mia susan amir
Co-Director
mia, (she/they) is a queer, Crip+Mad Jew of mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardi ascent. mia works at the intersection of creative and community practice as an educator, cultural organizer, curator, producer, and transdisciplinary performance maker. mia’s artistic practice spans writing, sound design, dramaturgy, direction, performance, and political intervention. mia is interested in the ways in which live performance offers a prefigurative space to investigate the conditions shaping our world, to challenge and expand perception, to unearth relationship, and to engage in democratic narrative production, starting from the site of physical sensation. mia has taught and presented their research, as well as their solo and collaborative performance works, nationally and internationally. mia is also the founding Co-Producer of Unsettling Dramaturgy. Most importantly, mia is a single mama to her kiddo, amadh solas.
Contact mia at mia@openaccessfoundation.org
Image Description
A very close-up photo of the left side of mia’s face. mia’s skin is freckled and light olive-toned. Whisps of brown and white hair curl around mia’s face. mia has a beauty mark on their upper cheek. They are smiling with their mouth and with their visible eye, punctuated by crows feet. mia is wearing a black sweater with gray dots. A silver hamsa is visible around their neck. Blurry in the background is a yellow wall, a white lamp with blue, grey and white lanterns strung around it, and a white basket with indecipherable art materials.
Photo credit: amadh solas aigéan amir (mia’s kiddo), 2022
Calla Evans
General Manager
Calla Evans (she/her)is a fat, queer, disabled, white settler living on the stolen lands of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples, colonially known as Vancouver, BC. She is an image-maker, visual storyteller, digital problem solver, fat activist and ex-academic. Much of her practice explores the material conditions of fatness in so called “Canada” as well as digital fat identity construction and performance. In addition to her work with OAFAC, Calla currently works as a digital storytelling facilitator at Re•Vision: The Centre for Art & Social Justice. She cultivates as much time as possible in the woods with her pup, Ellie.
Contact Calla at calla@openaccessfoundation.org
Image Description
Head and shoulders image of Calla on a grey background. She is looking directly at the camera with a slight smile. She has white skin with a large mark or scar on the left side of her face, blue eyes and dark blond hair that spills over her shoulders. A portion of her hair on the left side of her face is shaved. She is wearing a black and white striped scarf.
Raven John
Socially Engaged Artist (Intern)
Raven John, artist, involuntary comedian and two-spirit activist, is of Coast Salish and Stó:lō Nation decent. This Two-spirit Trickster is a BFA graduate from ECU, with a major in visual art and minor in social practice and community engagement. Raven is a visual artist, cultural consultant, mediator, storyteller, photographer and sculptor. A jack-of-all-trades (and master of a few), their practice covers a wide array of mediums from provocation and humor, puppet making, ceramics, dressmaking, interactive electronics and indigenous technologies. Are you feeling “Icky” about colonization and the ongoing occupation of unceded territory? Feel free to visit their website to directly wire them money.
Contact Raven at raven@openaccessfoundation.org
Image Description
Raven stands holding a metal baton in hands adorned with flashy opal rings. They wear a floral dress with purple leather harness with hundred dollar bills stuffed in them. Raven’s expression is stoic with teal and lavender makeup and glitter, a large black raven headpiece with thick fur on their head. A destroyed pinata of Queen Elizabeth hangs beside her, with a fake ribcage holding little toy native children inside it.
Carmen Papalia
Co-Director
Carmen (he/him) is a nonvisual social practice artist with severe chronic and episodic pain. Since 2009 Papalia has used organizing strategies and improvisation to address his access to public space, art institutions and visual culture. As a convener, he establishes welcoming spaces where disabled, sick and chronically ill people can build capacity for care that they lack on account of governmental failure and medical ableism. His work, which takes forms ranging from collaborative performance to public intervention, is a response to the harms of the Medical Model of Disability, a framework that erases disability experience by reinforcing ableist concepts of normalcy.
In 2020 Papalia was one of 25 artists who received the Sobey Art Award; in 2019 he was a Sobey long list recipient in the West Coast / Yukon region. Papalia also received the 2014 Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary, which supported a 3-month residency at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the 2013 Wynn Newhouse Award. His work has been featured at: The Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum, the Tate Liverpool, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Gallery Gachet, among others.
Contact Carmen at carmen@openaccessfoundation.org
Image Description
Against a blurry background of rocks and ocean, a close-up of the artist Carmen Papalia, an olive-skinned man with brown eyes, a dark, close-trimmed beard, and a gray fedora.
Jane Shi
Access Director
Jane Shi (she/her) lives on the stolen, occupied, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. She is the author of the chapbook Leaving Chang’e on Read (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2022). She organizes Masks4EastVan, a grassroots mutual aid organization that distributes high-quality masks to neighbours in East Vancouver and beyond. She wants to live in a world where love is not a limited resource, land is not mined, hearts are not filched, and bodies are not violated.
Contact Jane at jane@openaccessfoundation.org
Image Description
A double exposure photograph of Jane sitting at her desk on a black office chair, where two images of her are faded onto one another. Jane has pale tan skin and short black hair that slightly flares at the end with rounded, bowl-like bangs, with eyes closed and wearing brown-black glasses. In one exposure, Jane’s face is larger and closer to the camera; lights are directly behind her. In the other, she sits on a black office chair holding a sliced open pomegranate. Behind her is a round, moon-like lamp. The desk-shelf behind her is orange-brown with books ordered in red, black, white, and the remaining rainbow on top. Near the left end of the desk-shelf is a small brown monkey plushie. There’s a black and white ink illustration above the orange to blue books on top of the desk where there’s an open space below the top shelf.
Photo credit: Divya Kaur (Instagram: @soft.kaur)