Susan Aydan Abbott, Yvette Cenerini, Susan Lamberd, and Andrea von Wichert: Criptych

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Andrea von Wichert, "Trigger Warning: Satan (The Devil Made Me Do It)," 2020

Artists Susan Aydan Abbott, Yvette Cenerini, Susan Lamberd and Andrea von Wichert first came together as a group in 2019-20, during a media arts residency sponsored by Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba and Video Pool Media Arts Centre. Undertaking a conscious exploration of their relationship with technology in general and in terms of their individual artistic practices and lived experiences as persons with disabilities, the group art exhibit Criptych is the result of their investigations. They explore issues of embodiment, internal and external signs of "ability," and the various ways technology can affect personal and societal notions of well-being, health and normalacy. The work they create is deeply critical of outstanding systems, bound together by a radical reliance on one-another.

“We chose to be collectively responsible for each other,” the artists write, “of witnessing one another ‘witness oneself.’” Jenel Shaw, the Executive Director of AANM, continues to be a primary organizer of the exhibition and its events, ensuring their accessibility.

The exhibition will open on Thursday, September 16 at 7:30 PM. Andrea von Wichert will be performing her work, Trigger Warning: Satan, just once at 8 PM that evening. Viewing is free, but registration is required and seating is extremely limited due to current safety measures.

The following day, the AGSM and the artists invite the public to a Lunch & Look at 1:00 PM, an opportunity to engage the artists with their work in a casual setting.

Wrapping up opening weekend is a panel discussion about disability issues from 1 to 3 PM on Saturday, September 18. Both the Lunch & Look and the panel discussion will be hybrid in-person and live-streamed events.

About the artists

Using casts of her body and face, Susan Aydan Abbott's work links architecture and landscape to her own personal history as she directly transfers the pain of her experiences against and into her environment. Flashes of memory and raw emotion inform her work, revealing glimpses of the process of coping and living with unresolved trauma.

Yvette Cenerini is a Francophone Métis visual artist who has participated in group shows in Manitoba, Québec, and Ontario, including a solo exhibition at La Maison des artistes, Winnipeg. Her work in photo collage is characterized by the use of animal-as-subject. It examines the intricacies of emotion through a simple aesthetic that is laden with sarcastic undertones. Having obtained both a BEd (2001) and a BFA (2010), knowledge-sharing in the forms of teaching, mentoring, cultural mediation and community engagement are important facets of her practice.

Susan Lamberd is a multi-disciplinary artist interested in challenging the preconceived notions of what an artist with a disability can create. She positions the body as the central theme of her work. Diverse media communicate ideas of access in the arts, reject the view of disability that conventional artists have maintained, and aid in discovering radical new ways in which to express these beliefs.

Andrea von Wichert is a Winnipeg visual artist/writer/performer. A self-identified clown who explores abjection as identity, her work often muses on the failure to meet culturally-defined expectations on a consistent and chronic basis. Known as a fearless performer and provocative writer and orator, she has performed spoken word internationally and collaborated with orchestral musicians and composers, witchdoctors and various other eccentric weirdos. She has produced independent performance- and art department-heavy short films and live theatre. Her creative non-fiction has been published in Prairie Fire Magazine and in a number of anthologies designed to rile the patriarchy. She has spent some time studying towards a Master of Arts at the department of English, Film and Theatre at the University of Manitoba.