Pam Patterson, Assistant Professor, TIS, FOA, is contributing five new print/photo/drawing works to the exhibition Positive Masculinities, Maison Depoivre, Prince Edward County. This exhibit, opening September 14 and running until October 21, intends to encourage conversations/provocations around gender identification and LGBTQ2S+ issues and struggles.

Patterson’s work is concerned with gender and how gender is performed over time. She notes that there have been attempts - especially by the cisgendered male-identified members of her family - to change how their masculinity is perceived. They have hidden, and even attempted to erase - without apology or consequence - difficult acts and behaviours such as incest. Here, she explores how race, class and the male gender have been constructed and reconstructed through the generations of her family. This attempt at erasure has suppressed much familial trauma which has resulted in multi-generational alcoholism and suicide. In re-drawing these images, she attempts to recover and acknowledge these problematics.