A conversation with Anthea Black, Kama LaMackerel (Our Bodies, Our Stories), and Jenny Lin (B&D Press)
13 October, 2018 - 2 PM to 5 PM
Please join Queer Publishing Project at Artexte to celebrate the launch of HANDBOOK: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education edited by Anthea Black and Shamina Chherawala. The launch will begin with a brief conversation between artists and educators Anthea Black, Kama LaMackerel and Jenny Lin on queer publishing practices as pedagogy.
HANDBOOK is a collaborative intervention in art and design pedagogy. It offers faculty a radical rethink on how to work with queer and transgender students on their path to becoming artists and designers – from the first day of school through to seminars, studio classes, and critiques. HANDBOOK draws directly from student experiences to help faculty of all orientations bring equitable teaching practices and queer curricula into art and design classes. Queer Publishing Project is a working group of over 100 students, alumni, staff and faculty at OCAD University and beyond who identify as queer and/or transgender.
This 112-page publication is produced in a limited edition of 1200 with a gatefold letterpress cover, printed by Nick Shickand Queer Publishing Project, on Vandercook Universal and No. 4 presses. HANDBOOK is designed by Cecilia Berkovic, with illustrations by Morgan Sea, and published by Queer Publishing Project and OCAD University Publications Program.
Anthea Black is a Canadian artist, writer, and cultural worker based in San Francisco and Toronto. Her studio work addresses feminist and queer history, collaboration, materiality, and labourand has been exhibited in Canada, the US, France, Germany, The Netherlands, and Norway. Black is co-editor of Handbook: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education with Shamina Chherawala and Craft on Demand: The New Politics of the Handmade with Nicole Burisch. She is an Assistant Professor in Printmedia and Graduate Fine Arts at California College of the Arts.
Kama La Mackerel is a tio’tia:ke/Montreal-based Mauritian writer, educator, community-arts facilitator and multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores aesthetic practices as forms of resilience, resistance and healing for marginalized communities. Kama is the founder of GENDER B(L)ENDER (2013-18) and The Self-Love Cabaret (2012-17) and she is the Artistic Director of the Performance Poetry Program for Trans Women and Femmes with the Artist Mentoring Youth (AMY) Project. In 2017, she launched Our Bodies, Our Stories, a creation and performance training and mentorship program for queer and trans youth of colour.
Based in Montreal, Jenny Lin’s art practice centres around experimental narrative, realized in a variety of media and formats. She collaborates with Eloisa Aquino as B&D Press, an independent press for queer zine and artists’ book publishing. She currently teaches sessionally at Concordia University in the Print Media Program Area. jenny-lin.ca, banddpress.blogspot.com
Nicholas Shick is a queer, transgender artist and printmaker based in Toronto, Canada. Nick earned his BFA from NSCAD University and has assisted at several print shops including Island Press. As a printer at Open Studio, he has worked collaboratively with many artists including Tim Pitsiulak of Cape Dorset, Nunavut. In his role as Printmaking Technician at OCAD University, Nick was the Production Mentor and lead printer for HANDBOOK: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education, and is the lead printer for Working Title Press, an artist’s residency in the Publications & Printmaking programs at OCAD U.