For the past 45 years, Persimmon Blackbridge has worked as a sculptor, writer, curator and performer, as well as being an editor, cleaning lady and very bad waitress.
She has consistently made art on themes of disability since the late 1970s, as well as art, writing and performance on institutionalization, censorship, queer identity, generational alcoholism, feminism and war. Her latest exhibit, Constructed Identities, has been shown across Ontario and is scheduled for Vancouver in 2020.
Winner of the VIVA award for visual arts in 1991, a 1995 Lambda Award in Washington DC, the 1997 Ferro Grumley Fiction Prize in New York City, the 1998 Van City Book Award, and an Emily Carr Distinguished Alumni Award in 2000, Blackbridge’s work been shown across Canada and the U.S., as well as in Europe, Australia and Hong Kong.
History
Constructed Identities solo exhibition
Various galleries 2015-20
From the Inside/Out
Collaboration with the Self Advocacy Foundation
Various galleries 1998-2003
Sunnybrook
Various galleries 1993-4
Book version 1995
Drawing the line
Collaboration with Kiss & Tell
Various galleries 1988-93
Book version 1991
Still Sane
Collaboration with Sheila Gilhooly
Women in Focus Gallery 1984
Book version 1991
Press
The Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture, and Media, December, 2018
Crip aesthetics in the work of Persimmon Blackbridge
Canada Council for the Arts
Constructed Identities
National Post Article, June 21, 2016
Tangled, Toronto’s first accessible art gallery for disabled artists, is bringing the outsiders in
Inclusion BC
From the Inside OUT!
Frieze, September 1994
Learning-disabled-lesbian-cleaning-lady
Art form
Sculpture
Installation
Performance Art
Writing
Community
Disabled
Mad
LGBTQ2SIA+
Queer
Feminist
Province
British Columbia