Bio
K. MacNeil is a genderqueer American-Canadian artist, educator, writer, and curator currently residing in Tkaronto (Toronto).
MacNeil’s work has exhibited internationally in France, China, Canada, and throughout numerous institutions across the US including the Print Center New York, the Western New York Book Arts Center, and Print Austin’s The Contemporary Print. Their work has been funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Mark Diamond Research Fund (SUNY Buffalo), and the South Carolina Arts Commission. MacNeil was awarded the Hexagon Fellowship at Open Studio (Toronto, ON) and they have completed residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Tsinghua University (Beijing, China).
MacNeil holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University at Buffalo and a BA in Studio Art from the College of Charleston. They are an Assistant Professor of Printing History, Culture and Practice, Teaching Stream at the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto.
Artist statement
I am deeply interested in the ways print media intersects with performance art. Broadly, I use printmaking, instructions, performance, and performative mark-making to explore embodied understandings of gender, illness, and trauma. In my print-based work, my practice explores bodily impressions and queers notions of the matrix and substrate.
I am interested in the moments when the boundaries between viewer and artist break down and become enmeshed. My work invites a queer intimacy of direct relation with material and viewer. Whether it’s following a set of instructions, eating a piece of paper, or envisioning the actions behind a series of marks, in these relations, each enact a vulnerability and a responsiveness.
Through this push and pull between artist and material, material and viewer, viewer and artist, roles and boundaries are subtly queered. These intimate moments question the solidity of interpersonal connections to point at the mutability of bodies in contact.