Queer Artist Spotlight: Bree Tabin

What’s your story?

My name is Bree, I am a queer non-binary artist from Regina, Saskatchewan. I have lived here almost all of my life, doing a variety of different things and exploring this fun little city. I am currently an undergraduate student at the University of Regina, hoping to get this done as fast as possible. I am just starting to approach external art spaces, which is extremely exciting. I am a printmaker, sculptor, muralist, and mixed/multimedia artist. I would say those three are the most prevalent. I do a lot of work based on queer identity, exploration of identity, political conversations like food insecurity, and topics that impact my community. Ultimately, a lot of my work is about my community in some facet or another, whether it's about my community queer community, local folks that I know, or the community of businesses that I work in, it’s all for them.

What do you find most important about the work you’re creating?

Having a conversation, being able to engage in conversation with people that maybe don’t understand the concepts or narratives behind the pieces. I think that having conversations is the best way to have people open up their minds and understand other perspectives and other views. My political work is to bring things up that are happening, that are injustices that happen too often and are unsustainable injustices to my community. That’s the work I like to bring up and have conversations about in that facet. When it comes to gender and queerness, I explore that so that folks that aren’t in the community can engage in it and maybe ask questions like “How can I change and do better?”. Especially my most recent piece, it is talking to people that are not queer, and asking them to be a little bit better.

“All They See”, Bree Tabin, 2023, 18” x 14”, Soft ground copper etching on Washi Paper.

Tell me about your piece “All They See”

The first step of this piece when I was trying to plan it out, was planning conceptional. As a queer person, when you are queer you are a beacon to homophobic and transphobic people when you are out in public. There is not a time where you are wandering around your life and those eyes can’t see you, and you are flagged for them. Even if you are having conversations with CIS folks that aren’t in the queer community, unintentionally they play into that transphobic or homophobic way of the world and chalk up your identity without having conversations with the person. The tank top to me is one of the most androgynous pieces of clothing you can wear. It's a tank top, who doesn’t wear a tank top? For femme-bodied people, there is this expectation that you have to wear a barrier underneath that tank top in order for things not to be viewed because it’s not ‘appropriate’ or whatever the world says. As a nonbinary person, I don’t wear bras because to me this is an idea that we’ve put unfairly onto women, I’m waving a big bird in saying “This doesn’t apply to me,” even though it is unjust to women anyways, it doesn’t apply to me. When I don’t wear a bra underneath my tank top, it is evident that people stare, like it could be due to the sexualization of my body, but in a lot of ways when I look at the people who are looking at me and taking me in, a lot of the time it is in a view of trying to understand what I am and categorize who I am. That is the most frustrating point, because I am just living and being in this world, and sometimes the gazes from people trying to quantify my existence can be so stifling and so loud that it makes me not feel comfortable or safe being in external spaces. This piece, in particular, is about my uncomfortablity being in spaces built for the binary because I know how I am and how I show up, that I will be quantified and somehow categorized without my consent, without my conversation, without my identity, without any personal part of my opinion and lived experience. The piece is making people really reflect on how their external perception and gaze affect folks that are queer, nonbinary, and trans to tell people to mind their own business. The chest plate is basically there in a weird convoluted way, as much as people always want to stare at the chest of femme-bodied people, it's also there to tell you to stop looking.

What do you want people to take away from your artwork?

I want them to take away the importance of conversation in the artwork. The importance of what the artist is trying to communicate is because everyone is so multifaceted, everyone has so many things that they care about, and everybody has things that they are passionate about. For an artist’s entire body of work to be about one cohesive message is extremely rare and beautiful and magical when that is what it is, but all of us have so many different messages and reasonings for what we are creating. I want people to be able to look at each piece and have a conversation and be able to see each piece as its own individual message. To take in the message that comes with the labour of creation, messaging is in the labour, it takes time to make the stuff so if you are witnessing it in an art space, take the time to understand what the conversation of the piece is about. The labour, thought, care and love that the artist put into that work while thinking about the conversation about what the artist wants to convey to the viewer is there in the labour and in the final piece. I want people to approach all of the artworks that are in an art space and engage in it, and be conscious when viewing and taking in a piece of art, not just mine, but everyone’s!

What role does the artist have in Regina’s community?

It’s funny having to ask this question as two artists talking to each other because we know how important it is in this space to have living artists making artwork. We all know Regina is located in a particular place in the geography of Canada where unfortunately things like arts and culture aren’t front of mind and not normally seen as important. I think as artists in Regina, it's not only our responsibility to provide artwork to our community in Regina but to provide conversations in our art to central Canada because central Canada is unfortunately not thought about in the arts and culture world. Regina’s artists are important in a lot of ways, and in the time we are in, is trying to bring forth important conversations that are hard to have. There are artists that make things that aren’t necessarily about those conversations, but as an artist living in Regina, you are inevitably a part of these difficult conversations because there is not a lot of funding, there is not a lot of opportunity, there's not a lot of seen importance in creating art here. Even when you are just making art that doesn’t necessarily have those difficult conversations in it, just the act of making art in Regina is a resistance to how Saskatchewan is treated in the arts and cultural district. It is an act of resistance. Regina artists are inherently political in my opinion. There are artists like myself that are specifically bringing on those difficult conversations and trying to bring them head on so that hopefully provincial and municipal positions of power will hear us and maybe see that there are things that are valid that we are saying and could be addressed. Really creating anything as an artist in Regina, and if you make art you are an artist, you are a part of resisting and in the driving force of the importance of arts and culture in our community in Regina, Central Canada, turtle island, and the world.

What is your dream project?

I feel like many people would approach a dream project as a piece that they would be approached to do or getting the funds to make a really big print or something, but my dream project is to somehow run a space that is both studios for artists that includes equipment, like kilns, printing equipment, soft sculpture materials (sewing and embroidery machines), and then a front of house creativity space. Basically, my dream project is to have a space where people can come to also continue creating. I don’t need to be the person making stuff, but of course, if I had the space, of course, I would. I want a space that I can tangibly give to other people to make their stuff. Unfortunately, we lost a really beautiful space recently in Regina. Silt Studios was a space that a lot of artists found as a haven in the city and is something that inspires me a lot. I would really love somewhere to be personally studios where I can give people access to equipment and hopefully get in different folks that don’t normally create into the front of the house to try something new. I would really love there to be a way to get classrooms, daycares, senior homes, and classrooms from reserves to come in and try new stuff to make stuff creatively. The goal would be to get people who don’t normally have access to these things that artists are constantly sweating trying to find. I would love to be able to provide that, not only to artists but to people who have never been given the opportunity to use these pieces of equipment or create. That’s my dream.