Contemporary Calgary’s ‘Resistance & Respiration’ Exhibition Spotlights 15 Disabled Artists including Critically Acclaimed Bob Flanagan, Sheree Rose and Activist Alice Wong

Contemporary Calgary’s ‘Resistance & Respiration’ Exhibition
Spotlights 15 Disabled Artists including Critically Acclaimed Bob Flanagan, Sheree Rose and Activist Alice Wong, Honouring the Special Olympics 2024 in Calgary

Calgary, Alta (November 28, 2023) - Contemporary Calgary (701, 11 Street SW) is thrilled to invite the media and Calgary community to the exclusive media preview of ‘Resistance & Respiration’ on Wednesday, November 29, 2023, timed to coincide with the Special Olympics that will be hosted in Calgary in February 2024. The show features 15 disabled contemporary artists, including critically acclaimed US artist, Bob Flanagan in conjunction with American photographer and performance artist, Sheree Rose.  Disabled Canadian activist, artist and writer Alice Wong who is the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture is also a notable name featured in the group exhibition. To attend the media preview and interview Toronto-based artist, Hannah Bullock, on Wednesday, November 29, 2023, at Contemporary Calgary from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. MST - Please RSVP to nikita@parkerpr.ca.

Curated by Amanda Cachia, the exhibition asks the audience to wonder, how do contemporary disabled artists breathe? How is breathing an athletic act, a chore, a feat of endurance, a political horizon? 

Toronto-based artist, Hannah Bullock,  who will be leading the press preview adds, “My body of work “a low hum, a strong gale” delves into my experience with chronic pain and illness through the adoption of a performative drawing process. I made wire forms that wrap around my belly, and hold a marker on the other end — which allows me to “draw” with my breath. with this work, I am thinking through what it means to accommodate my own needs in the process of making — and thinking about the documentation of breathing as both a marker of time passing and a rejection of linear progress.”

This exhibition is inspired by the scholarship of Jean-Thomas Tremblay, and his new book Breathing Aesthetics (2022). In Tremblay’s book, he uses the work of contemporary artists such as Bob Flanagan to support his academic work around the complexities of breathing for the disabled.

“The exhibition encourages us to observe breath as more than a repetitive, subconscious act. Timed to coincide with the Special Olympics Canada hosted in Calgary in February 2024, this exhibition takes us through the work and life of fifteen artists for whom breath is a more precarious and deliberate act. Including the archival performative work of Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose made in the 1980s and 90s, as well as that of the influential disability activist and author Alice Wong, we hope to expand the conventional understanding of human difference and representation, as well as amplify and reform aesthetic constructions of disability,” says Kanika Anand, Senior Curator of Contemporary Calgary 

To book interviews with spokespeople, please email nikita@parkerpr.caand newsbob@parkerpr.ca.