Lady Parts *

SNAP is pleased to present Lady Parts, featuring new work by Jacky Tollestrup. The exhibition runs from May 3 – 31, 2025 at SNAP Gallery. 

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 3, 7pm-9pm

Artist Talk: Tuesday, May 27, 6pm-7pm

Artist Statement

Lady Parts * is an assemblage of Jacky Tollestrup’s invitations to queer pleasure. Her
contrasting styles and multiple methods ask us to search for connections to bodies, dimensions
of the erotic, and liberation. In silkscreen, linocut, lithograph, and etching, Jacky navigates from
intimate autobiography to playful metaphor.

Enchanted by Mira Bellwether’s zine “FTW,” Jacky began a screen-printing project in 2023,
focused on genital anatomy and queer pleasure. Lady Parts* is an expansion of this project to
include more of the explicit and subtle operations of power that are reflected in rendering
anatomy, as well as representing the intangible elements of what she defines as her “lady
parts.” By examining her own body and experience, she works to disrupt cis-normative and
heteronormative assumptions that accompany anatomical diagrams, norms of pleasure,
expectations about the functions of genitalia, and the broader cultural topographies that are
mapped onto the gender non-conforming body.

Jacky has used her experience as the Emerging Artist in Residency at SNAP to revel in her
sensibilities of queer figuration. Through her prints, Jacky presents a rhizomatic cluster of forms including whales, lace, language, food, anatomy, social geography, coded consumer products, fashion, and embodiment to examine queer life. Her lace motif indulges a delicate yet salacious invitation to queer desire. Inspired by the intersection of line, form, and figure, Jacky suggests the physical intersection of multiple bodies while avoiding outright depictions of queer sex. “Indecent Memoir” assembles narratives from Jacky’s history of sex work, hitch-hiking, being a patient at the gender clinic, passing, drag, cabaret, scuba diving, and writing. “Third Antenna” and “On My Terms” explore language that has been used to interpret her embodiment. “Tits Out”, “Pool Party”, and a series of “Mirror” etchings and monotype consider autonomy and self- portraiture.

As Jacky reinterprets and reiterates herself in print, she invites her audience to find more of
themselves and more of their pleasure. She hopes that her embodied reflections disrupt fixing,
normalizing, and colonial narratives, and inspire more stories that exist beyond the binaries of
male/female, old/young, agnostic/ecstatic, and naive/sophisticated. The asterisk in the show title reminds us that meaning is contingent, contextual, and personal. Jacky asks us to subvert the norms that keep parts of ourselves hidden and trapped and invites us to give up our suffering and self-negation. This exhibition is a call to pleasure activism, and it invites us to nurture a more expansive love between all of us.

About the Artist

Jacky Tollestrup (she/her) is an emerging interdisciplinary artist based in Edmonton. Her
painting, printmaking, film, performances, scholarship, and writing consider cultural and political
margins imposed on bodies. Her recent work in printmaking is inspired by artists such as
Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Swoon, Mark Bradford, and Barbara Kuebel. She incorporates playful
illustrative elements and has an obsession with line. Jacky has taken art classes at the
University of Alberta and Capilano University. Her work has featured in the Brighton Rocks Film
Festival, reelout+ Queer Film Festival, The Sex Worker’s Art Show, Modern Fuel, Union Gallery, and the 2024 ASPSH conference.