about

Aislinn Thomas, a white woman in her 40s, is making a thinking face in this video still. She's wearing bug-like dark glasses and her shoulder season uniform including an orange toque, yellow raincoat, and huge mittens. She's surrounded by the muted palette of late fall on the shore of the Mull River near Mabou Harbour in Unama’ki or Cape Breton. — Aislinn Thomas, a white woman in her 40s, is making a thinking face in this video still. She’s wearing bug-like dark glasses and her shoulder season uniform including an orange toque, yellow raincoat, and huge mittens. She’s surrounded by the muted palette of late fall on the shore of the Mull River near Mabou Harbour in Unama’ki or Cape Breton.

Aislinn Thomas (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes video, performance, sculpture, installation, and text. She culls material from everyday experiences and relationships, creating work that is by turns poignant and absurd. Many of Aislinn’s recent projects respond to disability and standard approaches to access–or the lack thereof. She gratefully works alongside and in the legacy of so many who treat access and survival as spaces for creative acts.

Aislinn is a white settler of Ashkenazic and mixed European descent. She is grateful to live and work in Unama’ki, part of Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq covered by the Peace and Friendship treaties.

Recent and upcoming exhibitions include the WRO Media Arts Biennial (Wroclaw, Poland), San José Museum of Art (San José, California), 221A (Vancouver), University of Glasgow (Glasgow, UK), Tangled Art + Disability (Toronto, ON), Flux Factory (Queens, NY), The New Gallery (Calgary, AB), Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, ON), Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery (Halifax, NS), articule (Montreal, QC), Blackwood Gallery (Mississauga, ON) and C Magazine.

Commissioned projects include QUIET PARADE curated by Claire Dykhuis and Laura Ritche for Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery; A piece of cloth held taut curated by Crystal Mowry for the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery; As I am and as I become curated by Lauren Schell Dickens for the San José Museum of Art; and A distinct aggregation / A dynamic equivalent / A generous ethic of invention curated by Jacqueline Bell for the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Her writing has been published in The Cripsters, ArtsEverywhere.ca, and BlackFlash Magazine. In 2023 she was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award.

Aislinn gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Her CV is available here.

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