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Create a Space: An Interview with Vera Frenkel
By Terence D***
From the early 1970s to the present, Canadian artist Vera Frenkel has produced a body of work that continues to resonate through the years. As geopolitical, aesthetic, and technological contexts have changed, her videos, installations, and online projects have acquired new meanings and her investigations into cultural memory and the impact of media on our sense of self and community have grown in depth. While much of her work was made before her mobility was impaired, its relevance when considered through the lens of disability is not surprising. As she reveals in the following interview, difference and inclusion have been ongoing concerns of hers for half a century.
Vera Frenkel, …from the Transit Bar
Could you explain your relationship with disability?
The reason I’m disabled is that I was in a train accident. I was on my way to a residency at Queens University and VIA Rail instructed us all to stand up immediately and be near the door. The train made a really wild gesture and I was thrown. My poor hosts saw me taken off on a [...]