Adrienne Crossman’s Flags consists of a series of three large handmade outdoor flags. On one side, they read: DEVIATE, SUBVERT and RESIST, and on the back they each read: EXIST. These sentiments serve as calls of resistance to oppressive structures and ways of being, and frame existing as a form of resistance for queer and marginalized bodies. They speak to the undigested ghosts of the political queer past and the increasing momentum at which queer politics and identity are ever changing. 

Adrienne Crossman is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and curator working in Hamilton, Ontario. They hold an MFA in Visual Art from the University of Windsor (2018), and a BFA in Integrated Media with a Minor in Digital and Media Studies from OCAD University (2012). Their practice investigates the liminality between the digital and the physical while highlighting queer sensibilities in the everyday. Crossman is interested in how the terms trans* and non-binary apply to media as well as gender and they are interested in the queer potentiality of the non-human. Adrienne has completed residencies in Syracuse (NY), Montréal (QC), Artscape Gibraltar Point on the Toronto Islands (ON), and Studio Beat (studio-beat.com), and has exhibited at: Patel Projects (Toronto, Ontario), Idea Exchange (Cambridge, Ontario), 8eleven (Toronto, Ontario), Studio L’Eloi (Montreal, Quebec), Moscow Biennale for Young Art (Moscow, Russia), the Art Gallery of Windsor (Ontario), and The Wrong New Digital Art Biennale (thewrong.org). Adrienne is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art in the School of the Arts at McMaster University in Hamilton.

Crossman’s work is made possible through funding from the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council.