Pam Patterson

For over 30 years, I, as a disability artist, have exploited my life experiences of precariousness and trauma to fuel performance and exhibitions. While trained in the visual arts, I also studied classical and experimental theatre. I screamed in Dada, wept in Chekhov, photographed, built installations, and drew – making startling connections.

The direction I took up was in time-based artmaking: process print/photo-based work and performance. I use my own body as a resource and as making material.

Much of my practice – in artistic making independently and with ARTIFACTS and SLIT and in teaching, academic research, and curation through OCAD University and WIAprojects – references the precariousness I – and others – experience in our lives and work. Our very survival is always “on the edge”. But the possibilities are multiple on this edge!

My creative work has evolved over these years from exploring the self-in-extremis to understanding self-as-social – especially in terms of self as person with disability in gendered and cultural spaces – and, most recently, to self-as-histories. As a practitioner who is socially-engaged, I find myself more and more reaching to community for conversation, collaboration and mutual understanding. It has enabled my practice and indirectly my very living.

You can also read my artist profile on the Centre for Canadian Contemporary Art website.

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