As an interdisciplinary performance artist with a background in object-making, Cindy Baker’s work explores human relationships to “things”. This includes both her relationship to things as object-maker and artist interacting with the objects of her creation, as well as the audience’s relationship to those things, both emotional and physical/tactile.
Baker’s work is informed by a commitment to ethical community engagement and critical social inquiry. The theoretical background for her research originates in queer theory, fat studies, disability theory, critical race theory, feminist theory, and art theory. The diversity of her research-based practice allows Baker to move fluently between the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Baker considers context to be her primary medium, and employs diverse materials and techniques from the low-craft (such as latch-hooking) to digital fabrication and performance, emphasizing the theoretical, conceptual and ephemeral aspects of her work.
Baker completed her BFA at the University of Alberta in 1997, and her MFA at the University of Lethbridge in 2014. She currently teaches in the Fine Arts Department of the University of Alberta. Recent solo exhibitions include those at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, 2018; dc3 Projects, Calgary, 2018/2016; Feminist Exhibition Space, University of Alberta, 2014; Gallery 101, Ottawa, 2010; and Dunlop Gallery, Regina, 2008. Her performances and public interventions have been shown extensively in art galleries and performance festivals across Western Canada. Baker is represented by dc3 Art Projects, Edmonton.
