risograph 11 x 17″ double-sided, Jijii Buck, 2024
Jijii Buck, 11 x 17″ risograph, in coral on light blue paper, printed at Moniker Press, and released by Hammock Residency Press, in conjunction with their residency with Hammock Residency in 2024.
Artist Quick Links
Jiji Buck
Jijii Buck is a plainspoken trailblazer seeking to liberate the world through love, criticism and art. Unleashing their power through performance art, poetic essays, and other manifestations, their goal is to make art accessible, and the catastrophic digestible. Over the past three years, Jijii has taken a dynamic lead in numerous initiatives from leading anti-police brutality protests, facilitating harm redux youth groups, spearheading grants at local artist-run centres to create art mentorship programming for BIPOC youth, DJing queer joy spaces, and creating music with multiple ensembles. They’ve extended their talents by offering sliding-scale tattoos to support the Treaty 7 QTBIPOC community, all while cultivating a rich and liberating fine art practice.
For Jijii, everything is rooted in bolstering the oppressed and offending the status quo. With their digital and physical artworks, they revel in exploring the obscure, those truths we’d rather not confront, the secrets we guard, and the uncomfortable realities that bind our shared humanity. They firmly believe that only by honestly examining the sources of our discomfort, the ways we cope, our struggles in finding meaning, and the reasons we harbour animosity towards others can we envision a future that breathes vitality into the intricate fabric of our humanity.
The darkness gives way to light, and without that darkness, there is nothing to give the light its form. This ever-enveloping light is drawn in parallel to our human desire for perfection, a desire for a world without scars, and a bottomless hunger for more. Within Jijii’s practice, there is a narrative that pushes the viewer to question how we can find satisfaction in ruins, what can be considered enough, and how can we rephrase the pain inflicted on us all as we watch late-stage capitalism sink its teeth into our beloveds. Through this undying thirst to unearth the obscure and alchemize it for collective care, Jijii is electrifying the Treaty 7 art scene with each step they take, encouraging a future where voices are heard and faces are seen, even if it hurts.
