I AM SNUG | Andi Syme

Showing May 20 - 27, 2025

"Even in spaces we understand as safe, we hesitate to soften. With people we trust and admire, we resist softening or allowing them to soften. With the intent to protect ourselves and others, we remind them to stiffen up and remain ‘resilient.’ It's perceived as distasteful to accommodate, empathize, and love traits essential and inherent to people’s existence. The softness of these actions, accused as counter-productive, allows a freer and more grounded experience, permitted to feel, explore, and connect while resiliency flourishes. This softness requires an attitude of playfulness, turning to joy, play, and desire to replenish energy and move forward with curiosity and action.

Between my trans* and high-masking autistic identities, I have always struggled with allowing myself to be seen for who I am. In this, my work primarily focuses on exploring identity, active loving, and safe bubbles of community, which need to make space for uncertainty, being open to surprise, and new constructions of self and relationality. Most of my work is in black-and-white, representing the binary structure of our world and the dismissal of grey areas. Within the desaturated planes, figures often rebelliously interact with a sense of freedom, play, or absurdity. Reflecting the nuance of finding joy and euphoria as individuals of non-dominate worlds, the figures continue to live with a plurality of self, recognizing the fuel joy gifts in upholding resiliency.

My current work explores the airy and bound materiality of the under and overside of shag and fur carpets. Dragged onto these objects of warmth and comfort in a home are inviting images of love, community, and kink. As they lie across the wall, the rugs are recontextualized from their familiar floor. The carpets' thick skin and soft fur embrace and suspend the stories of resiliency the dust released and revealed from their trapped, trampled, and compressed history underfoot. The resiliency of the dust is evident through the joy of the images it continues to form, pulling the rug out from under those who took for granted its warmth. The dust plays within 'the grey area,’ a fluid space, morphing to mimic, mock, or metamorphosis. Soft, liquified bodies stretch and transform as disruptions to binaries, with the vivid texture acknowledging the nuance and expansiveness of neuroqueer identities. The figures interact playfully within a compassionate and caring community, open to uncertainty, surprise, and novel constructions of self. With shameless vandalization of the bodies' shapes and homes, the dust bleeding through animatedly commands respect as a visible and honoured part of the home, continuing to provide warmth, comfort, and beauty. The carpets’ hearty fibres and skin mingle with the dust’s gritty fortitude, revealing free-flowing, euphoric figures that refurbish the home with an inviting aura of desire and voice."

About the Artist

Andi Syme (they/he) is an interdisciplinary visual artist. Currently studying at the University of Guelph, they live and work between their hometown of Hantsport, Nova Scotia, and Guelph, Ontario. 

With focus on figures in community, Syme expressively explores autobiographical themes of neuro-queer and trans* identity, community, and safe spaces. Syme primarily works through charcoal drawings and photography to share joy and understanding.

Syme's paintings and drawings have been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Guelph; 1313 Gallery; Zavitz Gallery; Tides Art Gallery. Additionally, Syme is the recipient of the Charlotte Wilson-Hammond/ Visual Arts Nova Scotia Award, Pink Velvet Award, Susan Wood Award, and a Minister's Award for Creative Excellence in the Arts.

Featured Work

I, 2024. Charcoal on polyester carpet. 152 x 91cm.

Come Play with the Onions, 2025. Charcoal on polyester carpet. 60 x 30cm.

Solid, 2024. Charcoal on polyester carpet. 235 x 153cm.

Work is available for purchase upon inquiry. 100% of sales are given to the artist.