Online: Art, Activism and Representation with Emily Waszak and Evgeny Shtorn
Info
Date:
October 10, 2020
Starts: Saturday 10 October
Time: 2pm – 4pm (GMT+1)
Workshop and Discussion
Cost: *Pay what you can
This online workshop will explore crucial and challenging questions around the ethics of representation and related tensions between art and activism. The issue of representation is made additionally complicated by observing the intersectional perspectives where the artist must simultaneously think about themselves in terms of their own class, race, gender and sexuality alongside that of the community within which they are working. This workshop will address these interrelated topics, examining the overlapping contradictions between activism and art.
*This workshop is free for those who are currently unwaged. We ask that if you can afford the ticket price, you contribute either €20 or €50 to support the payment of the facilitators on our programme.
Evgeny Shtorn is a writer, activist, and researcher from St Petersburg. Due to his involvement in civil society work he was forced to leave Russia in 2018. In 2019, he was granted international protection in the Republic of Ireland. He currently works as a Social and Cultural Diversity Consultant collaborating with different universities and NGO’s, (NUI Galway, UCD, Equality Fund at Rethink Ireland, Create – National Development Agency for Collaborative Arts among others), and co-facilitates a project with people seeking asylum ‘Something From There’ in the National Gallery of Ireland. Evgeny’s writing has been published in academic journals, anthologies and new media outlets in Russia, Spain, Germany, and Ireland. As an activist, he has been involved in human rights and LGBT advocacy for almost two decades. He is a co-founder of Queer Diaspora Ireland, an initative that supports LGBT people in direct provision. In 2019 he was awarded the Inclusion award by Galway Community Pride. In 2020, Shtorn was awarded the GALAs Person of the Year by the National LGBT Federation of Ireland (NXF).
Emily Waszak is a long-time anti-racist organiser and abolitionist originally from North Carolina. She is a founding member of MERJ (Migrants and Ethnic-minorities for Reproductive Justice), a grassroots group committed to making space for radical, affected-led political analysis from migrant and ethnic minority women, trans and non-binary people and fighting for reproductive justice in Ireland. Emily works as a textile artist and is a former recipient of the Arts Council‘s Artist in the Community Research and Development Award with Create. Her current work focuses on disrupting the white gaze and collective grief.
