Digital Carnival Z: Feminist Craft of Care for Times of Crisis

Featuring Lena Chen, Mallory Donen, and Sarah Shamash. Moderated by Minah Lee.

How have the labours of women artists been affected by the challenges of the ongoing pandemic? By centering feminist understandings of time and intergenerational connections, can we resist normalized and privileged cruelties practiced by capitalist patriarchy in these unprecedented times?

This panel invites you to the works of Lena Chen, Mallory Donen, and Sarah Shamash, three women artists who are crafting "care culture" in their communities through their art practice and subverting the expected outcomes of feminized labours. Lena Chen is a Chinese American writer and artist creating performances and socially engaged art in live and virtual contexts. Mallory Donen is a multidisciplinary artist residing in Vancouver, exploring processes rooted in traditional craft passed down by generations of women in her family. Sarah Shamash’s projects often underline geopolitics, feminist thought, and historical difference as a marker for understanding the world and worldings in media histories. Threading together realities of gender, labour, and surveillance, the artists' dialogue will expose gendered bodies in resistance, woven into the textile and tactility of the digital world and beyond.

This artist panel is part of the public program series for Cinevolution's Digital Carnival Z, featuring UNION by Featured Artists Nancy Lee 李南屏 and Kiran Bhumber ਕਿਰਨਦੀਪ ਕੌਰ ਭੰਬਰ.

Discover the rest of the events in the series at www.DigitalCarnival.ca.

About the Artists

Lena Chen is a Chinese American writer and artist creating performances and socially engaged art in live and virtual contexts. Awarded the Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award and "Best Emerging Talent" at B3 Biennial of the Moving Image (Frankfurt), she has exhibited and performed at Transmediale (Berlin), Die Digitale (Düsseldorf), Färgfabriken (Stockholm), and Baltimore Museum of Art, among others. She earned a B.A. in sociology from Harvard University, and is currently completing a MFA at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art. She has spoken at Oxford, Yale, Stanford, SXSW, HOPE, and re:publica. She has been awarded grants and residencies from Millay Colony for the Arts, Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Office of Public Art, Burning Man Global Arts Fund, Civic Media Lab, and Women’s Media Center. She is currently a Freshworks artist-in-residence at Kelly Strayhorn Theater, developing an interactive game about social media censorship and deplatforming of sex workers.

IG @elleperil | Twitter @lenachen

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Mallory Donen is a multidisciplinary artist residing in Vancouver, exploring processes rooted in traditional craft passed down by generations of women in her family. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of the Fraser Valley, and a Master of Fine Arts from University of Manitoba. Within her practice, she challenges notions of labour, productivity, and the value of art in relation to craft and women’s work.

In 2019, she was an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center. In 2020, she received an Honorable mention in the virtual exhibition Threaded II, Envision Art Show. She is a 2021 recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts, Research and Creation Grant.

Recent exhibitions include: Art on Demand 4.4, the Reach Gallery & Museum, I Come From a Long Line of Machines, Ranger Station Art Gallery, Seeking the Periphery, Paul H. Cocker Gallery, Uncompressed, Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery.

Instagram @mallorydonen | Facebook @MalloryDonen | Twitter @MalloryDonen

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Sarah Shamash’s research creation practice is committed to decolonial, feminist critique and action; it encompasses, artmaking, writing, curation, and education. Her artworks comprise the use of media in a wide variety formats, such as installation, documentary, photography, sound, performance, and video. They have been shown in curated exhibitions and film festivals internationally. Her projects often underline geopolitics, feminist thought, and historical difference as a marker for understanding the world and worldings in media histories. Her work as an artist, researcher, educator, and programmer can be understood as interconnected and whole; they all revolve around a passion for cinema and media art as a pluriversal technology of knowledge. She gratefully raises her son and lives on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh First Nations in what is known as Vancouver.

Instagram @sarah_shamash

About Digital Carnival Z

Cinevolution’s annual flagship event, Digital Carnival is a festival of cutting-edge media art for community and artistic audiences of all ages. This year's theme of Z references the gender-neutral pronoun ‘zie,’ the emergent generation-Z, and the possibilities for moving beyond the XX/XY binary.

Headlined by UNION by Featured Artists Nancy Lee 李南屏 and Kiran Bhumber ਕਿਰਨਦੀਪ ਕੌਰ ਭੰਬਰ, the festival highlights 16 boundary-defying artists who are exploring different ways of understanding the relationship between bodies, gestures, culture and society.

From April 21 - June 5, Digital Carnival Z will feature art, performances and talks by Natasha “Courage” Bacchus, Kiran Bhumber ਕਿਰਨਦੀਪ ਕੌਰ ਭੰਬਰ, Lena Chen, Margaret Dragu and Justine A. Chambers, Mallory Donen, Robin Gaudreau/Rye, Gina Goico, Romi Kim/Skim, Nancy Lee 李南屏, Danielle Mackenzie Long, Mickey L.D. Morgan, Kofi Oduro (Illestpreacha), Cecilia Point, Angelic Proof, Juli Saragosa, and Sarah Shamash.

For more information, or to explore the festival, visit www.DigitalCarnival.ca.

Accessibility

ASL interpretation, automated captions in English, and descriptive language will be available at the event. The event will be recorded, and an English transcript will be made available with the recording after the event.

Cinevolution understands that access needs are different for everyone and that these needs can also change every day. We will do our best to accommodate your needs before you even attend our programming. However, if there are additional accessibility needs, we will try our best to accommodate.

For more information or specific requests, or to register for the event by email or phone, please contact Regan Shrumm, our Accessibility Coordinator, at 250-896-8266 or regan@cinevolutionmedia.com.

Acknowledgements

Digital Carnival Z is made possible with generous support from the Government of Canada, Canada Media Fund, TD Ready Commitment, BC Arts Council, the City of Richmond, and the City of Vancouver.

Richmond Art Gallery is the Exhibition Partner for the Featured Artist Exhibition, UNION by Nancy Lee 李南屏 and Kiran Bhumber ਕਿਰਨਦੀਪ ਕੌਰ ਭੰਬਰ.