Residency: August, 2026

Rea Saxena will be artist-in-residence for the Eco-Process Artist Residency. Saxena (they/she) is a multimedia artist currently based on the unceded, ancestral land of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ nations. Rea’s media-based practice pairs hand-processed, disruptive analogue filmmaking techniques with rhythmic editing for projection and spatial media experiences.

For them, a film often begins with physical material—such as cyanotype printmaking, Hi-8 tape, 16mm or Super 8 film—before it inevitably gets reconfigured through digital code. By colliding old and new media, Rea explores cultural dysphoria, queerness and grounding rituals through their filmmaking and community-centred practices.

Their films have been featured across Canada at WNDX Festival of the Moving Image, XINEMA, WUFF (Winnipeg Underground Film Festival) and Capture Photography Film Festival. She holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Film, Video, and Integrated Media. Rea has also taught several workshops on analogue practices at The Blue Cabin, Slice of Life, Cineworks, Echo Park Film Centre North and Still Moon Arts Society.

Rea is interested in water as a site of flux, of layered histories, of things carried and deposited, in relation to their own experience as a third-culture-kid. Working with mentor Morgan Sears-Williams, Rea will experiment with lumen printing and phytograms using seaweed, sand, ocean water, light and time to speak to the traces left behind—marks made in conversation with the Blue Cabin by bodies that carry their own histories of displacement and transformation. Over their 4 weeks in residence, Rea will also be working on developing their installation practice, in which eco-processed, site-specific film performances are activated and transformed in real time. This residency is produced by grunt gallery, a member of the Blue Cabin Cooperative.