檚 writing has been nominated for the Journey Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize, and in 2021 she was a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in Poetry. Her recent chapbooks include鈥痀ou Don鈥檛 Get Out Much鈥�(2024),鈥疘 REMEMBER THE EXORCISM鈥�(Gap Riot Press, 2022), and鈥疻hat is Punk鈥�(2019). Her first full-length poetry collection,鈥疦o One Knows Us There, will be published by Book*hug Press on April 8th, 2025. @notyrmuse鈥�
Emily Sirota
Emily Sirota (she/they) is a Winnipeg-raised writer and media artist now based in Montreal. Her work has been presented at WNDX Festival, Vid茅ographe, aceartinc, Centaur Theatre, and in PaperWait journal and Art+Wonder magazine. She is currently working on a video divination performance using found footage from the 1920s.鈥疷sing found footage and analog video techniques, she brings together disparate themes, including media archaeology, pop culture detritus, and feminist theories of love and sexuality. Through these patchwork sources, Emily works at the interface of the major and the minor, looking for ethical and aesthetic sense within the silly, trivial, impossible and perverse.听
Yuki Tam
Through a multi-disciplinary practice of image-making, installation, and written word, Yuki K茅k茅 Tam (she/they) examines everyday tasks and objects, proposing that even the most ordinary rituals hold the power to tell profound stories of resilience. Their work is autofictive鈥攕imultaneously autobiographical and fictitious鈥攃reating an ongoing diaristic memoir. Using mediums such as print, painting, ceramics, and artist books, they employ play, trickery, and parody to create images, stage interventions, and produce re-enactments. They are particularly drawn towards depicting the domestic space, using charms, games, plants, and food. Their practice is rooted in a long family tradition of creativity and the belief in art as a democratic and socially engaged endeavor. Their practice is currently being nurtured through their studies for a Masters of Fine Arts at Concordia University, and informed by their Bachelors of Arts double major in Studio Arts and Human Rights & Equity Studies from York University.听Instagram: @yukitam_听 Website: 听Email: kekeartco [at] gmail.com听
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