Hi! I’m Jessie Myfanwy (she/her), an interdisciplinary artist and PhD student in the Communication’s department at Concordia University. I live as an uninvited guest in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal, on unceded Indigenous land. I am deeply thankful to the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation for their cultivation of the land. While I was born in South Wales, I spent most of my life in British Columbia, between Vancouver, the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, and the suburb of Tsawwassen, land of the Səwaθn Məsteyəxʷ (Tsawwasen) people. 

Curious about many things, my current interests weave in and around research-creation, disability, art and epistemology. I am in the first year of my PhD, supervised by Dr. Arseli Dokumacı. My doctoral research explores the transformative nature of access and intellectual disability in independent art and culture scenes. I am working on a range of projects with academic and community partners, such as a three-year long accessibility collaboration with the artist run gallery Centre CLARK (supported by a Mitacs Accelerate grant), research assistantship with the Explorations in Sensory Design Project and a textile and sound-based installation (supported by an Individual Research Grant from the Textiles & Materiality Milieux Cluster). 

As a core member of AIM, I co-coordinate the social media and collaborate on much of the lab’s happenings. I am also a member of the Textiles and Materiality Milleux Cluster, the Centre for Sensory Studies and the Feminist Media Studio at Concordia. My master’s thesis, titled “Craft-based Interviews: Intervening in Intellectual Ableism Through Research-Creation,” utilized textile-based co-creation to document first person experiences of intellectual and developmental disability. While exploring a new methodology, this research also entailed a critical analysis of the ableism that emerged in undertaking the work. 

I acknowledge that as a white settler I benefit from the imperalist, violent, and genocidal colonization of Turtle Island, and as such I approach my work through an anti-colonial and anti-racist lens. Recognizing the “non-performativity” (Ahmed, On Being Included) of empty acknowledgements, I name my positionality in my bio to be transparent and to hold myself accountable to colonial violence that will not be repaired through words but actions.  

If anything I touched on here resonates with you, please feel free to reach out (I’m friendly!). I am always interested in collaborating on projects around access, art, anti-colonial work and community engagement.  You can find out more about my work by clicking here.