Title: Co-Lead of Accessible Engagement Project (AEP) Pronouns: she/her Email: shanna@grunt.ca Ask them about: Accessible Engagement Project (AEP)
Name Pronunciation: Shah – nah
Biography
Shanna is a Curator bringing in experience collaborating with disadvantaged youths, emerging BIPOC artists and the Disability community in disability and BIPOC led community projects and exhibitions. She continues to work with artists with disabilities in consultation and developing transformative critical models in art spaces, expanding on inclusive curation, exhibition accessibility design, artist residencies and public programming.
She approaches projects through the disability justice lens of comfort and care practices, supporting the professional development and ongoing learning with, for and by artists with disabilities. Shanna is a Canadian-Chinese Hard of Hearing Curator, Project Coordinator and Printmaker.
Contact Information
Email: shanna@grunt.ca Shanna is Hard of Hearing and lipreads to communicate. She responds best through email and text messaging platforms. She is an oral speaker and will speak first to communicate. Feel free to send a quick email and/or text at shanna@grunt.ca.
Visual Description
Image Description: Shanna beams at the camera wearing a pale blue silky dress with a soft cardigan overtop. She wears her long dark hair down with blunt bangs falling across her forehead. Shanna is surrounded by large bright pink and orange obscure sculptures and paintings lining the black gallery walls.
She is small in stature, and you will find her wearing earthly-toned cozy outfits with a bounce in her small steps.
Title: Exhibitions and Accessibility Manager Co-Lead: Accessible Engagement Project with Shanna Cheng Pronouns: They/Them/Theirs Email: kay@grunt.ca Ask them about: Exhibitions, Access, Thursday’s Voice-Off and Low Sensory Visiting Hours, AEP, their cat Bobo. Here they share reflections on their participation in the non-verbal engagement project in 2024.
Name Pronunciation: K (like the English letter K) Slay-tehr
Biography
Video description: Kay signs their bio wearing a black mock turtle-neck shirt in front of a black background. For a full visual description of Kay, scroll down the page.
Kay Slater (Exhibitions and Accessibility Manager) is a multidisciplinary artist, creative access practitioner, accessibility consultant, exhibition designer, and arts worker. At grunt gallery, they work to plan and build exhibitions alongside our exhibiting artists as a preparator with more than 10 years of experience. They are co-lead on the Accessible Engagement Project (AEP), and chair the grunt accessibility committee.
They enjoy working directly with artists and organizations to build accessibility in at the planning stage, and to incorporate sustainable, grass roots strategies that support evolution in artistic presentation. Their work is rooted in anti-oppression practices, and they employ open source and community-engaged approaches to support ongoing knowledge transfer with makers and creators at all stages of their careers. They proudly work with the team at Queer ASL, and have completed the Rick Hansen Foundation’s Accessibility Certification program. Kay is passionate about sharing knowledge with the wider arts community, addressing assumptions, and embracing mistakes. Kay is a white european descendant and settler and is working to unlearn, relearn, and practice staying in their lane.
Kay is queer, mad and hard of hearing. They subscribe to the New Sincerity philosophy, which encourages people to embrace love and authenticity and to be more awesome.
Contact Information
Email: kay@grunt.ca Kay is hard of hearing and cannot hear on the phone. Voice messages by email are fine as they will use a caption tool or email you for more information. You can also call the gallery, 604–875–9516, and leave a message. Kay is a sometimes oral speaker, choosing to go non-verbal during special projects, to respect Deaf spaces, and to respect their own hearing fatigue. They lipread, use live captions, and text message to communmicate.
Visual Description
Kay is a white, middle-aged person with back-length hair the colour of wet West Coast sand. Their hair is shaved at the sides and back, and they often wear it up and away from their face. They have cow-brown eyes, a triple-pierced nose, double-pierced lip, and large, rosy cheeks. They have a yellowed, tea-stained, teeth-exposing smile that crinkles the corner of their eyes. They are of average to large build and stand 5’6 or 168 cm. Their figure reads as femme, and their clothing is neutral and casual in colour, fabric and style. Kay’s typically fingerspells their name in a quick cursive K-A-Y.
Image Description: Kay’s hair is pulled back with short hairs coming out of a bun above their shaved sides. They wear oversized plastic glasses and a face mask with a plastic visor that allows for lip reading.
