Creative Users Presents: CRIP INTERIORS: MIXER
Creative Users is launching their 3rd edition of Crip Interiors titled MIXER, curated by award-winning artists Syrus Marcus Ware and Barak adé Soleil and hosted this year by Tangled Art + Disability at Tangled Art Gallery in 401 Richmond Street West building, Suite 122.
Crip Interiors is a provocative demonstration of disability art and activism that brings together distinct creative perspectives and mediums into a shared space. The work presented in Crip Interiors exposes that which is often hidden, revealing the daily labour, creativity, and love that goes into negotiating public and private spaces often built and organized without disabled bodies in mind.
Collaboration, process and explorations of disability justice will be central to the collective work of MIXER. In July, a core of disability-identified artists from Black, Indigenous and people of colour communities will participate in a 5-week open studio period designed and co-facilitated by Syrus Marcus Ware and Barak adé Soleil. The artists will engage in an immersive creation process and develop new collaborative installation work that will be exhibited for three days, August 10th-12th.Exploring the intimacy of collaborative process, the artists of colour within the Deaf, Mad, disability communities, and of varied disciplines will creatively engage with each other in ways that are experimental and expansive. MIXER is about deepening community, discovering new ways of working together, experiencing multi-layered artistry and affirming intersectional identities. Public programming will include artist dialogs, open studio moments and showing of the artists’ communal process through a three-day exhibition.
Public Program at Tangled Art Gallery:
Tuesday – Friday, July 25 – 28: Gallery open for public studio viewing 11am – 5pm (ASL upon request. Artists may not be present)
Saturday, August 5, 2-4pm: Public open studio dialog with Artists
Thursday, August 10, 6 – 8pmOpening of exhibit
Friday, August 11, 11am-5pm: Gallery open
Saturday, August 12, 2-4pm: Closing of exhibit and public open studio dialog with Artists
Aligned with the creative process of MIXER, there will be a unique archiving process and publication produced for the project. MIXER’s generative process will be drawing upon Open Space Technology and Participatory Design. Multimedia artist Stephen Surlin will be co-designing an audio archiving with the core artists and co-Curators that will be exhibited alongside the installation. Informed by the archiving, a catalog will be developed by Sean Lee, Tangled Art + Disability 2017 curatorial artist-in-residence, in association with Tangled Art + Disability and Bodies In Translation.
Access Information:
This event is in a barrier-free location. Audio description will be available for the exhibit. We will have ASL interpreters and attendant care present during public engagements. Service animals are welcome. We request that you help us to make this a scent-free environment. Closest accessible subway station is Osgoode Station. The closest accessible streetcar stop is the 510 Spadina Queen Street West Stop.
For more specifics on accommodations, requests or questions around access, please email projectcreativeusers@gmail.com.
About Creative Users:
Creative Users is a disability-led artist platform that explores the intersection of art and design practices, accessibility, and disability. Creative Users is a shapeshifter, cultural connector and sector builder of disability arts and accessible curatorial practice. Our work stems from a desire to activate art and make visible an inclusive arts culture.
For further information about Creative Users please visit their website at www.creativeusers.net.
About Curators:
Barak adé Soleil has been part of the international contemporary arts scene for 25 years. Currently Barak is the Artistic Director of Tangled Art + Disability and making performance work focused on the intersection and intertwining legacies of race and disability.
Syrus Marcus Ware is a Vanier Scholar, a visual artist, community activist, researcher, youth-advocate, educator, and core-team member of Black Lives Matter Toronto. As a visual artist, Syrus works within the mediums of painting, installation and performance to challenge systemic oppression. Syrus’ work explores the spaces between and around identities; acting as provocations to our understandings of gender, sexuality and race.
About Tangled Art + Disability:
Tangled Art + Disability is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing disability arts in Canada by supporting Mad, Deaf and disability creative practices, engaging public programming and exhibitions. In April of this 2016, Tangled opened Toronto’s first art gallery dedicated to showcasing disability art and advancing accessible curatorial practices.Tangled is changing the ways people experience art.www.tangledarts.org
Creative Users Crip Interiors: MIXER is made possible with the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, in partnership with Tangled Art +Disability, and in association with Bodies in Translation.
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