Main Gallery:
Toxic Bodies, an ongoing project of thinking through bioremediation and experiences of chronic illness
Sarah Mihara Creagen
October 5 – November 23 | 2024
Reception: October 5, 2024 | 1-2pm
Followed by a performance: 2-4pm
Toxic Bodies is an ongoing project exploring the connection between personal experiences of chronic illness and the bioremediation growing process of healing and restoring contaminated land through plant and fungi growth.
Enacting the bioremediation process has been the focus of Garden of Repairs, an active bioremediation garden and current collaborative project with Zoe Hayes and the City of Hamilton, Ontario on unused city land. Working collaboratively with the plants in this garden to remove toxins found in the soil from leftover industry, and being in relation to phytoremediators over the last 18 months, has inspired this current body of work. Sarah’s work is informed by her long-term relationships to the medical system as a chronically ill and disabled queer person of Japanese and White settler heritage.
Toxic Bodies with Neutral Ground Artist Run Centre incorporates new drawings and performance installation work. Sarah is grateful for the support of the Ontario Arts Council in creating new work for this show.
Sarah Mihara Creagen is a white passing mixed-race Japanese Canadian Queer artist born in Nova Scotia and currently living in Toronto. Her practice consists of research into intersecting histories of the medical system and botany, and considers these topics through personal experiences of queerness, chronic illness and disability while living with Crohn’s Disease. Sarah received her MFA in 2018 from Hunter College (NYC) and was a 2018 Queer|Art Mentorship Fellow. She has had solo exhibitions at Katharine Mulherin’s NO FOUNDATION gallery (Toronto), SPRING/BREAK Art Show and Hercules Studios Gallery in New York City, and multiple artist-run centres across Canada including Montreal, Halifax, and London, ON.
Her work has been featured in The NY Times “What to See in New York Art Galleries Right Now”, Hyperallergic, and Visual Arts News. Sarah’s work has been supported through multiple visual artist grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Art Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
Image: Sarah Mihara Creagen, iv cyanotype (detail), 2024
