The first thing you see when you enter the Tangled Art + Disability gallery is a padded bench upholstered in a pink velvety fabric. Two small plaques facing in opposite directions have been placed on top of the pile. They read, \u201cI need a minute.\u201d This work by artist, writer, and performer jes sachse speaks to another collaboration with Papalia, Provisional Structures<\/em>, which was exhibited at the MacKenzie Art Gallery from June to October 2021. At one of the entrances to the MacKenzie\u200a\u2014\u200acalling to mind the traditional \u201cdonor wall\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200ais a series of more than eight hundred \u201cI need a minute\u201d plaques. Here, sachse is asserting their body, insisting on the consideration and compassion that other bodies might expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Graze past the plush bench toward the screen where artist and educator Sage Lovell fills the frame. They are speaking in American Sign Language, but there are no voiceovers or subtitles. Above the screen, written in interdisciplinary artist Aislinn Thomas\u2019s hand, are the words \u201cThe Possibilities of Care as a Sculpture.\u201d You realize that you are part of creating this work, an \u201congoing, collective effort,\u201d which Thomas has imagined as an invisible sculpture created by the physical and emotional labour of those present. Through collective effort, the space has been made fragrance-free and accessible to those whose bodies would otherwise react with pain and illness. (Thomas created a PDF resource to accompany the exhibition: \u201cFragrance Free at the RMG and Tangled Art + Disability.\u201d Among the information in this document: \u201cEven products labelled \u2018scent-free\u2019 may contain masking fragrance. Please read the ingredients list on product labels to ensure that no fragrance, perfume, essential oils, or masking fragrance is present.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The words that Lovell is signing are the extended and alternate titles for the piece:<\/p>\n\n\n\n ongoing, collective effort and learning in appreciation and humble recognition of bodily complexity, permeability, and vulnerability, as well as the interdependent nature of our survival, our thrival<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n OR<\/p>\n\n\n\n fragrance-free sculpture piece (in which we imagine and co-create toxicant-free access and fragrance-freedom as a fragile, dynamic, invisible sculpture co-created by the efforts of everyone who is present and everyone who maintains this space)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Turning to your left, you come upon Jessica Karuhanga\u2019s audio work You Feel Me? <\/em>(2021). Take the earphones off the hook, clip the belt around your waist or around your body like a sash, and press play. Da-da-da-dummm. Tap-tap-tap-tap.<\/em> It\u2019s an instrumental piece, co-produced with Emilio Portal, that is at once meditative and eerie. As the music plays, you feel a humming over your abdomen, vibrations from the portable amp that you\u2019re now wearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, the lively red lines by Heather Kai Smith. Hands playing string games. Fingers stitched together become a loose seam for another to share. Three frames are screening on the wall. Kai Smith and Papalia have worked together on this animation. The lines form hands passing a ball, a circle of bodies lifting and lowering a parachute, and sometimes there is just a blank screen. Narration\u200a\u2014\u200aby turns a male- and a female-sounding voice\u200a\u2014\u200afades in and out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Open Access\u2026 is a perpetual <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n negotiation\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n is radically different\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n is the root system\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n is\u2026 temporary\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Vanessa Dion Fletcher\u2019s quillwork Relative Gradient<\/em> (2020), red becomes pink, yellow, brown, white. Looking closely at the inkjet print of the quillwork, you see that the porcupine quills have been dyed, flattened, folded back and forth in a zigzag pattern, forming a line that has been drawn into a circle. Dion Fletcher dyes quills using edible plants such as hibiscus, onion, and blueberry. \u201cWatching porcupine quills absorb colour\u2026 I don\u2019t have words to describe the feeling,\u201d she has said in an online Tangled Art Talk, copresented by the gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario. \u201cI can understand the physical and chemical process that is happening\u2026 There\u2019s still something about it that\u2019s beyond my comprehension.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Queer Phenomenology <\/em>(2006), Sara Ahmed writes, \u201cOrientations shape not only how we inhabit space, but how we apprehend this world of shared inhabitance, as well as \u2018who\u2019 or \u2018what\u2019 we direct our energy and attention toward.\u201d Undeliverable<\/em> is disorienting in many ways. The exhibition is being held in two locations, Tangled Art + Disability and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG), with different opening and closing dates and different works on view. Interdisciplinary artist, musician, and writer Chandra Melting Tallow is included only in the RMG show, for example. Their installation, Blood Count <\/em>(2021), features four dresses decorated with beadwork of graphic scores illustrating a lifetime of memories. The work is inspired by a dress that Tallow\u2019s great-grandmother made for Tallow\u2019s mother. Ahmed writes that bodies and spaces inhabit each other, and you see this happening in a tactile way\u200a\u2014\u200aboth what is there, as with Karuhanga\u2019s vibrating sash that asks you to feel, and what is not, as with Thomas\u2019s sculpture, which asks you to notice that you don\u2019t smell any scent. These sensations are also affective: you have a feeling of joy seeing others play ball or string games, for instance. Ahmed also suggests that becoming (dis)oriented is a matter not only of space but of time\u200a\u2014\u200athe time we take and the time we give up. For example, Thomas\u2019s sculpture and Karuhanga\u2019s soundscape are created with you in the present. Tension is felt here. The music will play for thirty-seven minutes. Will you stay in the gallery, listening, vibrating, for thirty-seven minutes? With its demands and desires, Undeliverable<\/em> is a space and time that holds the messiness of your embodiment, where new bodies of knowledge are formed.<\/p>\n![\"105_CR_OConnor_ChandraMeltingTallow_BloodCount\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/105_CR_OConnor_ChandraMeltingTallow_BloodCount-scaled.jpg\")
Blood Count<\/em>, installation view, 2021.
Photo : courtesy of Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"105_CR_OConnor_JessicaKaruhanga_youfeelme\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/105_CR_OConnor_JessicaKaruhanga_youfeelme-scaled.jpg\")
U Feel Me<\/em>, installation view, 2021.
Photo : courtesy of Tangled Art + Disability, Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"105_CR_OConnor_VanessaDionFletcher_RelativeGradient\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/105_CR_OConnor_VanessaDionFletcher_RelativeGradient-scaled.jpg\")
Relative Gradient <\/em>(expanded), installation view, 2021.
Photo : courtesy of Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n