About the Artist
Taja Jinnah is an interdisciplinary artist who grew up on Nexwlélexwm/rural Bowen Island - the ancestral and unceded territory of the Squamish Nation. They found constant joy in the outside world, and inevitably in natural materials. Taja is a fourth year VIAR student at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design with an emphasis in ceramics. Their practice plays with functionality, familiarity and queerness through interactive sculpture and everyday ceramica. Past work includes experience with outdoor installations and social practice, that have involved interspecies art interactions and training in sustainable methods of making. The transformation of human/nonhuman bodies and communities is studied in these projects through the use of clay, performance, and tactile engagement. The making process involves traditional ceramic hand-building techniques and found objects as tools. Their traditional functional-ware explores enhancement of community interaction and is immediately comfortable to the hand, whereas the interactive sculptures are non-intuitive and need to be investigated by the viewer. These projects modify sensorial experience and examine how objects affect our movements, or take on a life of their own. This exploration of functionality relates to living with a disability, and draws on the queer art of failure