Happy Pride! It's episode 2 of the Artalogue's Pride Programming, speaking with 2SLGBTQ+ voices in Canada's art world. Today on the Artalogue, Madison Beale chats with Jake Kimble, a contemporary Dënesųłıné photographer based in Vancouver, who was recently highlighted by CBC Arts as an artist to watch! originally from Treaty 8 Territory in the North West Territories. Kimble's work moves between photography, performance, and material experimentation with a clear goal: make authenticity visible without sanding down its edges.

Kimble shares their path from acting to a visual art practice shaped by breath, the body, and the idea that “life is a performance.” He shares how growing up across the Northwest Territories and other parts of Canada taught him to value freedom, privacy, and the specific places that hold memory, which now informs where he shoots the Canadian landscape in his practice. We talk about what changed through training as an artist when honest feedback pushed him away from edgy, disingenuous work that wasn't representative of their true self, and toward a self-portraiture practice that can make sense of sexuality, love, pain, and humour all at once. Kimble also explores what their two-spirit identity means to them in their life and art practice, and how breaking down normative ideas of gender have become central to their work.

From there, we discuss some highlights in Kimble's over so far, such as the beaded tears that slowly obscure his face in It’s All So Incredibly Loud and the cheeky brilliance of printing photographs on paper towels for the Pick It Up Quick series. We also talk about the East and West coast art scenes from both the artist side and the gallery side, career highs, burnout, and the self-care practices that make long careers possible.

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