body — mind — distance explores the tension between how diasporic bodies are perceived in different contexts, serving as a visual manifestation of the psychic distance between body and memory. Vachon explores the friction that occurs when the way one perceives themselves contradicts how one is perceived in unfamiliar landscapes. Exploring cultural beauty standards, out of body experiences and fragmented selves, Vachon highlights how the body is simultaneously shaped by cultural conventions and more local, intrapersonal realities.
For more information, read body — mind — distance, an interview between artist Sabrina Vachon and curator Cassidy Alejandria.
Curated by Career Launcher Curatorial Incubator recipient Cassidy Alejandria
Sabrina Vachon is an emerging artist located in the GTHA. She is currently an undergraduate student at McMaster University in the Integrated Arts Program, where she works primarily in visual art, new media and performance to explore parallels between the personal world and the world around her—inspired by personal archives, cultural traditions and the new digital age. Working as part of the Asian diasporic community, she seeks to explore how intersecting parts of identity, perception and performance can create a sense of liminality and in between-ness.
Cassidy Alejandria is a Filipina-Canadian art historian and emerging curator based in Toronto. She is a graduate of OCAD University’s Criticism and Curatorial Practice MFA program as well as Queen’s University’s Art History MA and BA Honours programs. Her research interests include feminist curation, Filipina feminisms, embodiment, activist and socially engaged arts and epistemology. Her recent thesis exhibition explored questions around how incorporating embodied experience in curation can disrupt hierarchies of knowledge and serve as a bridge between historical and contemporary feminisms.
