Projects

Over seven years, Bodies in Translation projects will set in motion an intellectual wave combining artistic creation, interdisciplinary research, technological innovation and critical inquiry.

All of our projects are made possible and are strengthened by our collaborations with artists, curators, researchers, practitioners and community members.

  • artwork from the Outliers exhibition

    Outliers

    Artist Michel Dumont­ reflects on his tile mosaic sculptures and live performance at the Outliers on Tour exhibition at Tangled Art + Disability. Dumont’s work engages how colonial oppression both shatters and re-creates his relationships to his past, present, and future as the son of an Indian Day School survivor and as a queer Métis…

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  • a screen of the documentary Finding Language

    Finding Language

    In this interactive performance, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Potawatomi and Lenape neurodiverse artist, considers how systemic colonial oppression intersects with her relationship to language as a learning-disabled person. Finding Language was performed at the Cripping the Arts symposium in Toronto.  This video was made in collaboration with Vanessa Dion Fletcher. Video footage by Kavya Yoganathan and Hannah…

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  • Image of performer at Cripping the Arts

    Cripistomologies of Disability Arts Culture: Reflections on the Cripping the Arts Symposium

    A special issue of Studies in Social Justice co-edited by Eliza Chandler, Katie Aubrecht, Esther Ignagni, and Carla Rice Through reflecting on Cripping the Arts, a symposium held in January 2019 in Toronto, this collection of articles and dispatches reflects on Deaf, mad, and disability arts and culture in Canada from various cripistemological perspectives (Johnson…

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  • Better Practices: A meme-able crip public education campaign

    We’ve all heard the phrase ‘best practices,’ but what are ‘better practices’?  We know from principles of disability justice and Relaxed Performance that there is never one way to meet everybody’s access needs. Access requires flexibility and creativity as we figure out how to be together in supportive ways. As many people across the world…

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  • Promo image

    deaf interiors

    Deaf Interiors is a multidisciplinary online exhibition presenting six Deaf Canadian artists whose featured work is the culmination of a three-month online incubator. In response to the world health crisis and to social distancing measures that exacerbate feelings of isolation, artists gathered online with facilitators Peter Owusu-Ansah and Sage Lovell to share stories, generate ideas…

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  • Banner image for event

    Intersectionality as a methodology and practice panel

    The reach of intersectionality continues to grow and resonate in a variety of fields, raising theoretical methodological and practical issues. In short, how does one “do” intersectionality in ways that honour its history and social justice aims? Knapp (2005) calls intersectionality a “fast travelling” theory with shifting meanings and applications. For Knapp, intersectionality has been…

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  • Crip Times logo

    Crip Times: A Podcast Series

    Disabled people have long been experts at staying at home, and getting creative with new ways to stay in community with one another. At the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, many of us were wondering how we could maintain the sense of intimacy and connection that we get from gathering in crip arts spaces. Out…

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  • Artwork by Vanessa Dion Fletcher

    Translation roundtable

    The Roundtable on Translation explores artists’ reflections on how accessibility impacts experiences of art and art making. Co-presented in September 2020 by ArtsEverywhere and Bodies in Translation, and co-curated by Elwood Jimmy and Tracy Tidgwell, the Translation Roundtable features a provocation by Eliza Chandler and artistic interventions by Alex Bulmer, Taeyoon Choi, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Elwood Jimmy, Carmen Papalia,…

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  • Graphic for public call

    Disability and livelihoods

    With employment rates among people with disabilities at less than 50 percent, and a resulting reliance on government transfers, we ask: how do people with disabilities in Canada survive, let alone thrive? People with disabilities continue to respond imaginatively by finding alternatives to paid work to sustain themselves and their families. This disjuncture between policy…

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  • The Secret Feminist Agenda logo.

    Secret Feminist agenda

    Episode 4.22 of Secret Feminist Agenda: “Disability Art is the Last Avant-Garde,” with Sean Lee! From host Hannah McGregor: “This week I sat down virtually with Sean Lee, Director of Programming at Tangled Arts + Disability, to talk about radically accessible curation, the transformative possibilities of disability as disruption, and the exciting work of Tangled…

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  • art in translation: a digital catalogue series

    Art in Translation serves to document and publish projects, exhibitions, artistic projects and research initiatives co-produced by Bodies in Translation and collaborating artists, scholars, and community members. Using a digital platform, Art in Translation aims to provide artistic content in a range of accessible formats, including giving our readers the option to customize their viewing…

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  • 2020 curator in residence

    Meet Max Ferguson! Max is Tangled Art + Disability’s 2020 Curator-in-Residence. The Tangled Art + Disability Curator Residency is an opportunity for Mad, Deaf and/or Disability-identified curators to think critically about and develop accessible, crip curatorial practices through a disability cultural lens and crip aesthetics. This residency is co-developed and supported in partnership with Bodies in…

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  • A drawing of text and images combined into a large grouping of doodles.

