This Is What Makes Our Guts So Vibrant
Femme Wave

Exhibition Dates: November 18, 2016 - November 24, 2016

Where: U-Hall (upstairs) at Truck Contemporary Art – 2009 10 Ave SW
When: Friday November 18, 5:00pm to 7:00pm

Striking an enigmatic balance between bold formal elements and momentous content This Is What Makes Our Guts So Vibrant is a group exhibition not to be missed. This Is What Makes Our Guts So Vibrant features a comprehensive array of work from artists Cassandra Ellanor Avery Faire, Dainesha Nugent-Palache, Emily MacDonald, Laura Hudspith, Nine Kennedy, and Susan Clarahan. Laden with charm and power, This Is What Makes Our Guts So Vibrant builds a dialogue about identity by confidently destabilizing the hierarchies of dominant culture.

This Is What Makes Our Guts So Vibrant runs from November 18 to November 24 and is welcoming visitors during Truck’s regular gallery hours (Tuesday – Friday 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, Saturday 12:00pm to 5:00pm.

Femme Wave's 2016 visual arts programming is an exploration of femme identities in their many forms, pluralities, and understandings. Aiming to be inclusive and intersectional in both politic and approach, this programming endeavors to shift binary thinking. Clear traditions and understandings become murky, without boundary, and offer reprieve from any single meaning or expression of what it means to be femme.

Cassandra Ellanor Avery Faire is a Calgary-based visual artist. Faire is a multidisciplinary artist currently focused on emotional portraiture. Her work deals with the challenges of self love and intimacy. She explores vulnerability through beauty and seduction. Born and raised in Calgary, she has attended both the Alberta College of Art and Design and the Ontario College of Art and Design. This summer her work was featured in the pop-up exhibition Lavender Menace.

Emily Lynn MacDonald is a feminist-identified artist, creative writer and curator. She has a BA in Communications with a focus in critical theory, cultural criticism and creative writing. She is currently working on a collection of prose poetry. Emily is also a member of an all queer and feminist-identified artist collective, Papsmear, with Tegan Bowers and Haley Pukanski. The collective acts as a research incubator for projects that dismantle rape culture, promote sexual health awareness, promote body positivity and autonomy and create inclusive spaces for woman-identified people who are excluded by art institutions for aesthetic, political, economic and social reasons.

Dainesha Nugent-Palache is a Toronto based artist, writer, curator and recent graduate of OCAD University—working primarily in photography, video and with performativity—her practice is often centred around themes of otherness, identity and representation, in relation to both femininity and the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. By employing the use of satire, pastiche and colour, Dainesha’s work is aesthetically tantalizing enough to pull viewers in, then consider the deeper layered complexities which exist within her work. All in all, it is Dainesha’s intent to provide documentation and commentary on twenty-first century realities through visual narratives, for the sake of posterity.

Laura Hudspith is a Toronto-based sculptor and installation artist. Her work combines the idealized (porcelain and plaster figurines) with the mundane (found objects and manufactured materials) to satirically address themes of authenticity and mechanisms of identity-making. Hudspith holds a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal, and has exhibited her work and participated in artist residencies in both Canada and the United States.

Nine Kennedy is an interior designer and visual artist residing in Calgary. They received their Bachelor of Applied Interior Design from Mount Royal University in 2013, and have been practicing professionally since. Their artistic practice explores how queer identity impacts our presence and performance in various architectural and interior spheres, utilizing various mediums including installation, film and performances. Nine is the Co-Founder of Haus of Masc Drag Collective and regularly performs in Calgary.

Susan Clarahan seeks a feminine understanding of sensuality, intimacy, landscape, community and beauty. Clarahan creates a sense of wonder at the natural world, using both performance and landscape to engage the senses and connect with nature.

*Safer Spaces*
Femme Wave Feminist Arts Festival and organizers are committed to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race or religion.

*Accessibility*
U-Hall is located up one flight of stairs at Truck Contemporary Art. The washrooms at this venue are gender-neutral.

*Treaty 7 Land*
We acknowledge this event takes place on the land of the Treaty 7 People, The Blackfoot from Kainai, Blood, Siksika, and Peigan, The Sarcee from Tsu’tina and Eden Valley, and the Stoney Nakoda people from Morley. We are all treaty people, visitors to this land and we give thanks to the people who came before and keep this land for us and all our future generations.