I Am YEG Arts: Cindy Baker

Cindy Baker: a contemporary artist with an interdisciplinary research-intensive practice, working at the forefront of queer, gender, race, disability, fat and art discourses. From early on as a performance artist with what she describes as a ​“taboo body,” body politics and fat liberation have been integral to her artistic practice. Cindy’s next project not only pairs exceedingly well with some of her most-oft visited themes, it will also exercise her well-honed research chops. The Edmonton-based artist was recently recommended for the Coronation Recreation Centre public art project. Currently under construction, the Coronation Recreation Centre will serve as a community hub for central-north Edmonton that meets the leisure, health and wellness needs of residents of all ages. For the project, Cindy will create site-specific freestanding sculpture(s) for the facility’s large exterior entrance plaza.

This week for the blog, we talked with artist Cindy Baker about her initial plans for her new public art commission and got the scoop on her solo show currently on at dc3 Arts Projects.

Tell us about yourself and your connection to Edmonton.

I’m a queer, fat, disabled, contemporary, interdisciplinary and performance artist based here in Edmonton. I was born and raised in Leduc, and I moved to Edmonton in the 90s to go to school at the University of Alberta, where I got a Bachelor of Fine Arts. And I worked at the Fine Arts Building Gallery, the Works Art & Design Festival, Latitude 53 Gallery, Harcourt House Artist Run Centre, and Metro Cinema. So, I was deeply involved in the arts community before I decided it was time to move away. I was away for several years but Edmonton’s home to my family, my support system, all my networks of people, my communities, and I just couldn’t stay away.

How did you get your start as an artist? Was it always plan A for you?

My parents were both teachers, so I always thought that I had to grow up to be a teacher too, but I always really wanted to be an artist. My mom’s sister was an artist and I just idolized her and everything she did. And I was always drawing, painting, sewing, sculpting, crafting — doing crafts and art of all kinds. I never had a preferred medium, but I was just always making and working with my hands, so I always knew that no matter what I did for a living, I was always going to be an artist. I don’t think I ever expected to make a living at art, but there is no way that I wasn’t going to make art throughout my life.

Is there a narrative or discourse you find yourself returning to in your work?

I have a few major themes running through my work. To start with, the body, especially fat bodies and othered bodies are a major theme in my work. As a performance artist with a fat body and — what I call a taboo body — I knew it was always going to be read into the content of my work, so very early on in my career I made a point to become involved in body politics and fat liberation, to really inform the work and enrich the content. Productivity is another theme running through my work, questioning and resisting the moral imperatives of body, health and self-care that imply there are good bodies and bad bodies. That to strive towards being a good little productive cog in the wheel is a moral good. Therefore those who can’t, or who fail to be this really strident definition of productive from our work lives to how we enact self-care, are inferior humans and less worthy of care or social support. So that’s one of the major themes I think that has run through my work in the last decade.

And there are a lot of beds in my art and not on purpose, that’s just kind of how it goes, beds and relaxation and toys and leisure activities like hot tubs and tricycles and swimming pools. I just keep coming back to rest and that idea of resisting productivity in the name of privileging and honouring the body’s needs and care for one another being just as important as self-care.

These are subjects that have become very topical in recent years, have you noticed a difference in the reception to your work?

I think my work used to be a bit ahead of the curve and now I think it’s very sort of right in what’s being talked about in the world right now, especially to do with self-care and these neoliberal impulses towards productivity. And the world falling apart has us all questioning what we should be doing with our lives and our time. I think, especially since the pandemic started, we’ve all been rethinking what it is that we want to do with our time and our lives.

Tell us about the Coronation Recreation Centre public art commission that you’ve recently been awarded. What drew you to the project?

I’m really excited about it. I think the fact that the work will be connected to a leisure centre, which is also paradoxically basically a triathlon training facility, meshes so well with the themes I come back to again and again in my work. There’s nothing leisurely about athletic training. It’s work, and it should be valued as work, even if it’s not the productive kind of capitalist labour that we’ve been taught to value. And on the flip side, I want to talk about leisure in a way that disconnects it from any need to perform, to perform work especially. I want to honor those who train and who engage in leisure activities as well, and those who can’t or don’t or won’t, for any number of really valid reasons connected to bodies and time and desire and priorities and ability. Whether that’s a body ability, financial ability, or what have you.

Is this your first foray into public art? Tell us about how it overlaps or differs from your overall art practice. 

It’s not exactly my first foray into public art, considering that my performance practice is often interventive and happens in public spaces, and is meant to be encountered by and engaged with by a general public. But it’s definitely my first permanent public sculpture project. I don’t consider myself a sculptor in the traditional sense, but I do make a lot of objects. And in my object making practice, no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to stop making big things that really have a presence. So, I do feel like this project is a natural extension of my practice and hopefully a new direction for my practice to grow into.

Tell us about your interdisciplinary research-based approach. Will it be an important part of your creative process for this commission?