    Vital Practices in the Arts

    Vital Practices in the Arts is a resource guide for documenting, producing, and sharing arts and knowledge in ways that are accessible, collaborative, and disruptive.  How to use The guide is provided as an accessible PDF document. You can download it to use for professional and personal purposes. How to contribute The practices in this…

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  • Relaxed performance: exploring accessibility in the canadian theatre landscape

    Report Highlights: Exploring Accessibility in the Canadian Theatre Landscape (2020) is a booklet that presents findings from the May 2019 Report on Relaxed Performance (RP) research on RP training across Canada, co-sponsored by the British Council and Bodies in Translation. Summarizing the first research on Relaxed Performance in Canada, the Report Highlights booklet engages interview,…

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  • THE Pretty Porky and Pissed Off ARCHIVE

    Pretty Porky and Pissed Off (PPPO) was a queer feminist performance art and activist collective based in Toronto, Ontario from 1996 – 2005. Their seminal fat liberationist art and activism brought intersectional fat politics and humour to the streets and stage. Bodies in Translation (BIT) is thrilled to partner with Allyson Mitchell, one of Pretty…

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  • Two people performing outside in front of a shipping container for small group of people.

    kNow Access: A digital collage

    Welcome to the Bodies in Translation year-end digital collages, which compiles the art, activisms, and reflections of artists and researchers throughout the project. Using visuals, text, and audio, these collages reveal the interwoven ideas, and admired works explored by our valued collaborators and artists. Each year, we invite artists and members of our community to…

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  • Disability & fashion

    This project develops new activist methodologies and pedagogies in fashion design and education by centring the disabled wearer. In a special topics course on disability and fashion in the School of Fashion at Ryerson University with Dr. Ben Barry, fashion students will co-design an outfit with a disabled wearer by working through a collaborative design…

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  • Accessing the Arts cover image of tags hanging on a wall

    Accessing the Arts

    Creative Users Projects is working with communities with lived experiences of disability and difference across Canada to co-create solutions that make difference discoverable and vital in a world that’s transforming to digital. Our research and development initiative (Accessing the Arts) aims to build a business model and service that is created in collaboration with the…

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  • Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario

    Image description of film preview: Mona Stonefish speaks into a microphone. Mona is an Onkwehón:we Elder with long silver and black braids. Her name and title, “Mona Stonefish Elder and Co-Curator,” are displayed in the lower right corner of the image. At the lower centre of the image there’s a caption that reads, “That I am with you.” (End…

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  • Image from Hidden

    Hidden

    ‘Hidden’ explores intergenerational trauma [hauntology], isolation and lived experiences of Black artists with hidden disabilities. What is hidden is kept concealed, and what is concealed is done to hide our uniqueness. As we navigate through unwelcome spaces that create exclusion and anxiety, we recognize how ableism, according to Dustin P. Gibson’s definition, is an “anti-black…

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  • Group of participants from big picture committee meeting

    Bodies in Translation 2020 Big Picture Committee Meeting

    Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life (BIT) cultivates activist art produced by disabled, d/Deaf, fat, Mad, and E/elder people through research that explores how creating access to art for non-normatively embodied people and opportunities for the public to engage with this art expands understandings of vitality and advances social justice in…

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  • Dancers

    Night of Ideas: Being Alive

    Part of a global initiative across 50 cities, Night of Ideas: Being Alive brought together a dynamic mix of international artists, writers, philosophers, performers, and activists to explore what it means to be alive in the multiplicities of the body and the entanglements of identity. An evening of free lectures, performances, and screenings presented in…

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  • Image from Ancestral Mindscapes

    Ancestral Mindscapes

    Ancestral Mindscapes is an autobiographical collaboration using video, sound and photography to explore the intersection of madness, indigeneity, colonialism, environmental destruction and the healing power of nature. Ancestral Mindscapes is a collaboration between Rick Miller, who self-identifies as a Mad artist in discovery of his Indigenous ancestry; Jules Koostachin, a Cree artist and academic; and…

