Phases (in and out)
Hollis McConkey
Curated by Sarah Shelton & Lauchlin MacQuarrie.
Hollis McConkey (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Ontario, on the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabe, and the Huron-Wendat. She recently graduated from OCAD U with a major in Drawing and Painting and minor in Art History and is currently pursuing a graduate degree at Goldsmiths, University of London.
As a chronically ill woman, artist, and previous athlete, Hollis aims to make visible the nuanced invisibilities of her own identity and experience in/with Western ‘normative’ structures. Taking references from contemporary media, sports, and historical art practices, her work considers what it means to be an invisibly disabled woman navigating structures designed to marginalize experiences outside of heteronormative, Eurocentric, capitalist, ableist, and patriarchal systems.
In this exhibit, Hollis speaks indirectly to her own disabilities by addressing her sister’s lived disability experience. Hollis invited her sister to write down her feelings and struggles in living daily with a painful disability. This resultant collection – scraps of paper, napkins, and wrappers – exposes the viewer to the consistent and exhausting nature of surviving with certain disabilities.
In addition, Hollis unpacks the TTC’s accessibility poster campaign. Despite appearing in street cars, buses, and subway trains across the city, the TTC’s poster is often passed over and misunderstood by travellers in the rush of commuting.
The resulting dissonance between the TTC’s ineffective poster campaign and Hollis’ sister’s visceral writing opens the viewer to question how a lack of visibility further disables people with invisible disabilities. In this, Hollis emphasizes the continuous marginalization of invisible disabilities.
Special thanks for exhibition support to Cathy Cappon and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Sustainability Initiatives (ODESI).