- 9 Apr 2022 10 pm UTC
- dur 18 min
Queer Lines (For Agnes) In the spring of 2021, I was given the opportunity to make a video performance through an at-home residency with FADO Performance Art Centre. Titled, “Queer Lines (for Agnes)”, this work marks pandemic time through the abstraction of the traditional Pride Flag. I use my body in various ways to paint acrylic washes on an un-stretched canvas. I\’ve developed an embodied painting approach that I call performative-aktion-painting that combines body, object and site. In this performance, I create a site specific performance for the internet with the intention of expanding the live art experience through a space and time. Primarily, “Queer Lines (for Agnes)” takes art historical cues from the American lesbian abstract painter Agnes Martin by utilizing an abstraction of the horizontal lines found in her later work. Inspired by her resistance to patriarchal norms realized in both her painting and her writing, I find her contribution to a re-definition of art historical conventions provocative, and I see my video performance as an extension of this line of questioning that Martin was pursuing throughout her (their) life and art.
Kate Barry is an artist currently based in the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Sḵwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and sƏl̓ílwƏtaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations on the west coast of Canada. Her work investigates queerness, subjectivity, and embodied practice through painting, drawing, performance art and video. She has also contributed over 25 years to working in artist-run spaces in Canada, including as a board member at FADO Performance Art Centre (2011-14), project manager for “More Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women” (2016), archival and research associate for “Wordless: The Performance Art of Rebecca Belmore”, (2019), and as the programmer for the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen launched by grunt gallery in 2019. Currently, Barry is a sessional faculty at Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design (ECU), is a member of the collective, MARFEC (Mutual Aid and Reciprocity Fund at ECU) and is a member of the board of directors at the Western Front. Kate Barry is represented by Vtape, Toronto. ARTIST’S WEBSITE