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  • constructed identities: persimmon blackbridge

    Constructed Identities, a major show of new work by Persimmon Blackbridge, uses mixed media wood carving with found objects to question how disability is framed as a fracturing of ordinary life rather than a normal, expected part of it. Her exploration of the figure begins in disability, but necessarily complicates itself as our embodied identities…

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  • Transgressing body boundaries

    Jake Pyne, Jen Rinaldi and May Friedman are working on a multi-media storytelling project on trans approaches to weight stigma. Call for participants (past): Seeking trans, Two-Spirit, genderqueer, non-binary, genderfluid, butch, femme, fairy folks with a relationship to fat and/or who experience weight stigma Do you have a story to tell about your gender in…

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  • Promo image for Fault Lines

    Fault Lines

    Acceptance of change and change through acceptance—Fault Lines explores processes emblematic of observant insight and growth gained from conditions of challenge and disruption. It approaches disturbance with openness and optimism, and challenges the problematic and commonly accepted ideas about disability and aesthetics. Using altered photographs, video, fabricated materials, and immersive installations, artists Leala Hewak and…

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  • Jeff Thomas on Disability Visibility Project

    Alice Wong’s podcast episode #51 features an interview with Jeff Thomas, urban Iroquois photographer, artist, researcher, public speaker, curator and BIT collaborator. Jeff talks about racism, indigeneity, colonialism and how his photography re-contextualizes historical images of First Nations people. To listen to podcast go to Disability Visibility Project.

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  • Group photo of Aging Vitalities participants

    Aging Vitalities

    Aging Vitalities was a 3-day Digital Storytelling Workshop, April 15, 16, 17, 2019 with aging identified and/or older adult (55+ years young) participants who created short multimedia digital stories. Agin Vitalities brought into creation, especially in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong, diverse representations of aging with difference by older adults and persons who identify as aging.​ Nadine Changfoot is Associate…

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  • Vanessa Dion Fletcher engaging with audience member

    Finding Language: A Word Scavenger Hunt by Vanessa Dion Fletcher

    In this interactive performance, Vanessa Dion Fletcher considers how systemic colonial oppression intersects with her relationship to language as a learning disabled person. Finding Language was performed at the Cripping the Arts symposium in January 2019 in Toronto.   Read a special issue of Studies in Social Justice that begins with a conversation between Vanessa Dion…

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  • Poster for Blindness Gain and the Art of Non-Visual Reading

    Blindness Gain and the Art of Non-Visual Reading with Hannah Thompson

    Presented by The Peripheral Visions Speakers Series, Tangled Art + Disability and the Bodies in Translation Project Friday March 29, 6-8 pm, reception to follow Location: Tangled Art + Disability, 401 Richmond Street Wheelchair Access, ASL This lecture will celebrate the critical and creative power of blindness. Through a discussion of examples from 19th century French…

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  • Poster for event with information and images of Mona Stonefish and Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning

    Dreams, Visions, Hallucinations: Disability and other ways of seeing with Mona Stonefish and Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning

    March 6, 2019, 4-5:30 pm in the Joe G. Green Theatre. Presented by Sensorium, VISTA and The Peripheral Visions Speaker Series. Dolleen Tisawii’ashiiManning hosts a public conversation with Traditional Doctor and Elder Mona Stonefish on Anishinaabe dream imaging practices and their implications for critical disability studies. Manning worked with her mother and Stonefish in developing her mnidoo theory of consciousness. This interrelational understanding of…

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  • Image of Horak's paintings on wall

    Bruce Horak: Through a Tired Eye

    Retino-blastoma, monocular tunnel-vision, extreme light-sensitivity, floaters, flashers, blepharitis, capsular opacification… Through a Tired Eye is Bruce Horak’s interpretation of how he sees the world. Using Acrylic, Oil, Canvas, Sculpture, sound, and light, Horak moves art off the wall and into the space for an immersive, tactile experience. The portraits and landscapes give the viewer a…

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  • Erin Ball performing on stage

    cripping the arts 2019

    Cripping the Arts 2019 was a three day symposium – panel discussions, co-creative workshops, exhibitions and performances – animating how Deaf, Mad, and Disability arts and activism changes how we experience art and culture as well as the ways our sector contributes, and leads to, the achievements of disability rights and justice movements. We invited…

