Mikiki: Port Manteau
Artspace, 2022
The work in this exhibition emerges from a self-led research trip, during which Mikiki spent three months in Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland, reconnecting with family and land.
Through an ongoing, resourceful engagement with knowledge-keeping materials and processes, the work reflects an effort to preserve and deepen cultural and familial connections.
As the exhibition unfolds, the work will continue to evolve, with the artist returning throughout its duration to further engage with the materials.
Mikiki is a performance and video artist and queer community health activist of Acadian/Mi’kmaq and Irish descent from Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland, Canada.
They attended NSCAD and Concordia before returning to St. John's to work as Programming Coordinator at Eastern Edge Gallery and later to Mohkinstsis/Calgary to work as the Director of TRUCK Gallery. Their work has been presented throughout Canada and internationally in self-produced interventions, artist-run centres, performance art festivals and public galleries.
Their identity as an artist is informed and intrinsically linked to their history of work as a sexual health educator and harm reduction worker. Mikiki’s creative themes often address safety and responsibility, disclosure and self-determination, community building and reckoning with trauma and loss.
Mikiki has worked as a Sexuality Educator in Mohkinstsis/Calgary's public schools, a Bathhouse Attendant in sâskwatôn/Saskatoon, & Drag Queen Karaoke Hostess in St. John's. Mikiki has worked in numerous capacities in the gay men's health and HIV response both nationally/internationally and as well in Kitche Zibi/Ottawa, Tiohtià:ke/Montreal and Tkaronto/Toronto, co-developing and implementing the first sexual health promotion programming specifically for gay men living with AIDS and/or HIV in Canada.