Trauma Clown is a new photographic series by Vivek Shraya (with collaborator Zachary Ayotte) that traces the correlation between the amount of suffering a marginalized artist shares in their work and the increase in their commodification. Using herself as subject, Shraya reveals how artists who experience oppression must repeatedly revisit traumatic experiences for marketable entertainment—and the material and psychic effects that being a “trauma clown” has on the artist, the art, and audiences.

Shraya is a multidisciplinary artist based in Calgary, Alberta. She is the author of the best-selling book I’m Afraid of Men, and was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize for her album with Queer Songbook Orchestra, Part-Time Woman. Her previous photo series, Trisha, received international media coverage, including in Vanity Fair, and has been exhibited across North America. Ayotte is an Alberta-based photographic artist who has participated in select solo and group exhibitions in Canada and Europe. He recently collaborated with sound artists Nulle Part to create a site-specific installation at the Art Gallery of Alberta.

Curated by Devan Patel

• Zachary Ayotte is a visual artist based in Edmonton working primarily with photography and installation. With light and form, he uses depictions of bodies and space to explore gender and sexual identity, power, distance and experiences of the unknown. A sense of otherworldliness hovers over his work. Interested in the relation that intimacy and familiarity have to disconnection and uncertainty, Ayotte allows the forces in his work to elide and collide, generating tension. This process allows him to embrace and comment on the superficiality of the photographic image, exploring it as both a manipulation of light and a mode of delivering information.