Lisa Anita Wegner

Tag Archives: tangled art + disability

July 13, 2022 The Role of The Artist in Society

I believe every child is born an artist, and retains creative urges even into an adult life where it seems they may have been lost. During dark times, it is our role as artists to dream up the future and propose new ideas of what’s possible for the future; and then make our dreams resonate with others, to spark their dormant imaginations.

The theme that runs through my work is Liberation Through Dreaming, and I use my stories and art to tell hard stories elegantly and with humour to bring attention to poverty, disability and social injustice. Through comedy and absurdity, I invite the audience into my crip universe, where we all can be stars and agents of change; and our imaginations are nurtured so that we can thrive and dazzle.

Being on ODSP and living below the poverty line has opened my eyes to the harsh realities of disabled life in Toronto. I want to dazzle the public with my otherworldly art, to spread awareness to foster change. I want to propose brand new ways of thinking and doing things, and welcome others to dream of a future where disabled folx are nurtured and cared for, not discriminated against and hidden away. The more people I can reach and invite to join my dreaming, the stronger the creative force for change will become.

As a public artist, I also want to astonish people with magic in unexpected places. Particularly in the current climate of fear and anger growing in the shadow of the global pandemic, I believe that putting art out into the world – free and equally available to everyone – is the way to uplift people and restore faith.

Share this:

• Tweet
• More

Like this:

Like Loading...

Tags: accessability, Canadian Art, lisa anita wegner, performance art, tangled art + disability

• Leave a comment
• Posted under Uncategorized

• Blog Posts

  • May 15, 2023 Mysterious gifts in the mail
  • July 25, 2022 Seeking Cotton Candy Administrator
  • July 13, 2022 Stretching Through Dimensions Like Lions Tied by Spheres
  • July 13, 2022 The Role of The Artist in Society
  • July 4, 2022 my open windows

• Lisa’s facebook

  Lisa’s facebook

• 

• mental inertia, clichés and bad jokes

  Lisa Anita Wegner (°1973, Toronto, Canada) creates performances, installations, films and conceptual artworks. By parodying mass media by exaggerating certain formal aspects inherent to our contemporary society, Wegner makes works that can be seen as self-portraits. Sometimes they appear idiosyncratic and quirky, at other times, they seem typical by-products of American superabundance and marketing.

  Her performances often refers to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, her works references post-colonial theory as well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of resistance against the logic of the capitalist market system.

  Her work urges us to renegotiate performance as being part of a reactive or – at times – autistic medium, commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society. By using popular themes such as sexuality, family structure and violence, she creates with daily, recognizable elements, an unprecedented situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and has to reconsider his biased position.

  Her works demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a ‘corporate world’, she touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matter can be recognized, such as the relation with popular culture and media, working with repetition, provocation and the investigation of the process of expectations.

  Her works are saturated with obviousness, mental inertia, clichés and bad jokes. They question the coerciveness that is derived from the more profound meaning and the superficial aesthetic appearance of an image.

  -500 Letters