Creative Connector Updated on Apr 10, 2026 2 min read

Her Voice the Waves Like Silk

Tour-ready project by Kim Kitchen.

Keywords: video, visual art/exhibition, spoken word soundscape

North Bay (ON) based artist Kim Kitchen’s solo exhibition at Between Pheasants Contemporary situates the self-reflexive relationship between artistic production and disability by using video, photography, and sound recordings that document her journey to the shores of Lake Superior as part of a research residency in 2019. The central driving force of Her Voice the Waves Like Silk a 4.43 minute video work titled SILK, is accompanied by five large scale photographs produced on material for outdoor installation.

The true “work” from Kitchen’s practice in this exhibition comes not from the lens-based productions or the performances they document, but in getting her body to the shoreline and in turning to media arts as a tool for advocacy: the work of her practice — and the emergent pieces — manifest through the entangled, self-reflexive intra-action of ability and artistic production.

Exhibition essay by Alexander Rondeau, Curator - Between Pheasants Contemporary.

About the Artist

Kim Kitchen is a multidisciplinary artist working in audio and film as a result of a debilitating and transformative illness. She explores collective cultural understandings of the female body, its intersections with and presence within the natural world. This is evident through the inclusion of ritual in her work - particularly in To Re-convene // To Shoreline - which draws on her lifelong connection to the Primordial Mother, and to knowledge of her ancestral homelands of old Europe. This ongoing research and consciousness has deeply influenced her artistic practice, which has been largely tactile, focused on painting, sculpture, installation and performance.

Currently, Kim engages her practice of critical inquiry of body/land relations and the self-reflexive relationship between ability and artistic production through largely multimedia approaches. With significant changes in mobility, old spaces become unknown insofar as the body must learn anew how to navigate through them. The familiar becomes unfamiliar: the body is tasked with relearning how to exist, reaching out in changed, renewed and ever-urgent ways through creativity.

Kim’s community activism is inclusive, celebratory, and exuberant. In contrast, her work is introspective, thoughtful, and prompts quiet reflection. Now more than ever, interdependence is fundamental for this disabled artist.