Bethany MacKenzie (she/they) is a Queer Settler, emerging artist, and arts administrator currently based in eastern Ktaqmkuk, on the unceded homelands of the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq (also known as Newfoundland). They hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts (2021) from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador and is the Director of Union House Arts (UHA) since the spring of 2022. On top of their personal practice and administrative work, she also sits on the board of ATLANTIS (The Association of Artist Run Centres in the Atlantic) as their treasurer (2022-24). MacKenzie was the recipient of the Newfoundland and Labrador BMO 1st Arts Award (2021) and in 2024 was graciously awarded the VANL-CARFAC Mary MacDonald Award.

 

Bethany MacKenzie is a multidisciplinary artist who primarily works in fibres, printmaking, drawing and performance. They use labour and repetition as a means to explore the (in)visibility of “otherness” within land-body relationships, community, heritage, and Queer identity to create playful composition and oftentimes interactive installations. Through this, their work acts as an invitation for critical examination in how we perceive shifting historic and contemporary contexts of place, culture and self. Interested in the experiences that are both shared and yet unspoken, their work holds itself as a place to visit and explore ethnographic symbols, motifs, and to find shared camaraderie between people, handmade objects, garments, movements, and sculptures that perform and subvert ideas of domestic labour, Queer aesthetic, and gendered expression.