MacKenzie Art Gallery Residency Plays with Minecraft

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How do you hold an artist residency during a pandemic? In Regina, the MacKenzie Art Gallery’s response is a new digital residency using Minecraft, a video game where players can explore digital spaces and build anything they imagine. 

Four artists – Cat Haines, Simon M. Benedict, Travess Smalley and Huidi Xiang – will use Minecraft as a virtual studio and exhibition space to explore ideas of queer and trans intimacies, Indigeneity, language and performance.

"I'm incredibly excited to see how these artists can re-imagine the creative potential of Minecraft," says the MacKenzie's director, John Hampton.

“Artists have always pushed the boundaries of experience and explored creative mediums in new ways, and this type of work opens up new audiences and understandings for where art happens and what it can do."

Haines, a Regina artist, is the first residency participant. She will construct digital representations of her own body, creating a trans-feminist intervention into the “cissexist feminist art canon.”

Her exhibition opens to the public on May 6. Participants will be able to interact with the artist in Minecraft. An artist talk will be live-streamed to the MacKenzie’s Facebook and YouTube accounts on May 20.

Source: MacKenzie Art Gallery