Yeah, I don’t think any other project that I’ve done has put my research chops to the test as much as this one will. It’ll be a really integral part of the creative process for this project. In research-creation practices in general, the research exists as much in the making as in engaging in traditional research methods. Which for me, and for this project specifically, means that all the making I’ve done in my practice to date exists as a body of research that’s led me to this commission and will really inform and shape the work, and then in turn, the making of this work is its own research that will lead me to my next projects; be they new artworks, journal publications, conference presentations or incorporation into my university teachings. They’re all one big whole in my work.

As you’re working on this commission is it spurring on new ideas or potential new directions that you’ll take from here in your practice?

As I develop the ideas for this project, I can see the threads coming out of other work that I’ve done. I don’t think that that’s unique, I think most artists have common threads that run through the work. But it’s really interesting as I’ve grown and progressed in my career. It used to be that things felt very individual and from one project to the next, I didn’t necessarily see those threads, but now I really see them throughout all the work.

What does community mean to you and where do you find it? What will your community engagement approach be for this public art project? 

Community for me is family, whether that’s blood family or chosen family, social networks and support systems. Community is my stomping grounds, workplaces, and favorite haunts. So, I find community where I find my people and that’s for me, artists, fat community, queer community, thinkers and lovers of culture. For this project, more than talking to geographic community, I want to consult with people and organizations that are attached to communities that are traditionally underserved by public art projects and by recreation centres too; people with reduced access to financial resources, people who feel disconnected from that kind of facility, queer people and disabled people, people with mental health concerns. All those whose various demographics put them into the categories of those who don’t fit those definitions of moral good, as defined by their abilities or their bodies or their productivity.

Tell us about your current solo exhibit at dc3 Art Projects.

The show is called Things I’ve Forgotten, and it’s part of an ongoing work about my dreams. I spent about 10 years collecting a journal of my dreams. I would wake up every morning and write down my dream from the night before, and then never look back on it again. After 10 years I decided to start rereading my dreams and I was fascinated by the fact that they were so old and had long been forgotten because even though I wrote them down, I would forget about them shortly afterwards, like I think most of us do. I would read these dreams and they would be completely new to me and were completely foreign. So, I got to experience them for the first time, but then slowly the memory of the dream came back to me, and I could see all the images vividly and hear the sounds and smell the smells. It was as though the dreams had really happened and I was remembering them as a memory and at the same time I was kind of going through having heard stories about this trauma that happened when I was a kid but not remembering it, and I thought what if by reliving these dreams and pulling them to the surface what if I could bring this trauma to the surface as well? So, it sounds a bit like it was meant to be therapeutic, but I’m an artist and nothing is quite so literal, so I went about this project of working with my dreams to try and change myself as a person and see how I could be affected by this.

One of the works in the show is a collaboration by Scott Smallwood and me — he’s a local audio artist — and together we recorded 20 different voice actors reciting my 10-year journal of dreams and created this really beautiful cloud of sound of all these overlapping voices, it’s an 8‑channel audio installation of all these overlapping voices. It’s difficult to pick out any individual dream or any individual voice, but it does create this soundscape when you go in, that adds to the surrealness I think and beauty of it. It’s very dreamlike.

What excites you most about the Edmonton arts scene right now?

I think Edmonton is exciting in general. I’ve only been back in a permanent way for a few years, but I think growth and change is what’s most exciting to me. The arts scene here kind of feels like it’s breathing and changing and growing and maybe that’s exciting to me because I feel like I’m changing and growing too, which is exciting in its own way and makes me feel connected to Edmonton. I have to say that I love Edmonton cinema, theatre, festivals, music and dance, but my heart really belongs to visual and performance art. So, the galleries and the artists and the public art are what really grounds me to this city.

Want more YEG Arts Stories? We’ll be sharing them here and on social media using the hashtag #IamYegArts. Follow along! You can catch Cindy Baker’s exhibition Things I’ve forgotten at dc3 Art Projects. It’s on until May 13, and as part of the exhibit programming, there will be performances on April 27 at 7 pm and a closing reception on May 13 from 6 – 10 pm. Keep up with Cindy on Instagram, Facebook, or visit her website.

About Cindy Baker

Cindy Baker is a contemporary artist based in Western Canada whose work engages with queer, gender, race, disability, fat, and art discourses. Committed to ethical community engagement and critical social enquiry, Baker’s interdisciplinary research-based practice draws upon 25 years working, volunteering, and organizing in the communities of which she is part. She moves fluidly between the arts, humanities, and social sciences, emphasizing the theoretical and conceptual over material concerns. Baker holds an MFA from the University of Lethbridge where she received a SSHRC grant for her research in performance in the absence of the artist’s body; she has exhibited and performed across Canada and internationally. Helping found important community and advocacy organizations over the course of her career, Baker continues to maintain volunteer leadership roles across her communities.