Thirza Cuthand

Thirza Cuthand is a filmmaker, artist, writer and curator of Plains Cree and Scottish and Irish descent.[1] Born in 1978 in Regina, Saskatchewan, she grew up in Saskatoon.[2] She majored in film and video studies at the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design in Vancouver.

In 1995, a queer film festival and workshop that came to Saskatoon prompted her to start making her own films.[3] The workshop led her first short video, Lessons in Baby Dyke Theory, made when she was sixteen and acclaimed at film festivals around the world. A self-described "bipolar butch lesbian two spirited boy/girl thingamabob"[4] of Cree, Scottish and Irish heritage, she majored in film and video at Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her low budget productions of experimental film and video explore issues of identity, race, sexuality, relationships, ageism and mental health.[5]


As an Aboriginal woman, lesbian and a video artist, Thirza Cuthand is a contemporary artist responding to her indigenous cultural background, she is answering to subjects of exclusion in our society and desire to see a nation for inclusive values. She references her own sexuality, desires, lusts, doubts, and the questions she has about them and situates then within a post-colonial, post-feminist, and post-identity political frameworks, challenging viewers to see her through her own eyes, not a predetermined collective conscience. [4]


Cuthand currently resides in Toronto, continuing to work on short films and video and deconstruct stereotypes of sexuality, mental health, youth, love, relationships and race, on a low or no-budget style.[6] She has self-funded many of her own projects.[7][8][9][10] Cuthand also works as a curator and has organized programs for ImageNation (Vancouver), Video Out (Vancouver), Paved Art (Sasktoon) and Queer City Cinema (Regina).


Cuthand's work has been presented at numerous festivals and exhibitions including the Whitney Biennial (USA), Walker Art Centre (Minneapolis), Mackenzie Art Gallery (Regina), Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (Germany), San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Optic Nerve (Peterborough) The Women's Television Network, MIX NY, the Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon), MIX Brasil Festival of Sexual Diversity, New York Exposition of Short Film and Video, 9e Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement (Geneva) and the 70th Berlin International Film Festival[11] where NDN Survival Trilogy (Reclamation, Extractions and Less Lethal Fetishes) her witty, personal short films about extraction capitalism in Canada were screened at the Canadian Embassy.


She was featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, and the film program, What Was Always Yours and Never Lost, yet shared her disappointment in the controversies of Whitney Museum Vice- Chair, Warren Kanders's implication in war profiteering.[12][13]

References
  1. Tatonetti, Lisa (2015). Packing Penises and Two-Spirit Traces: Thirza Cuthand's Performance of Female Masculinity. Washington, DC: Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. pp. 121–130.
  2. Mitchell, Claudia; Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline (2008). Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9780313339097.
  3. Williams, Jasmine. "Q&A With Aboriginal Independent Filmmaker, Thirza Cuthand". TalentEgg Career Incubator. Retrieved 2019-04-09.
  4. Steven, Loft, Acquisition Proposal for Thirza Cuthand's Working Baby Dyke Theory: The Diasporic Impact of Cross Generational Barriers; Through hotel Looking Glass and Love & Numbers, accession #42309; #42308 and #42307, Curatorial File, National Gallery of Canada.
  5. "Thirza Cuthand". Art Gallery of Ontario. Retrieved 2021-02-03.
  6. "Queer City Cinema". www.queercitycinema.ca. Retrieved 2019-04-25.
  7. Dupuis, Chris (August 15, 2016). "These Rising Filmmakers are Finally Bringing Two-Spirited Stories to the Screen". CBC.
  8. "The Longform Lesbian Census - VUCAVU". vucavu.com. Retrieved 2019-04-25.
  9. Cuthand, Thirza (2013-08-19), Sight, retrieved 2019-04-25
  10. "2 Spirit Introductory Special - CGiii...for LGBT films, filmmakers & festivals". cgiii.com. Retrieved 2019-04-25.
  11. "In Berlin, Indigenous artist Thirza Cuthand interrogates Canada's extraction economy". Retrieved 2020-03-06.
  12. "Whitney Biennial 2019". www.whitney.org. Retrieved 2019-04-30.
  13. Small, Zachary (July 24, 2019). "As Artists Withdraw From the Whitney Biennial Over Kanders Controversy, Others Refuse the Call to Boycott". Hyperallergic.
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