Vanessa Godden | Adrienne Matheuszik
Diasporic Futurisms is a collaborative curatorial team comprised of Adrienne Matheuszik and Vanessa Godden. This collaborative curatorial endeavor works to create space for Indigenous, Black and racialized peoples whose artworks are based in the genre of diasporic futurisms.
Matheuszik and Godden define diasporic futurisms as the presentation of alternative perspectives of the present, predictions of the future, and creative approaches to reimagining the past. Within the movement of diasporic futurisms, the destabilization of white-supremacy, colonisation, and capitalism in relation to the lives of diasporic peoples are a primary concern. In diasporic futurisms, these concerns are materialized through the genres of Fantasy, Magical Realism, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, and related subgenres.
The collaborative team, Diasporic Futurisms is radically reimaging and reimagining IBPoC diasporic futurisms in the arts through the impact of a global pandemic and the increased visibility of police brutality. Diasporic Futurisms is continually working to build immersive and inclusive arts experiences that radically resist patriarchal, heteronormative, ableist, and racist oppression.
Diasporic Futurisms are the winners of Subtle Technologies's 2020 Curatorial Mentorship program, and will be programming festivals and events in partnership with Subtle Technologies between 2020-2021
illustration by Karla Monterrosa
Adrienne Matheuszik is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Ontario, currently exploring ideas of representation, identity and subjectivity through working with digital mediums such as augmented reality, video, sculpture and interactive installation. She has an MFA from OCAD University from the Interdisciplinary Masters of Art Media and Design Graduate program (2019), and a BFA from University of Ottawa with a specialization in New Media Art (2014).
Adrienne [she|her]: I am a new media artist who loves/hates space and the future. I’m interested in speculative narratives and design that imagine the best/worst possibilities for the future. I am particularly interested in issues of identity, visibility, and perception.
Vanessa Godden is a queer Indo-Trinidadian and Euro-Canadian artist and academic based in Toronto, Canada. Vanessa has a PhD from the Victorian College of the Arts (2020), supported through the Melbourne International Research Scholarship and Melbourne International Fee Remission Scholarship. They received their MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2014) and BFA from the University of Houston (2012). Their artistic practice uses performative gestures to explore how personal histories of sexual assault, cultural heritage, and the body in relation to geographic space can be conveyed through material engagements with the body.
Vanessa [they|them]: I’m a performance|video artist who draws from Caribbean folklore and horror film aesthetics to speak about my experiences of embodied trauma. I love teen sci-fi and fantasy novels + tv, enjoy feminist speculative fiction, here for all the anime, and am an avid horror film enthusiast.