Deanna Armenti
Biography
"Deanna Armenti (Fae/Faer, She/Her) is a Queer Faegender poet, zine creator, and textile researcher. Deanna is attending Toronto Metropolitan University for the Media and Design Innovation PhD program. Her practice-based research has been featured in festivals such as DesignTO 2024 and galleries like Abbozzo Gallery. She has presented her research at national and international conferences including the Unravelling Fashion Narratives Symposium (Parsons School of Design), Strangeness and Oddity: Embracing the Extraordinary in Arts-Based Research (London Arts-Based Research Centre), and Worlding Beyond the End of the World (Western University).
Through research creation, Deanna’s accessible material installations are an embodied practice which invites folks to engage with Queer and Trans identities. Deanna's research focuses on queer temporalities, seeking liminal spaces and 'slices in time' as a means of conveying the non-linear spectrum of queerness. She explores the Queer community's use of signalling as semiotics, investigating alternate forms of communication such as sign-based discourse. Deanna’s work most recently investigates gender expansive identities, like Faegender, through the intersections of Gender Studies, Folklore, and Ecology as a glimpse into Trans Futurity."
Residency Goals
Access to Artspace through the residency will allow me to create large-scale site specific work, which is something I have never done before. While I have installed many large-scale artworks into both conventional and unconventional gallery spaces, I have not been able to build a piece from start to finish in the space it will then be exhibited in. As a research creationist, I believe that trying new processes is how emergent outputs are created, which is why the site specific nature of this residency speaks to me. I am also interested in how this site specific installation will interact with the incorporated plant life that is local to the gallery as their entangled nature may also lead to compelling and surprising outcomes.
Residency project
Other Than is the project I will be focusing on for the MDI Artspace Summer Studio Program. Other Than will be a continued exploration of my ‘Hybrid Fabrication’ methodology that I have been integrating into my research through my time in the first two years of the MDI program. Hybrid making pairs analogue making techniques - for myself this includes textile work such as knitting, crocheting, weaving, felting, and casting - with digital fabrication such as 3D printing, projection, laser cutting, engraving, and large scale printing. As a current Design Fabrication Zone (DFZ) member, who has been with the DFZ since my time in the TMU Fashion MA program, this hybrid fabrication technique has been in development since 2021. Throughout my continued engagement, I solidified the methodological framework of hybrid fabrication through research creation (Loveless, 2019), crystallization (Ellingson, 2009), and more-than making (Romano, 2022).
Other Than will utilize plant matter that I foraged myself from High Park during winter 2025 and integrate it into a large scale sculptural textile piece. The piece will incorporate the analogue making techniques of weaving, with both fibre and plant matter, as well as crocheting. 3D printed and laser cut elements will also be blended into the final piece as the digital fabrication elements. I am also interested in exploring projection during the residency, projecting both filmed visuals, and elements created with softwares like Touch Designer, onto the final sculptural piece.
Other Than will thematically explore how Queer Ecology and Folklore relates to the gender expansive experience. The project will particularly investigate how multi species (Haraway, 2019) are an avenue to query breaking down the nature/culture, and human/non-human, divide as a glimpse into Trans Futurity. This relates to my current areas of study in the MDI program which I focused on for my comprehensive exams as well as the thematic and research elements that I will be bringing forward into my dissertation exhibition.