Both/and: Artist-parents in conversation + a performance
Rennie Hall (1:30-2:45PM)
An artist’s livelihood is rich and meaningful. At its very best, the gig can feel a little bit like a dream job, rife with wonderful friendships, nourishing community connection, and big inspiration. But the work itself is also often taxing, isolating, and undervalued. So many of us are only just getting by. The days are long, and the margins can feel razor thin. This is a precarious reality likewise shared often by parents, especially primary caregivers. When the lives of parents and artists—and artists-as-parents—intersect, how do these worlds co-exist, clash, and fuel one another? What structural systems might impact art created under the conditions of parenthood?
Join four BIWOC artist-parents, visual artists Sandeep Johal and Damla Tamer, writer Hiromi Goto, and filmmaker Meghna Haldar, in a facilitated conversation with writer Jackie Wong as we explore their experiences of raising children while sustaining careers in the arts. We will talk about identity shifts, labour, and the overt and invisible ways work and parenthood continually shape each other. The panel draws on the ideas of traditional feminist consciousness-raising circles, where open knowledge-sharing helps build awareness and combined resilience.
The session will open with a performance art piece by Clare Yow. It will delve into some of the energies and spillages of her experiences as a new-ish mother undertaking caregiving alongside contract work: from the repetitive and imbalanced labour, to feelings of frustration, resentment, and worth.
ORGANIZERS
Jackie Wong
Jackie Wong currently works at hua foundation, a youth empowerment non-profit in Chinatown, where she manages its Race & Equity Project and its communications files. She has a background in journalism and maintains a freelance practice as a facilitator, writer, and editor. She has reported on housing justice, drug policy, and equity issues. In the first year of her kid’s life, she was freelancing and things were chaotic. He’s now two, and she’s striving for a different kind of life-life balance.
Clare yow
Clare Yow is a visual artist and creative freelancer specializing in photography, design, and marketing projects. Her artworks focus on memorializing everyday objects, bodies, and places as they intersect with race and culture, transnationality, and feminism. She usually grows her conceptual art practice and freelance work from her studio in Chinatown, but she is presently working from home as a full-time caregiver to her eight-month-old baby while attempting waged work between feeds and sleeps.
GUESTS
Guest biographies to come.
Don’t miss the 2020 Future Forum for creative BIWOC in Vancouver.