Cassandra Monk

During the pandemic, Cassandra Monk began drawing as a calming and contemplative pastime, playing with linework and its different weights, movements, and narratives. The linework in this series represents a balance between chaos and stability. By situating drawing as a form of self-care, Monk expresses emotions that are often difficult to work through due to anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia. Monk’s more recent work deals with subject matter including death, femininity, altered realities, and subconscious desires. Seeking out meanings from the Victorian language of flowers, published medical articles about mental instabilities and human rights cases involving women and minorities, Monk reappropriates her references to depict inner emotions, at times hidden. In Dysphoria, Monk breaks from the tradition of painting on physical canvas to painting in the digital world. Dysphoria immerses the viewer in an endless mirage of colour, a world with no containment of gender or signs of common identification.

Cassandra Monk is an emerging queer artist from rural Eastern Ontario. They have always felt a connection with the unknown as revealed in their recent body of work. Many of their works involve extensive research to challenge our perspectives of the world. Dealing with subject matter such as death, taboo ideals, the unspoken topics of femininity, and gendered identities, Monk creates illustrations utilizing ink, posca markers, and gouache, as well as digital tools.