Alan Callander

About the Artist

Artist's Statement

My work leverages the potential of abstract narrative form to convey the opportunities and challenges in disability, sexuality, and loss, and to encourage greater contemplation of them by the viewer. By using both classical cinematic conventions and abstract visualizations, I aim to produce compelling, beautiful, and sometimes provocative time-based and 2D works that give voice to my inner emotional and physical experiences as a sexual minority and as a person living with multiple sclerosis. My most recent work dives deeply into neurological signaling—the biomechanics behind human sentience and our awareness of the physical world—even as it grows diminished and distorted by disease. Just as in my body, my art often mirrors these same distortions between actual and perceived, between literal and abstract. My earlier work tackled the complex and sometimes sensitive issues of human sexuality and sexual identity including themes of “sexual positivity”, masculinity, and “otherness.” In all my work, I seek to evoke a resonance with the audience not through merely illustrating facts but by inspiring curiosity, wonder, awe, and sometimes fear—and by challenging the viewer to appreciate the beauty in the breadth of all human experiences.