Photo credit: Louis Barbier
Kelly Day is an educator, DJ, and interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture, performance, video, installation, design, and community-engaged arts. Her work explores nostalgia and lived experiences through interactive elements that emphasize sensory engagement, humour, and play. She incorporates repetitive, mundane tasks as methods of healing and regeneration. As an art educator, Kelly highlights the importance of ideation and research, encouraging students to draw from personal memories, stories, and curiosities to foster empathy and creativity in the classroom.

In my art practice, I create sculptural interactive environments that encompass a variety of mediums, including fibers, found objects, digital design, sound, video, and performance. My work explores complex themes, often viewed through a nostalgic lens shaped by my lived experiences. I focus on mundane household items that hold significant personal meaning, aiming to provide participants with a regenerative experience that allows them to create new memories. Through humour, sensory engagement, and play, I invite audiences to engage in challenging conversations.

The repetitive and tedious tasks I investigate in my pieces represent my “happy place,” enabling me to embrace and reflect on the beauty within the mundane. My research-creation projects have offered me closure regarding childhood trauma, providing insights that I had not accessed before. This journey has taught me to trust my instincts as I explore different directions in my work, reassuring me that answers to difficult questions will emerge in time.

As an art educator, my conceptual practice profoundly influences my teaching. I emphasize the importance of ideation, research, and planning, encouraging my students to contemplate not only the whys and hows but also how their lived experiences can inform their work. I am particularly interested in developing methods to help students incorporate their personal narratives into their creative processes. This aspect of creation captivates me the most; it is raw, honest, and deeply human.

RAAV is the representative association of visual artists in Quebec

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