The Power Plant

When did you first become interested in art and why?

From quite early on I remember honing in on art, not as a want but as a need: coming home from school and setting up pseudo still lifes to draw, falling fully into the act of creation, of reading, of experimenting. Some of my best and most inspiring work lives in sketches and doodles I made at ages six and seven.

Tell us about the materials you use in your work.

I guess you could say I’m used to working with trash—sometimes out of necessity, sometimes not—but the idea of upcycling, so to speak, has always run parallel to my practice. There’s a different kind of beauty that emerges in primal, nonsensical materials.

In papermaking, for instance, I often take old prints and drawings of mine, destroy them, press them into a new sheet with handmade dyes, make an artwork on that sheet, hate it, destroy it—you get the cycle.

I hate sculpture, unless I’m draping a model or blocking a figure into paint. I guess I like to look at the body as a sculpture to be adorned, secretly placing in an old clip from my grandmother, taping together two shoes like when I was a child and wanted to reach a top shelf. It’s absolutely a narrative in details.

What have you learned about the process of artmaking that's been surprising to you?

If things aren't going to plan, switch it up! Maybe it's time to experiment instead. Being an interdisciplinary artist is helpful here, being able to code-switch. Try something silly, like crayons or fingerpainting. Sometimes the idea is right but the medium isn’t—keep your toes in many pots and don’t feel discouraged.

What are some thought-provoking themes that you're exploring in your practice?

Working interdisciplinary, I aim to root my practice in an exploration of an imagined queer future, whereby embodied oppressions can be transcended.
My work takes form under the guise of the cyborg body, the hybrid body, the site of possible being. The figure of the cyborg aims to surpass the limitations of an otherwise alienating present, coding itself within a kind of disassembled, reassembled landscape-figure relation.
Throughout my interdisciplinary practice, I often will insert symbols, hieroglyphs, objects, “secrets” into my work, not only as things but as a way to engage with the energy and power manifested within them.
There are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between pharaonic bodies akin to Ancient Egypt and the idea of the cyborg body. A pharaoh can adorn the wings of a bird, the body of a human, and the senses of a cat. Why can’t a human carry those same secrets? More recently, I’ve spent some time developing my own visual language akin both to the Egyptian hieroglyphic language but also in homage to artists like Keith Haring and this notion of reclaiming public space as a catalyst for change.

As a BIPOC artist living in Toronto, are you creating art that's informed by the communities to which you belong?

I see my practice, and my work more generally speaking, very much related to my identity as a BIPOC artist living in Toronto. Collaboration, opportunities to uplift—and to facilitate teaching and learning—are at the core of my practice.

For the past two years, I have been working towards the first issue of Lotion Magazine alongside founders Forever and Dent, while also creating a Black, queer, and BIPOC cultural hub and artist index, which will feature events, editorials, photoshoots, workshops, and more. Our mission is to democratize access to Black, queer, and Afrocentric artists and performers, elevating their work and voices to the Toronto mainstream arts and culture industry. This summer, alongside an ongoing partnership with The Drake Hotel to facilitate workshops and other community-forward events, we plan to release the first issue of Lotion Magazine with an accompanying launch event and in-depth exhibition.

About the artist

Biba Esaad is an interdisciplinary artist, painter, and fashion stylist based between Toronto and Montreal. Following Esaad’s time at Queen’s University, Kingston—where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts studying oil painting and printmaking as well as art and fashion history—she worked with the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, assisting in the presentation of the 16th International Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018. In 2021, she was awarded The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery Emerging Artist Award at the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair. Alongside her artistic practice and career in fashion styling at SSENSE, in editorial and commercially, Esaad is the acting Creative Director and Style Editor of Lotion Magazine, as well as a model signed to Chantale Nadeau, Faces MGMT, and Niwa Models.