Film Screening ongoing throughout Sappyfest weekend
Performances: Saturday, August 3 – 12:30 – 1:15 / Sunday, August 4, 4:30 – 5:15 pm
Struts Gallery, back gallery
“Authenticity and vulnerability can be a type of psychic rest. I am making space for you here.” It’s Giving is a performance and video screening event examining contemporary wellness culture, positive psychology, and the championing of Tik Tok spirituality in lieu of more functional strategies of existence.
I was so heartbroken and didn’t understand where I fit into the world. I could not find a positive narrative to my career, my relationships, society, or aging. It was not depression. Society was crumbling/had crumbled.I began to rely on social media psychics posting daily to infuse hope; something good could happen in the future and it would. My blessings were being blocked but that would end, the opportunities meant for me were being shielded to align with divine timing. Structuring art from the concept of not this, not that, but the secret third thing, "It’s Giving" will begin with a screening of 2022 video, "Grafter in which a subtle interdimensional traveller realizes she is in a body and tries to be appealing to others. She investigates her childlike affects and her need to go back to the places of childhood to wrestle with unmet emotional and developmental needs. She explores the concept of self-abandonment and experiences empathy burnout. She turns to health food trends, supplements, and acupressure to fill the gap. Lamenting the loss of most of her friends, she celebrates her last one. She is grateful for her AI Social Emotional companion. We see her come alive in the presence of appreciation, acknowledgment, and reciprocity.
This will be followed by a restorative interactive performance; an exploration that syncs us to our best selves in all space time continuums.
About Lisa Smolkin
Lisa Smolkin is an artist living in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her art practice comprises performance, video, and installation, exploring themes of selfhood and hierarchies by incorporating elements from popular culture and healing traditions within humorous narrative structures. She was a frequent performer at Doored, a performance art/conceptual comedy show put on by Life of a Craphead and has performed at The Art Gallery of Ontario and The Khyber Centre for the Arts as well as having work featured in C Magazine and Canadian Art Magazine. In 2020, Lisa was a winner of an Emerging Digital Artists Award and most recently performed on Drip Drop TV with a 90 minute performance titled, If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.
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