Mikiki

Mikiki is a performance and video artist and queer community health activist of Acadian/Mi’kmaq and Irish descent from Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland, Canada.
They attended NSCAD and Concordia before returning to St. John's to work as Programming Coordinator at Eastern Edge Gallery and later to Mohkinstsis/Calgary to work as the Director of TRUCK Gallery. Their work has been presented throughout Canada and internationally in self-produced interventions, artist-run centres, performance art festivals and public galleries.

Their identity as an artist is informed and intrinsically linked to their history of work as a sexual health educator and harm reduction worker. Mikiki’s creative themes often address safety and responsibility, disclosure and self-determination, community building and reckoning with trauma and loss.

Mikiki has worked as a Sexuality Educator in Mohkinstsis/Calgary's public schools, a Bathhouse Attendant in sâskwatôn/Saskatoon, & Drag Queen Karaoke Hostess in St. John's. Mikiki has worked in numerous capacities in the gay men's health and HIV response both nationally/internationally and as well in Kitche Zibi/Ottawa, Tiohtià:ke/Montreal and Tkaronto/Toronto, co-developing and implementing the first sexual health promotion programming specifically for gay men living with AIDS and/or HIV in Canada.
Recently Mikiki’s work focused on Harm Reduction outreach & agency staff training, and conducting HIV testing. As well, Mikiki sat on numerous national, provincial and local boards, committees and research projects, like CAS, the Canadian AIDS Society; CTAC, the Canadian Treatment Action Council for HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C; the Bad Date Coalition and the CHIME study. The CHIME study involved PLWHIV as standardized patients in training medical students to deliver HIV rapid testing and reduce HIV stigma. With CHIME, Mikiki was a member of the research team, the Research Assistant training team, a standardized patient research participant as well as an external HIV testing preceptor. Mikiki was an inaugural member of Beyond LIVING’s Life Force, providing strategic direction for international HIV/AIDS advocacy in concert with the three global PLHIV networks GNP+/ICW/Y+.

Mikiki divides their time between Tkaronto and Utrecht and is now dedicated to their art practice full time when not hosting their Golden Girls screening & queer cultural studies lecture series Rose Beef.