Listen or read through a conversation between Timelines artist-in-residence Keimi Nakashima-Ochoa and local writer, poet, and educator Mercedes Eng.
Keimi and Mercedes sit down in the gallery to talk about their shared experiences as queer, racialized people across so-called “Alberta” and “Vancouver”; writing as a process of documentation and survival; and the collaborative poem they wrote together for this project in 2022.
In a conversation approached with both humour tenderness, Keimi and Mercedes’ discussion touches on some heavy topics, including racist, white supremacist and police violence; survival sex work; and substance use disorder. We encourage you to move through this interview with care.
As part of this response, a collaborative poem was crafted which can be read here.
Listen or read through a conversation between Timelines artist-in-residence Keimi Nakashima-Ochoa and local writer, poet, and educator Mercedes Eng.
Keimi and Mercedes sit down in the gallery to talk about their shared experiences as queer, racialized people across so-called “Alberta” and “Vancouver”; writing as a process of documentation and survival; and the collaborative poem they wrote together for this project in 2022.
In a conversation approached with both humour tenderness, Keimi and Mercedes’ discussion touches on some heavy topics, including racist, white supremacist and police violence; survival sex work; and substance use disorder. We encourage you to move through this interview with care.
As part of this response, a collaborative poem was crafted which can be read here.
Keimi Nakashima-Ochoa (all pronouns) is a racialized immigrant settler of mixed heritage. They live and work on the stolen ancestral territories of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ families and nations. They are a Disabled bilingual worker, learner and artist whose practice incorporates reading, writing, weaving, printmaking, and more. Keimi’s work holds central their learnings from Black Feminism and practices of Disability Justice. They are interested in anti-colonial research and learning, accessible spaces, and liberated futures. Keimi was the Timelines artist-in-residence at CAG in 2022.
Mercedes Eng is the author of Mercenary English, Prison Industrial Complex Explodes, winner of the BC Poetry Prize, and my yt mama. Her writing has appeared in Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry, Jacket 2, Asian American Literary Review, The Abolitionist, r/ally (No One Is Illegal), and Survaillance (Press Release). Mercedes is an Assistant Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she organizes the On Edge reading series. Her next book, cop city swagger, is forthcoming in 2024.
