By Meghan Power
In 2024, Owen received a project grant from Calgary Arts Development (CADA) for Dirty Picture: “It meant a lot to receive funding for this project and to have it shown at TRUCK Contemporary Art. I didn’t expect that it would make it into a public space. Often, my work is not welcomed into public spaces because it can be challenging for audiences.”
For this installation, Owen created Blue Fantasy Motel, a fictionalized motel room set for an imaginary pornographic film: “A big part of this work is all about the constructed reality of fantasy, its falseness, and complexities, and examining my haunting nostalgia around these spaces.” The motel room set features found and handmade objects such as bedding, curtains, pillows, a take away motel key chain, a blue rhinestone cowboy hat, denim jacket, and a CRT TV playing my experimental video piece, BED.”
BED is a video installation piece that Owen has been working on over the last two years with support from the Canada Council for the Arts. It features a supercut of each instance a bed appears throughout a personal archive of bootleg, gay pornographic tapes that Owen acquired.
“The previous owner had recorded skin flicks over tapes of late-night cable films, TV shows, and personal videos from the ‘90s to the early 2000s. After archiving these tapes, worn down by time and repeated viewings. I clipped and manipulated sections using magnets, heat, and analog video bending to distort and disrupt the tapes creating disassembled representations of nostalgia, fantasy, and queer narrative; creating a collaborative imprint with the previous owner.”
Owen gratefully acknowledges that this exhibition would not have been possible without funding from CADA. “It’s so important to support queer and trans arts, because it is still part of and has always been part of our communities, whether it is being publicly acknowledged or not.” The funding also made it possible for Owen to create public programming, including an artist talk tour, The Blue Fantasy Drag Night, and a queer dance party at Pansy Club. “It was important for the exhibition to be activated beyond the gallery space and create unique opportunities for visitors to engage with the installation and queer and trans identities in different ways.”
“I appreciate being able to make art in Alberta,” says Owen. Contrary to what some people might expect, Owen believes there are many funding opportunities, in Alberta, and a surprising openness in local audiences to new perspectives. “Making new art and being able to show it here—in the Alberta arts community—as a queer artist to audiences; offering them a chance to feel and explore new perspectives is an important part of the relationship between artist and audience.”