BIO
Jem Woolidge (he/they) is a white-settler, transmasculine, emerging artist and facilitator based in Tiohtià:ke (so-called Montreal). Jem is a costume designer, cartoonist, and textile artist with interests in participatory performance and illustrative storytelling. Forefronting playfulness as an entry point into his work, Jem invites viewers to engage with art objects through games, jokes, and dressing up.
Jem has exhibited at Galerie d'art Stewart Hall and MAJ as part of L'art de perruquer (2026), the Art Gallery of Peterborough in Presently (2021), The Anna Leonowens Gallery in IOU (2022), and the Khyber Centre for the Arts in Ephemeral Love (2022). He was featured in the AGO's Inner Space series in 2023, and became an artch fellow after moving to Quebec in 2024. In summer 2026, Jem attended a residency at Eastern Edge Centre for the Arts in St. John's NL, where he developed costumes for performers. Jem is looking forward to the Contextile Biennial in Guimarães, Portugal in September 2026.
Jem Woolidge (he/they) is a white-settler, transmasculine, emerging artist and facilitator based in Tiohtià:ke (so-called Montreal). Jem is a costume designer, cartoonist, and textile artist with interests in participatory performance and illustrative storytelling. Forefronting playfulness as an entry point into his work, Jem invites viewers to engage with art objects through games, jokes, and dressing up.
Jem has exhibited at Galerie d'art Stewart Hall and MAJ as part of L'art de perruquer (2026), the Art Gallery of Peterborough in Presently (2021), The Anna Leonowens Gallery in IOU (2022), and the Khyber Centre for the Arts in Ephemeral Love (2022). He was featured in the AGO's Inner Space series in 2023, and became an artch fellow after moving to Quebec in 2024. In summer 2026, Jem attended a residency at Eastern Edge Centre for the Arts in St. John's NL, where he developed costumes for performers. Jem is looking forward to the Contextile Biennial in Guimarães, Portugal in September 2026.
STATEMENT
Jem Woolidge is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. His work balances intensive, embodied textile processes, illustrative storytelling, and printed matter, all bound together by a sense of sentimentality. Humour is a major throughline, with cartoons, games, and jokes frequently surfacing as entry points into the subject matter.
Jem's experience performing as a musician and working with children has oriented him toward using play as a way to cultivate a sense of intimacy, permissiveness, and exploration in his work. To this end, ubiquitous subjects and pre-existing structures such as application forms, board games, and clothing patterns are a basis for his practice. Text, printed matter, textiles, and fashion play an enormous role. These materials are so woven into daily life that they contain a marked ability to reach people – through soft sculptural board games, cartoonish, colorful representations of commercial signage and mapping systems, and garments with exaggerated silhouettes.
Thematically, Jem often employs people-focused, anecdotal text or craft objects to explore capitalist isolation, bureaucracy, and psychogeography, questioning the ways in which we relate to built environments. Revealing a sense of humor in heavily mediated middle spaces, rather than despair, is a goal for these conversations. The restrictions of bureaucracy, gender norms, mapping, and games are simultaneously limiting and liberating. These rules (in)visibly dictate our lives, but their impact can become visible in a campy, humorous way when brought into a leisure environment. When the mundanity of our routines is denaturalized, it can make engaging with artwork in a gallery and reflecting on our own sense of restriction less intimidating.
Jem Woolidge is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. His work balances intensive, embodied textile processes, illustrative storytelling, and printed matter, all bound together by a sense of sentimentality. Humour is a major throughline, with cartoons, games, and jokes frequently surfacing as entry points into the subject matter.
Jem's experience performing as a musician and working with children has oriented him toward using play as a way to cultivate a sense of intimacy, permissiveness, and exploration in his work. To this end, ubiquitous subjects and pre-existing structures such as application forms, board games, and clothing patterns are a basis for his practice. Text, printed matter, textiles, and fashion play an enormous role. These materials are so woven into daily life that they contain a marked ability to reach people – through soft sculptural board games, cartoonish, colorful representations of commercial signage and mapping systems, and garments with exaggerated silhouettes.
Thematically, Jem often employs people-focused, anecdotal text or craft objects to explore capitalist isolation, bureaucracy, and psychogeography, questioning the ways in which we relate to built environments. Revealing a sense of humor in heavily mediated middle spaces, rather than despair, is a goal for these conversations. The restrictions of bureaucracy, gender norms, mapping, and games are simultaneously limiting and liberating. These rules (in)visibly dictate our lives, but their impact can become visible in a campy, humorous way when brought into a leisure environment. When the mundanity of our routines is denaturalized, it can make engaging with artwork in a gallery and reflecting on our own sense of restriction less intimidating.