Most of the year’s work in review. Click on the thumbnails to see images and brief descriptions of the works and the works-in-progress.
-
- Jan: I was Barbie, my one woman show about the night I was asked by Mattel to portray their loved plastic doll at her 50th birthday party, at the Yukon Arts Centre in Whitehorse
-
- Jan: I Live, a workshop reading I performed, a fractured poetic text written by Nicholas Flood about his real life experiences as a former methamphetamine addict
-
- Jan, Apr, Aug: Sodom, a monthly themed masquerade party -- I hosted Sodom, appeared on their posters, and also just enjoyed the event on other nights. I used the opportunity of shooting the nightclub posters to also create artistic portraits (which appear in the portraiture section of this site)
-
- Feb: Liminoid, a series of photographs by myself and inkedKenny I revealed online (originally shot in 2008)
-
- Feb: Transformation, a series of photographs by Bruce LaBruce and myself (the images had already appeared in several art journals and magazines internationally as well as being auctioned at Buddies in Bad Times' Art Attack, but hadn't been shown in Canada)
-
- March: Landscape with Yukon and Unnatural Beauty, a collection of prose poems about my experiences performing and travelling in the Yukon (2010 and 2011), to be published in the volume TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: an Unreasonable Body of Work, edited by Judith Rudakoff, to be published by Intellect Books in May 2012
-
- Feb- Apr: Self-portraiture: identity, transformation and performance, an artist's talk and slide show I gave at 5 Canadian universities. My Jessica Rabbit impersonation is one of the slides.
-
- March: Fey, photography by myself and Michael Chambers I revealed online (originally shot in 2010)
-
- Aug: Acting Ladylike, being ladylike -- an essay about performing in Sky Gilbert's Ladylike, to be published in a book about Sky's work by Guernica Press in 2012
-
- Feb: Surrealist Automaton --a photo portrait by Neil Mota and myself I reveald online (originally shot in Dec 2010, the morning after 18 consecutive performances of my play Th Silicone Diaries)
-
- Apr: idol hands do the devil's, werqk!, a series of photo portraits made using my iMac photoshop.
-
- June: The Female Form, Beauty and Art, a lecture given at the National Gallery of Canada. The first half of the lecture focused on representations and imagery of women produced across the globe and throughout time. The second half of the lecture focused on my collaborative portraiture. The lecture was presented to coincide with my play The Silicone Diaries at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival. My only involvement in the lecture was organizing the imagery for presentation.
-
- Aug: Still Life Serving, a sculpture made from my former silicone implants (one ruptured), blood and video installation. The video elements of this piece have been shot, but not edited.
-
- June: The Silicone Diaries, my one woman show performed at Magnetic North, Canada's National Festival of Contemporary Theatre in English
-
- Aug: I started studying The Zohar, Kabbalah's 'Book of Splendors.' I study 30 - 45 minutes five days a week simply by listening to a live audio podcast. I've done this faithfully since August. It is enlightening and heart expanding.
-
- Aug: Converge, a gathering of queer youth and the arts. I was the keynote speaker.
-
- June: Award of Excellence in the Arts from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association
-
- Sept: Manifesto of Living Self-portraiture, a document explaining my artistic process for the 150th anniversary issue of the Canadian Theatre Review, to be published Spring 2012
-
- Aug: I Live, phase two of a project that began with a workshop reading in January. My own poetic pose writing, observations from an outsider who was witness to a series of gay methamphetamine orgies. I''ll be reading some of the poems at two poetry nights --Bill Bissett's Secret Handshake Club in January and at David Bateman's The Beautiful and the Damned in March. (exact dates coming soon)
-
- Aug: Plane of Immanence, a short video made in collaboration with Jordan Tannahil, filmed in the unfinished re-construction site of Maple Leaf Gardens. The video has not been shown yet. There are also a series of photographs.
-
- Oct: The Silicone Diaries is nominated for The Critics Prize by the Association of Quebec Theatre Critics. The show was nominated in the 'Outside Quebec' category for productions that come from other cities. The other two nominees were Potudo-ru (from Japan) and Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech (also from Japan).
-
- Oct: Ophelia/Machine, a long form video I am writing and producing. Approximately one third of the footage of the video has been shot. This is a large project that will be in development for a few years.
-
- Aug: Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain, a lecture by David Lynch which prompted me to explore transcendental meditation. The ful talk is available on youtube with a link in the 'Inspired by' section of this website.
-
- Nov: The Art Game, an installation by Kent Monkman, at the Toronto International Art Fair. I performed inside the installation for two days.
-
- Nov-Dec: a series of university talks culminating in Queer Art Diva, an evening of selected writing, monologues and visual art. I spoke at five Canadian universities in the fall semester.
-
- Dec: Shade, a series of prose poems from my experiences as a gay nightlife hostess. I will be reading some of the poems at two poetry nights --Bill Bisset's Secret Handshake Club in Jan, and at David Bateman's The Beautiful and the Damned in March. (exact dates coming soon)
-
- Dec: The Crime of Embellishment / The Book of Neoism, a continuing series paintings by Istvan Kantor a.k.a. Monty Cantsin Amen. My role in the creation of the paintings is that of the muse. In Istvan's words, he wanted to "paint the demons inside Nina."
-
- Dec: The Crime of Embellishment / The Book of Neoism, a multi-stage project by myself and Istvan Kantor which includes photography, video and eventually live performance as well as paintings. This work will be in development through 2012. It is about the connections of ritual, representation, transformation, the unconscious and technology. It is also about shamelessness.
-
- all year: vocal training with Fides Krucker. I've been training with mezzo soprano and voice teacher Fides Krucker. I'm using the training to learn how to find more emotion and authenticity as a performer. This is an on-going discipline that is very exciting work. Training the transsexual voice for more resonance and freer expressivity presents certain challenges. I hope to be able to write about this in the future. Eric Armstrong, voice teacher and York University Theatre Department Chair, observed me working with Fides and wrote about it in an article to be published in TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: an Unreasonable Body of Work, to be published in May 2012 by Intellect Books.
-
- Dec: Lilith, a new piece of visual art I created which I am not showing online because I want to show it in a gallery. It was made during a ritual performance which involved simultaneous self-flagellation. The video documentation of the making of the piece will be a part of the artwork in its installation form which will also include text, audio, hieroglyphics and photographic projections. (The above image is a ancient Mesopotamian carving which some scholars say is an image of the demon/ Goddess Lilith.)
