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 Artspace in A National Test Market (2017), the Art Gallery of Peterborough in Presently (2021), The Anna Leonowens Gallery in I O U (2022), and the Khyber Centre for the Arts in Ephemeral Love (2022). He was featured by the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of their Inner Space series in 2023. Jem is also looking forward to a residency in partnership with Eastern Edge Centre for the Arts and Lawnya Vawnya in summer 2026, where he will be developing costumes for musicians and performers.
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 Artspace in A National Test Market (2017), the Art Gallery of Peterborough in Presently (2021), The Anna Leonowens Gallery in I O U (2022), and the Khyber Centre for the Arts in Ephemeral Love (2022). He was featured by the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of their Inner Space series in 2023. Jem is also looking forward to a residency in partnership with Eastern Edge Centre for the Arts and Lawnya Vawnya in summer 2026, where he will be developing costumes for musicians and performers.
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.