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  • Two figures working on their laptops

    Bridging Wikipedia and Academia

    WikiEdu, a project of the Wiki Education Foundation, is designed to increase public access to quality information by publishing work generated by people in the higher education field. By pairing up with university educators, WikiEd allows some of the 600 Wikipedia articles published each day to be enhanced by the addition of field-specific sources by…

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  • Holding patterns: roll-a-thon

    This video documents the Roll-a-thon tour of Artspin’s 2019 installation exhibition, Holding Patterns, that took place on October 11, 2018. The Roll-a-thon tour led mobility device users through the maze of a storage facility to discover 20 artists and organizations animating storage lockers with site-responsive and multidisciplinary programming. The Roll-a-thon was co-presented by Art Spin and…

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  • Eli Clare

    Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure

    In partnership with Ryerson University School of Disability Studies, Tangled Art + Disability, and Creative Users, we celebrated the launch of disability scholar, activist, and poet Eli Clare’s new book, Brilliant Imperfections: Grappling with Cure. Eli Clare read from his new book. BIT captured photo and video documentation of this launch. In Brilliant Imperfection Eli Clare uses memoir, history, and…

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  • Artist Jenelle Rouse

    Hear, Feel, See, What!

    Centre[3] for Print and Media Arts in Hamilton and VibraFusionLab in London, Ontario present Hear, Feel, See What!, a collaborative speculative soundscape and interactive installation. Five artists from Hamilton, London, and Toronto, including hearing, hard of hearing and Deaf artists, and an archivist co-authored a piece that captures and documents both the audio and vibrations…

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  • Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning

    Off the Cuff: Mnidoo Infinity Squeezed through Finite Modulations

    Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning Public Talk: Off the Cuff: Mnidoo Infinity Squeezed through Finite Modulations Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning is a member of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nations, an artist, scholar, and youngest of twelve. She is a postdoctoral fellow with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), hosted by the Institute for the…

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  • Fork on table top

    My Head Lay on a Trusty Word

    You’re invited to experience My Head Lay on a Trusty Word, a documentary film exhibition by Roberto Santaguida. This is the final exhibition of Space Shapes Place, a national series of vibrant commissions produced by Tangled Art + Disability. Opening Reception: April 19, 6:00 – 8:00 pm Exhibition dates: April 19 – May 19, 2018…

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  • The image is a colour photograph of David Bobier, with his hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a black sweater and glasses. His right hand is extended and adjusting a Vibro-projector. 

    Interview with David Bobier

    We were thrilled to interview David Bobier, co-lead of Bodies in Translation: Accessing the Arts via email. David Bobier is a hard-of-hearing media artist and the parent of two deaf children. David conducts research into employing vibrotactile technology as a creative medium at VibraFusionLab in London, Ontario. He also is founder and co-chair of Inclusive…

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  • Red knitted yarn

    Mindful Art Night

    A night of art, performances, food and good conversations. A night of mental health awareness, celebration, discussion presented by Jack.org. BIT presented a video program featuring select digital stories. Jack.org is a charity that trains and empowers young leaders to revolutionize mental health on Canadian University campuses. Tracy Tidgwell curated a video program of 3 stories from the…

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  • Artist Lara Kramer standing by tree in front of former Pelican Lake Indian Residential School

    Lara Kramer: Phantom, stills & vibrations

    Lara Kramer: Phantom, stills & vibration from RedLab on Vimeo. In partnership with Champlain College and Gzowski College, Political Studies and Chanie Wenjack School of Indigenous Studies, Artspace Gallery, Traill College, and Public Energy, Bodies in Translation was thrilled to co-host Trent University’s 40th Annual Ashley Fellow Artist In Residence Lara Kramer. During the two-week…

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  • Thickening Fat: Dialogues on Intersectionality, Social Justice & Fatness

    In February 2018, scholars, activists, and artists from across Canada, the US, Europe, India, and New Zealand gathered at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada for a two-day international symposium entitled Thickening Fat: Dialogues on Intersectionality, Social Justice & Fatness. The overarching aim of the event was to bring together established and emergent experts from…

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  • technologies of justice

    On January 26th & 27th, the Legal Studies program at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) hosted Technologies of Justice, a conference that aimed to develop a more holistic understanding of the relationships between law, technology and (in)justice. Technologies of Justice: Plenary Panel from RedLab on Vimeo. Organized by Dr. Jen Rinaldi, BIT…

