Whess Harman

Tribe: Carrier Witat / Lake Babine
Based In: Vancouver, BC
Email: whessharman@hotmail.com
Social Media: @ghost_suit
Website: whessharman.com

About the Art
I am a mixed race, trans/non-binary, Indigiqueer artist of the Carrier Witat Nation. In my work I try to create a space where I can visually reconcile and collect the intersections of my own compounded identities of gender and race to examine how they are integrated into my cultural views. This pursuit is chosen in opposition to the colonial paradigms of understanding that dominate these conversations. The intentions of my work come from a desire to shout and call forward while embracing the scrambled paroxysms of descriptors and salvaged language we use to be understood by others; to demand attention to both the necessity and absurdity we go through in finding the labels which best describe ourselves. The elevation of juxtapositions and fractures in language are strategies I use as a way of deliberately highlighting mistranslations and misunderstandings in identities that are constantly renovated and commissioned upon by ourselves and others.