Art From Here Virtual Studio Visit | Mitchell Chalifoux
Art From Here
Skirt, 2020.
“I make art to examine my complicity in the slippery overlaps between hyperfemininity, sexuality, whiteness, and value. Using self-taught craft skills and quilting methods, I investigate muddled feminine signifiers, and the borders and slippages between femininities, and femmeness.
My previous work ruminates on the politics of doing and undoing specific white femininities, and my attraction to embodying them. I operate under a self-enforced material scarcity, utilizing improvised quilting, drag performance, experimental printing, and fabric dying methods. Fabricating, smothering, and softening surfaces of prestige, and decadence, reveal a pillow queen’s aesthetics, and a quilter/drag performer’s resourcefulness. This hyperfeminine playhouse gives space to think about my connection to the troubling systems where white women, femmes, and I do and do not wield power. Layered with existing in a real body and in a drag character of Belle of the Blue Balls, we create performances, costumes, and clothes together.
Belle is the site where I reveal myself through deception, being me by becoming someone else – or more of me. In blurred performances, handmade ‘historical’ garments, and laminated veils of intimate, and awkward narratives, I build and unravel these illusions, fears, and desires. Through her, I respond to the unreality of gender with more theatrics without discerning plot, truth, or fiction.
My work currently upholds and supports myself. In future, I will use the remnants, cutoffs, and collected textiles to build new garments in collaboration with/for other performers. Costuming and garment making as an act to lift up others. I want to build new futures with discarded things in search of people’s dreams.”
Mitchell Chalifoux (any pronouns) is an emerging artist and arts worker based in amiskwaciwâskahikan ‘Edmonton’ on Treaty 6 territory. They hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Alberta. Working in performance, print, and craft, their art practice contemplates resourcefulness, hobby forms, decoration, and femininities. Collaborating with existing materials in a scarce present and future is core to Mitchell’s working methods. Most recently, Mitchell has participated in the Venice International Performance Art Week (Venice, ITA), and in the Zero Gravity Performance Art Workshop (Edmonton, AB). They currently work at the Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts, and while not making art, spends their time baking and waiting for summer blooms.
