Faculty of Art

Photography

Kinzi Dempsey

Making 'Creative Homes' Online

A digital poster made for online and physical display at Gallery 1313 as a part of the "UNPACKING PANDEMIC PONDERING" group exhibition with contributors from Gallery 1313 artists, OCADU & University of Manitoba researchers, and OCADU emerging artists. These digital posters created by OCADU artists represent the ethos of community knowledges they hoped to represent as they spoke to & represented communities close to them.

“How can we take ‘home’ to a digital space? I wonder if- like hunter-gatherers turned to mud and straw to make bricks for shelter in their transition to agriculture- we must look to the resources of social media to both accommodate and re-invent our lifestyles of creative practices. This idea of ‘home’ is at the core: Galleries have housed artworks and art-events, and similarly, my friends and I previously used our homes to connect via art and creative practices. Both of these homes are unavailable to us now by nature of their physical walls during this pandemic, and- whether we are excited pioneers or reluctant tech participants- we now seek ways platforms such as Instagram might be transformed into hospitable spaces for connectivity via creativity. Can features like ‘Stories’, ‘Reels’, ‘Tags’ and ‘Comments’ become the new dining room craft tables, kitchen-conversations and arm-chair interactions?”