Bio
Jaye Kovach is a multimedia and performance artist who lives as a white Magyar/Scots settler on Treaty 4 territory (Regina, Saskatchewan). Her work, which has received local and national attention, often engages their queer and trans community, taking as its starting point his positionality as a disabled and neurodivergent, butch trans woman.
In 2019, she was featured in the spotlight section of Canadian Art’s FEMME issue. In 2020, they attended the Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency. His performance work has been presented at Queer City Cinema/Performatorium, a queer media and performance art festival based in Regina that attracts international artists and filmmakers, as well as Buddies in Bad Times' Rhubarb Festival in Toronto.
Jaye is a current participant of Tender Container’s Peer Mentorship Platform, Do Trans People Dream of Non-binary Sheep?. She also facilitated the Capacitor project, a programming channel for Two Spirit, trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming artists with a connection to Saskatchewan, with the University of Saskatchewan (USask) Art Galleries and Collection. Most recently they have been named interim project director for Into The Streets, a Regina-based mentorship program for trans girls and youth affected by transmisogyny.
Artist Statement
I ground my artistic practice in my positionality as a white, Magyar/Scots settler living on stolen Indigenous land; a queer, disabled and neurodivergent, butch trans woman, and big dyke. It is from this vantage point that I engage in primary and secondary research – seeking out and drawing from historical texts, images, films, and other archival sources, conducting interviews with other queers, and constructing a personal archive of materials drawn from my own lived experiences. This source material leads to work in a wide range of media – drawings and paintings, photography, short film and video, performance, music, sound art and noise, new media, and tattoos, generally produced with a raw DIY aesthetic and ethos. My hand (and voice and body) is present in the work. This is how I take up and hold space – through esoteric symbols gently poked into skin, or reading you your tarot in bed in nothing but a jockstrap and bulldog harness, or rendering the bodies of my trans comrades in lush oils with a care and consideration they’re so rarely afforded, or screaming loud enough to puncture a sonic wall of feedback in visceral live performances.
A lot of my work is uncomfortable (mostly for those who are invested in cis-hetero patriarchy) but I don't really care. I think I make dyke art – unlikeable work that is challenging but also darkly humorous, that strives to be emotionally resonant and sharply insightful, with a deeply empathetic and ethical core. In a world that grows increasingly hostile to trans people and their ways of being, it asks what is necessary to survive, and, more and more, gestures towards trans joy and futurity through a developing t4t creative methodology.