WEBPAGE in process
Culture X: Cultural Studies Student Show
Cultural X is an annual showcase of Trent University’s Cultural Studies undergraduate students. The students in studio courses are invited to submit their work for the prestigious Gregory R. Frith Memorial Prize. The work crosses disciplines, mediums, and theoretical approaches, questioning and problematizing digitality, the body, identity, movement, nature, language, place, family, and the ontology of art in an age of contagion, war, and isolation. These artworks were created in a handful of courses encompassing our integrated arts platform: CUST1510H: Integrated Arts, CUST2114H: Ecological Art, CUST2186H: Photography, CUST3111Y: Visual Arts Studio, CUST3142H: Experimental Film, CUST3143H: Electronic Music, CUST3184H: Documentary Film, CUST3186H: Experimental Film, and CUST4136H: Computational Arts.
Participating artists included:
ANABELLE CRAIG, Bog Body, 2025BROOKLYNNE MELBURN, Ó:nenhste, 2025 Winner, Gregory R. Frith PrizeCOHEN ARNDT-PERRIS, Apron, 2025DEZIRAE GLOVER-CAMPBELL, Nesting Willow, 2025DAKOTA HAMILTON, I Heard You, Now You Hear Me, 2025JINIAN HARWIG, an active dying, 2025 (Winner, Gregory R. Frith Prize)KATHLEEN CLYSDALE, I think I am a Memory, 2024
Anabelle Craig
Bog Body
2025
Cotton, cotton thread, beads, embroidery thread.
Bog Body is a collaborative coat inspired by garments found on bog bodies dating from the Iron Age. It is covered in pockets, beads, buttons, and 28 patches in the shape of birthmarks, scars, and freckles collected from family and friends. The fashion and beauty industries thrive off of people feeling like they need to conform to one unattainable (and unhealthy) standard. Bog Body is a celebration of the body and making precious the imperfections and blemishes we all have. It is a coat to our bodies and who we are.
(Made in CUST 3112H: Fashion and Power)
BROOKLYNNE MELBURN
Ó:nenhste
2025
Copper, wood.
Winner, Gregory R. Frith Prize
Ó:nenhste (corn) reflects upon the interconnectedness of corn, trauma, and healing through the process of nixtamalization. Dried white corn transforms through boiling and soaking in an alkaline solution, eventually shedding her hard outer shell, now ready to nourish us. This process mirrors our own journeys through trauma, grief and renewal. Copper, sacred in its ties to water, womanhood, and ceremony, grounds this work materially and spiritually. Through cutting, doming, and layering copper, phases of transformation are suggested. Movement and reflection emerge in each element, tracing a path from what was to what is becoming. Like Ó:nenhste and ourselves, this work is transformed, forever shaped by the journey.
(Made in CUST 4111H: Advanced Research-Creation)
COHEN ARNDT-PERRIS
Apron
2025
Latex, hair, cotton.
Shortlisted, Gregory R. Frith Prize
Apron highlights how the fashion industry reflects and perpetuates hegemonic standards, while specifically responding and critiquing the trad wife' trend and idealized conceptions of the past. Visceral and anthropomorphic qualities of the work elucidate how tradition asserts itself on not only attire, but the body, while also functioning to liberate the wearer from conservative domestic labour designations through disgust. Simultaneously, the piece also draws attention to patriarchal and racialized standards of skin tone and body hair that constitute Westernized understandings of beauty. Apron aims to illustrate the boundaries and restrictions of our culture's values, our own bodies, and the intersection between them.
(Made in CUST 3112H: Fashion and Power)
DEZIRAE GLOVER-CAMPBELL
Nesting Willow
2025
Yarn, willow branch, copper wire.
Nesting Willow is a tactile meditation on memory, grief, and transformation. Inspired by my grandfather’s dementia diagnosis, the piece uses yarn in layered shades of blue suspended from a curved willow branch symbolizing mourning, resilience, and the weight of slow loss. The textures shift from loose to dense, mirroring the emotional deepening as his memory faded. Viewers are invited to invert the colours using a screen, revealing orange tones that echo warmth, joy, and duality. This work is a gesture of care, an attempt to hold onto what slips away, and a way of saying: he was here. I am here.
(Made in CUST 4515H: Art, Culture, Theory)
DAKOTA HAMILTON
I Heard You, Now You Hear Me
2025
Canvas, acrylic paint, clay.
This piece explores childhood trauma and the lasting power of words. As a child, I absorbed messages — some harsh, some dismissive — that shaped how I saw myself. The black words reflect those painful moments; the white words are my voice now, rooted in healing and self-worth. The heart, eye, ear, and broken mouth symbolize how trauma entered through what I saw, heard, and felt — and how it silenced me. The broken mouth especially speaks to the damage of words from those meant to protect. This work is about reclaiming my voice, honouring my story, and breaking cycles with compassion. It's a personal reminder that healing is possible, and that the words we use — to others and to ourselves — really do matter.
(Made in CUST 4515H: Art, Culture, Theory)
JINIAN HARWIG
an active dying
2025
16mm film, medium format film.
Winner, Gregory R. Frith Prize
an active dying is an experimental film that utilizes film’s position as a dying medium to explore what dying is. I came to the conclusion that there is an active state of dying and an inactive one. That active state is like a crescendo of ever increasing importance, and change. It's a dying star, creating a supernova, blowing you up from the inside. If you survive, you still feel the pressure of the star inside you, you aren't able to ignore it as you did before you knew of its precarious nature. An active dying recreates this experience with film texture, colour and flicker.
(Made in CUST 4515H: Art, Culture, Theory)
KATHLEEN CLYSDALE
I think I am a Memory
2024
Paper, glue, pencil crayon, coffee, ink, silver gelatin print.
A collage series in the form of a children's book exploring the relationship between experiences, people, and memories. This was a creative extension of an essay looking at how the word memory carries meaning in a variety of fields, such as: medicine, education, cultural history, and ancestry. The materials used are mainly paper I made out of recycled scraps and transparent vellum. The pages are as follows:
They conjure me in quiet moments, like cups of tea and tying up shoes (coffee mug rings in the center of the page)
I walk across my windowsill as the dust that I once moved (the bottom left corner has a cat footprint pressed into the page because my cat walked across it as it was drying. At the bottom of the page is a little ladybug holding a bindle and the bug's tiny footprints)
I greet them on the sidewalks as the smell of rubber boots jumping in puddles (the bottom of a shoe stamped on the page in green ink)
and I cry out for them to take me home and warm my soul (a madeleine sitting on a small tea saucer with a gold edge)
I think I am a memory (a vellum page with text in the top left corner)
I hope they wont forget me (a vellum page with text in the middle)
But sometimes I stew and worry (a vellum page with text in the bottom right corner. These three pages are transparent but cloudy which makes it difficult to read the text the more pages are added to represent the difficulty of accessing our memories as we age)
Untitled (no text on a burnt page where we can see through to the final image)
How could I forget you? (three sets of photo corners two of which hold the words and the 3rd holds an image that I fished out of the trash at the thrift store that I work at. I felt compelled not to let this boy's photo be thrown away and was upset at the idea that his memory was discarded)
(Made in CUST 2550H: Keyword: A Tool Kit for Culture Studies)