Coronation Recreation Centre Public Art Project
From I Am YEG Arts Interview with Cindy Baker
Tell us about the Coronation Recreation Centre public art commission that you’ve recently been awarded. What drew you to the project?
I’m really excited about it. I think the fact that the work will be connected to a leisure centre, which is also paradoxically basically a triathlon training facility, meshes so well with the themes I come back to again and again in my work. There’s nothing leisurely about athletic training. It’s work, and it should be valued as work, even if it’s not the productive kind of capitalist labour that we’ve been taught to value. And on the flip side, I want to talk about leisure in a way that disconnects it from any need to perform, to perform work especially. I want to honor those who train and who engage in leisure activities as well, and those who can’t or don’t or won’t, for any number of really valid reasons connected to bodies and time and desire and priorities and ability. Whether that’s a body ability, financial ability, or what have you.
Is this your first foray into public art? Tell us about how it overlaps or differs from your overall art practice.
It’s not exactly my first foray into public art, considering that my performance practice is often interventive and happens in public spaces, and is meant to be encountered by and engaged with by a general public. But it’s definitely my first permanent public sculpture project. I don’t consider myself a sculptor in the traditional sense, but I do make a lot of objects. And in my object making practice, no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to stop making big things that really have a presence. So, I do feel like this project is a natural extension of my practice and hopefully a new direction for my practice to grow into.
Tell us about your interdisciplinary research-based approach. Will it be an important part of your creative process for this commission?
Yeah, I don’t think any other project that I’ve done has put my research chops to the test as much as this one will. It’ll be a really integral part of the creative process for this project. In research-creation practices in general, the research exists as much in the making as in engaging in traditional research methods. Which for me, and for this project specifically, means that all the making I’ve done in my practice to date exists as a body of research that’s led me to this commission and will really inform and shape the work, and then in turn, the making of this work is its own research that will lead me to my next projects; be they new artworks, journal publications, conference presentations or incorporation into my university teachings. They’re all one big whole in my work.
As you’re working on this commission is it spurring on new ideas or potential new directions that you’ll take from here in your practice?
As I develop the ideas for this project, I can see the threads coming out of other work that I’ve done. I don’t think that that’s unique, I think most artists have common threads that run through the work. But it’s really interesting as I’ve grown and progressed in my career. It used to be that things felt very individual and from one project to the next, I didn’t necessarily see those threads, but now I really see them throughout all the work.
What does community mean to you and where do you find it? What will your community engagement approach be for this public art project?
Community for me is family, whether that’s blood family or chosen family, social networks and support systems. Community is my stomping grounds, workplaces, and favorite haunts. So, I find community where I find my people and that’s for me, artists, fat community, queer community, thinkers and lovers of culture. For this project, more than talking to geographic community, I want to consult with people and organizations that are attached to communities that are traditionally underserved by public art projects and by recreation centres too; people with reduced access to financial resources, people who feel disconnected from that kind of facility, queer people and disabled people, people with mental health concerns. All those whose various demographics put them into the categories of those who don’t fit those definitions of moral good, as defined by their abilities or their bodies or their productivity.