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  • Art As Activism/Activism as Art: a conversation

    Bodies in Translation was pleased to co-present with the International Institute on Critical Studies in Improvisation and Arts Everywhere, Art As Activism/Activism as Art: a conversation between artist-scholar-activists Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, BIT co-applicant and lead on the Cultivating the Arts stream of the grant, and curator Amanda Cachia, moderated by Senior Curator at the Art…

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  • Textile art hanging on gallery wall

    Bodies in Translation: Age and Creativity

    The Bodies in Translation: Age and Creativity exhibition was an exciting collaboration between Bodies in Translation, the Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) Art Gallery and the Nova Scotia Centre on Aging that ran from September 9th – November 12th. This exhibition challenged assumptions on aging and age-related disability. Artists explored sexuality, the mental effects of…

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  • Progress is a Spiral Upward

    Tangled Art Gallery presented Progress is a Spiral Upward, an exhibition by sab meynert which ran September 7 to October 14, 2017 “Map out your inner life/ and watch the patterns emerge/// take flight.” – sab meynert Progress is a Spiral Upward consisted of vivid drawings and sculptural pieces. sab meynert utilizes organic repetitive patterning,…

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  • Co-Design with bodies in translation

    We are holding a co-design session on October 19th, 2017 from 10am-2:30pm at the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University.   What is a co-design session? A co-design session is an opportunity for diverse members of diverse communities to come together to collaborate, experiment, and explore a problem or project. The objective of the…

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  • Gallery installation

    crip interiors: mixer

    This exhibition was presented by Creative Users and installed at the Tangled Art Gallery August 10-12, 2017. CRIP INTERIORS is an annual arts event that brings together disability-identified artists to consider how we understand accessibility and interior space through the process of dissecting what it means to be a “user” in the environments we inhabit.…

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  • Gallery visitor feet on floor

    Admiring all we accomplish

    Admiring all we accomplish by Deirdre Logue was presented by Tangled Art Gallery in collaboration with the Images Festival in collaboration with VibraFusionLab, April 7 to June 30, 2017. Co-presented with Gallery 44 and A Space Gallery, audiences were invited to a large-scale solo exhibition of Deirdre Logue, this year’s Canadian Artist Spotlight. admiring all…

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  • The Cycle: Deaf, Disability, Mad Arts and Inclusion

    The Second Cycle engages deeply with the Deaf, disability and Mad arts community, and grapples with the idea of inclusion. National Arts Centre English Theatre launched the Second Cycle at the Stratford Festival in April 2016. The Second Cycle concludes in Ottawa in June 2017, when artists, leaders and students from the Deaf, disability and…

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  • Textile installation on floor

    Outside The Lines

    This exhibition was held May 15-19, 2017 in conjunction with the international conference “Lives Outside the Lines: Gender and Genre in the Americas, A Symposium in Honour of Marlene Kadar.” Kadar is a noted Canadian feminist studies and life writing scholar whose research interests clustered around issues of gender and genre with special attention given to…

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  • Create/Change: AZ Institute

    Create/Change was a 3-day intensive institute developed by Anne Basting and the TimeSlips team, who focus on transforming care for elders through creative engagement. Melita Belgrave and Robin Rio presented “A Storm in the Desert” in their sound workshop at Create/Change: AZ Institute: Transforming Elder Care Through Creative Engagement in May 2017. Melita Belgrave is pictured…

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  • Design Fiction: Thinking With Our Chemical Stories

    Creative Users Projects, Ryerson University Disabilities Studies department and Bodies in Translation teamed up with artists in the disability community for a unique artistic experience in the summer of 2017. Through intensive Design Fiction workshopping over four days, we co-developed a fictional product called Painsonic. This fictional product provokes us to think about how we…

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  • The Aging/Disability Nexus project

    The Aging/Disability Nexus project is inspired and supported by Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life. The concept for The Aging/Disability Nexus emerged from our recognition of a surprising gap in critical scholarship, that is, scholarship specifically exploring the intersections of disability studies and aging studies. Surprising, we think, because there is significant conceptual overlap between the…

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  • Images of dancers

    Disability Arts Oral Histories

    Dr Karen Yoshida is leading an oral history project on Canadian disabled and cultural activists. BIT has co-produced 10 oral history video interviews and a documentary short.

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