June – July 2019:

Ryan Josey

Over the course of a two-month residency at Eastern Edge, Ryan will develop Monad a new two-part project consisting of a sculptural installation and a text to be performed live alongside the object. Responding to letter-box church signs and their recent tendency to share twitter-length messages IRL, Ryan’s work at Eastern Edge will be to develop a text that walks viewers through a complex and critical response he had to a particular sign in his hometown of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Informed by literary analysis, postcolonial theory, diaristic poetry and queer ontology, Ryan’s text will deconstruct one particular message from this sign and turn inside out its tangle of assumption, belonging and identity.

RYAN JOSEY is a Nova Scotian artist practicing writing and visual art. Through image, text and text-based performance, video, sculpture and installation his work has explored translation, dislocation and the field of identity through the lens of queerness. He has been supported by grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and Arts Nova Scotia, and has participated in residencies internationally including the New York Arts Practicum (New York); the Centre for Art Tapes (Halifax); the Arteles Creative Centre (Finland); the Khyber Centre for the Arts (Halifax); and Plug In ICA partnered with DIS.art (Winnipeg).