Artist Resident Announcement: Peter Hobbs
This Is Not Art Therapy, the artist studio residency program at the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation (PWA), is very pleased to announce the new resident artist to launch the program’s second year, Peter Hobbs. Peter Hobbs will occupy the PWA studio from November 7 to December 9, 2016.
Download the This Is Not Art Therapy Peter Hobbs flyer (pdf 904 KB)
Peter Hobbs
is a Toronto-based artist and researcher who has a long history of creative interaction with community and queerness. For his residency, titled The PWA Queer Ecospirits Lab, Hobbs will “work directly with individual clients to develop a creative lab that uses Allan Gardens [Conservatory] as a space of communal importance (historical, ecologically, and spiritually), with the ultimate goal of producing an invocation/séance event.” The PWA Queer Ecospirits Lab mirrors a significant art-based project produced in collaboration with senior Canadian artist, AA Bronson (co-founder of General Idea), Queer Spirits (2008-2010).
Hobbs recently received his Ph.D. through the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, under the supervision of Professor Cate Sandilands. This Is Not Art Therapy heartily welcomes Dr. Hobbs to the PWA studio and community. He will hold open studio hours on Tuesdays from 11am-6pm, and Wednesdays and Thursdays from 11am- 7pm. During these times, everyone is welcome and encouraged to stop by and visit with Peter.
About This Is Not Art Therapy
This Is Not Art Therapy comes directly from a call from the community for a place for art, not art therapy, at PWA. During PWA’s most recent strategic planning process, a passionate and vocal group demanded the re-engagement of art and HIV, remembering the bold and transformative works of previous artistic practices—such as that of Toronto-based artist group, General Idea—as a means of HIV expression, education, and activism. The focus on art, and not art therapy, came from the conviction to not “pathologize” PHAs but rather to empower them to take on active roles of expression and engagement through art at PWA.
This Is Not Art Therapy is developed by PWA in collaboration with artist Andrew Zealley/Disco Hospital. Zealley was PWA’s artist-in-residence from July 2015 through March 2016. This Is Not Art Therapy is both a community-based research initiative and the site of Zealley’s doctoral research into “artistic responses to the biopolitics of HIV/AIDS.” For more information about Zealley’s creative practice, visit www.andrewzealley.com. This Is Not Art Therapy is generously funded by the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN).
Read the full announcement (pdf 104 KB)
