For the past 45 years, Persimmon Blackbridge has worked as a sculptor, writer, curator and performer, as well as being an editor, cleaning lady and very bad waitress.
She has consistently made art on themes of disability since the late 1970s, as well as art, writing and performance on institutionalization, censorship, queer identity, generational alcoholism, feminism and war. Her latest exhibit, Constructed Identities, has been shown across Ontario and is scheduled for Vancouver in 2020.
Winner of the VIVA award for visual arts in 1991, a 1995 Lambda Award in Washington DC, the 1997 Ferro Grumley Fiction Prize in New York City, the 1998 Van City Book Award, and an Emily Carr Distinguished Alumni Award in 2000, Blackbridge’s work been shown across Canada and the U.S., as well as in Europe, Australia and Hong Kong.
Communities of Practice
Artistic Mediums
Exhibitions
- Constructed Identities, various galleries, 2015–2020
- From the Inside/OUT!, Inclusion BC, 1998–2003
- Sunnybrook: A True Story with Lies, Press Gang, 1996
- Drawing the Line, various galleries, 1988–1993
- Still Sane (collaboration with Sheila Gilhooly), Women in Focus Gallery, 1984
Press
- Canada Council for the Arts. (2018). Constructed Identities.
- Millett-Gallant, A. (2018). Crip aesthetics in the work of Persimmon Blackbridge. In B. Hadley & D. McDonald (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of disability arts, culture, and media (pp. 218–226). Routledge.
- Ahsan, S. (2016, June 21). Tangled, Toronto’s first accessible art gallery for disabled artists, is bringing the outsiders in. National Post.
- Archer, M. (1994, September 6). Learning-disabled-lesbian-cleaning-lady… Frieze.
