Do you identify as queer (gay, lesbian, bi, two-spirit, trans, inter, pan, poly, label-resisting-non-[rigidly-or-exclusively-]hetero or questioning) and have you encountered homelessness or some other form of displacement, whether this means crashing at friends' places, living on the streets, in a shelter, in transition from another community, city, province or country, or other similar experience?
Do you enjoy some form of creative expression? Would you like to paint a self-portrait as part of an experimental documentary artwork?
Toronto artist and one-time homeless queer youth, Erin Clarke, is completing an MFA in Documentary Media at Ryerson University. Of Self and Home: Queer Faces, Queer Places is part of her thesis work and will be exhibited at a Toronto gallery in June 2009.
To participate contact Erin via email at: e6clarke@ryerson.ca
Using a custom-built, portable apparatus that holds a piece of clear Plexiglas, each person paints a self-portrait, the process of which is video recorded from the other side of the Plexiglas, the portrait eventually filling the frame. Each participant gets one sheet of Plexiglas and, using acrylic paints (with added retardant to slow drying), can make several paintings, free to interpret 'self-portrait' however s/he wishes, until satisfied with one. All 'takes' will be recorded using a Panasonic HVX video camera. Participants will be able to keep their final painting after the exhibition.
I will conduct informal audio interviews with each person, during which we discuss what it means to be young, queer and struggling to live. These sessions will be recorded and edited with the participant's painting video for the exhibition. Possible questions are, "What does the term 'queer' mean to you? What does the idea of 'home' mean to you? What are some of your experiences of 'home'? Tell me about an experience that really changed the way understood yourself and the world."
Participants are free to ask me questions about my experiences as a queer youth, as well. My answers will be edited with the portrait video I include in the work (this makes me wonder whether I should open up the project to anyone who experienced homelessness as a queer youth, regardless of their current age). Participants are encouraged to contribute other audio, if desired, such as an original song, poem, or musical performance.
About the Artist
Erin's work is deeply informed by both personal and professional experience with the complexities of urban living, as well as an acute sense of justice and compassion for those who struggle to overcome obstacles. After several years drawing and painting, she began working with video and digital image-making in the mid-nineties. Erin has created low-tech animations, video artworks, such as the nine-screen installation, Borne, and a short documentary, Woman With Cats, which was broadcast on the U.S. Documentary Channel from September 2008 to March 2009. Experimental, wistful and whimsical, her work has been exhibited in Toronto and New York and she was awarded a Toronto Animated Image Society prize in 2005. Mixing analog and digital media, Erin engages the personal, her own and others' stories, and draws on experience in both frontline social work and the IT industry. Erin Clarke studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design, the Polytechnic Institute of NYU and The New School. She holds Bachelor and Masters degrees in Fine Arts and Integrated Digital Media and is currently pursuing an MFA in Documentary Media at Ryerson University in Toronto.
