Join artist Alexis Kyle Mitchell for the Canadian premiere of The Treasury of Human Inheritance (2024).

Mitchell's feature-length debut is a poetic meditation on the experience of living with and alongside genetic disease and disability. The Treasury braids together home movie footage of the artist’s family, somatic and religious rituals for death and life after death, and images of abandoned urban architecture teeming with natural growth. The rich visual language of the film is accompanied by a specially-commissioned analogue synthesizer soundtrack by Luke Fowler and Richy Carey, which mimics specific inheritance patterns of genetic disease.

Following the screening, Mitchell will discuss the making of the film alongside it's producer Mason Leaver-Yap. Mitchell will reflect on her approach to the entangled legacies of family and identity, practices of fluid consent, knowledge and the divine, and discuss her own techniques of making a hand-processed film with and about genetic material.

This screening is presented in partnership with The Vega Foundation and MOCA Toronto as part of the GTA24 Live & Screening Programme.

Alexis Kyle Mitchell (b. 1983, Toronto) is an artist and scholar based between New York and Glasgow. Her work has circulated internationally, including in exhibitions at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Kunstverein Munich; and Mercer Union, Toronto; in screenings at International Film Festival Rotterdam; Art of the Real, New York; and IndieLisboa International Film Festival, Lisbon; in lecture-performances at University of Toronto and the New School, New York, and residencies at Cove Park, Scotland; MacDowell, USA; Sommerakademie Paul Klee, Switzerland; and Akademie Schloss Solitude, Germany. Mitchell often works collaboratively, most frequently with Sharlene Bamboat — the duo recently launched a web project called Before Law. Mitchell was a postdoctoral fellow at New York University in the Center for Disability Studies and is currently a visiting scholar in the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. She is one of the featured artists in Glasgow International 2024 and GTA24 at MOCA Toronto.

Mason Leaver-Yap works with artists to produce exhibitions, events, and publications. His recent collaborations include working with Ingrid Pollard, Phil Collins, Jamie Crewe, Ima-Abasi Okon, Monica Maria Moraru, Peng Zuqiang, and Razan AlSalah.