2018

UNRULY

UNRULY: Jasmine Noseworthy Persaud | Harmeet Rehal

JUNE 28 – AUGUST 26, 2018

Curated by Anu Radha Verma | XIT-RM Project Space

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 28, 6 – 9 PM

 

 

 

UNRULY is a conversation between two local queer and trans artists of colour, a creative intervention that contends with the (dis)embodied ways of moving through home, space, belonging, community, binaries and boundaries. Jasmine Noseworthy Persaud and Harmeet Rehal’s bodies of work coalesce in the XIT-RM, inviting the visitor to see, feel, experience and question. Each artist examines and confronts the way ‘being,’ surviving and thriving is (im)possible for the queer, trans, disabled, racialized individual, in the suburbs, in ‘community,’ and in the season(s) when they are expected to be ‘proud.’ What could an inquiry into the said/unsaid rules look like? What would disrupting the traditional feel like? Let’s imagine, produce and nurture these possibilities.

REFLECTIONS

UNRULY represents change, possibility, bucking against convention and disrupting the normative. As the first exhibit curated by me, the AGM’s newest staff member in a newly-created role, the process of curation reflects community-based and community-grounded processes, which prioritize the relationships between artist and curator, community member and institution. Working closely with Jasmine and Harmeet has been transformative. Two artists who are in proximity given their lived experiences, yet have distinctive identities, practices and connections. Eschewing traditional models, the process has been collaborative, with all three of us sharing space in Google hangouts, text message boxes and Google Docs. With the intention of troubling the very nature of the XIT-RM (why exit but not enter? why are queer and trans people so often forced to summarize their experiences into coming out stories?), as well as troubling Pride season (What does June mean for queer and trans people of colour?), Jasmine and Harmeet responded to complicated questions I posed, their answers grounded in their respective perspectives, political praxes and approaches. Together we represent three distinct generations of LGBTQ+ experience, with the suburbs providing a base for the ways we interrupt and interrogate. There is a long history of queer and trans organizing in Mississauga, including significant creative interventions – UNRULY seeks to respond to this history, and imagine futures as well.

— Anu Radha Verma, Community Arts Curator for Social Change

 

ARTIST BIOS

Jasmine Noseworthy Persaud is a genderfluid mixed kid (Guyanese/Newfie) artist. They draw tender and loving depictions of queers of colour. They write about diaspora and depression, colonization and trauma, and resilience and healing. Their poetry is about survival. Away from art, Jasmine lives as a demigirlfriend, pet parent, and zucchini.

www.jasminepersaud.portfoliobox.net 

Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter 

Harmeet Rehal is a 19 year old trans non-binary, queer, and disabled creative of color, with roots in the Sikh-Punjabi diaspora. They are a multidisciplinary artist who primarily uses digital illustrations, mixed-media installations and sneaker art as a disruptive and radical tool to navigate their relationship to healing, community, adornment, identity and trauma.

www.harmeetrehal.com

Follow them on Instagram

The XIT – RM is a project space showcasing emerging artists in the Mississauga, GTA and 905 regions.

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PROGRAMMING

UNRULY Artist Talk | July 14, 1 PM

FREE | Barrier-Free Space | All Gender Washroom | Snacks Provided

Join Jasmine Noseworthy Persaud and Harmeet Rehal for an Artists Talk focused on their respective art practices, as well as their collaboration for the XIT-RM exhibition, UNRULY.  A conversation circle will be facilitated by UNRULY Curator Anu Radha Verma.

 

UNRULY Visions: Writing Unruly Bodies into Fiction Workshop | Sunday, July 22, 1 PM

FREE | Barrier-Free Space | All-Gender Washroom | Tea and Snacks Provided

What are unruly bodies? How are they written into fiction? Who can write them? These are some of the questions that will be discussed and pondered upon during this workshop. Certain bodies – trans bodies, Black bodies, Indigenous bodies, bodies of colour, disabled bodies, queer bodies – are rarely seen/absent/marginalized/caricatured in Canadian fiction. This workshop will look at examples of writing about such bodies, and discuss the possibilities and difficulties of writing such bodies. Through writing prompts and freewriting exercises, participants will be encouraged to attempt writing unruly bodies into fiction, with a particular focus on intersectionality.

Facilitator Bio: Sanchari Sur is a feminist/anti-racist/sex-positive/genderqueer Canadian who was born in Calcutta, India. Her work has been published in The Feminist Wire, Matrix Magazine, Toronto Lit Up’s The Unpublished City anthology (BookThug, 2017), Arc Poetry Magazine, Humber Literary Review, and is forthcoming in Prism International. She is a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow in fiction, PhD candidate in English at Wilfrid Laurier University, and the curator/host/co-founder of Balderdash Reading Series.

Follow her on Twitter.

Closing Celebration | Saturday, August 25, 1 PM

FREE | Barrier-Free Space | All Gender Washroom | Refreshments Provided

For the past seven weeks, artists from our Summer exhibitions have been working with diverse Mississauga residents and communities to create and animate our evolving, interactive gallery – border crossings: travelling along the in between, exploring and expressing differing and intersecting border crossing stories.

Come to the AGM on Saturday afternoon for the Closing Celebration of this project and our Summer Exhibitions, Lisa Hirmer’s In Case of Emergency and UNRULY: Jasmine Noseworthy Persaud | Harmeet Rehal in the XIT-RM. Spend time with the exhibitions, listen to the stories, share your own story. Enjoy some refreshments and join us as we bid farewell to our summer exhibitions!

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Image above: Jasmine Noseworthy Persaud, wish, 2016, digital illustration. Courtesy of the artist. Harmeet Rehal, khaar, 2017, digital still. Courtesy of the artist.