Welcome to our fourth and final Thought Residency of 2022: Accessible Lovefest, co-curated by Cara Eastcott.
About this Thought Residency Cara offers: Cara, Pree and Harmeet have an intimate zoom conversation on a December evening. They share some thoughts on access intimacy, the challenge of growing into new career directions and some foundational approaches to shaping accessible spaces.
Click here for a transcript of the video.
Meet the Residents:
Cara Eastcott is an independent culture worker. From 2011-2018, Cara worked at Tangled Art + Disability, where she curated programming, led Ontario-wide tours and expanded the organization’s connection to new and racialized communities. She curated the exhibition Legends Are the Rivers That Take Us Home in 2020 at the Thames Art Gallery in Chatham, Ontario which highlighted how storytellers harness the power of public history to sustain cultural communities. Currently, Cara is collaborating with artists, culture workers and communities to develop public art projects which aim to preserve cultural histories through intergenerational exchanges, oral storytelling, and relationship building.
Harmeet (they/them) is a fat, trans, and disabled, Sikh-Panjabi artist, designer, community organizer, and student living in Tkaronto. Using a disability justice framework in their work, Harmeet creates art that sensorly activates feelings of rest, pleasure, and slowness. Currently they are focusing on archival textile painting, illustration, accessible design, collaging, and graphic recording. Harmeet also creates workshop programming on these mediums and when they are not facilitating, they do accessibility and social media coordination and consultation. You can check out more of their work on Instagram (@harmeetrehal) or Harmeet-Rehal.com
Pree (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Tkaronto by way of Tiohtiake, with Panjabi ancestry. Their art style is inspired by community care, cultural heritage and storybook illustrations. Pree’s arts practice is called: Sticky Mangos (IG @stickymangos). Their art has been featured in Luminato Arts Festival, Design TO festival and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Their shop has been featured in CBC, Xtra magazine, and BlogTo. Pree is the creator of CRIP COLLAB and DigiZine, both of which create paid opportunities for artists who belong to, Disabled, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities.
