About Us
a space to create art about surveillance centred around care and compassion
Surveillance as a method of control disproportionately targets 2SLGBTQIA+, Indigenous, racialized, and disabled peoples.
How we create art about surveillance matters.
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surveillART is a research-creation lab at Carleton University dedicated to disrupting the colonial, western, heteronormative, and oppressive systems of surveillance through experimental and media based art. Specifically, using surveillance technology and equipment ethically and care-fully to resist their original violent and coercive functions.
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surveillART provides artists, scholars, students, and community members the resources and space to experiment with themes of surveillance and art, in critical and disruptive ways. Some of which may come in forms of play, pleasure, healing, care-laboration, and community engaged art.
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​Here, we prioritize accessibility, equitable access to industry grade software and equipment, and provide spaces for emerging and professional artists and curators to create and exhibit their work.
At its core, surveillance is an extractive system of power and colonialism that dehumanizes and violently dispossesses equity deserving people across the world. The lab reimagines how artist-scholars co-create art about surveillance, in transformative, just, and care centric ways, to bring care back into care-less places.
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Research Team
Director
Dr. Stéfy McKnight
they/them/iel
stefy.mcknight (@) Carleton.ca
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Research Assistants
Kayleigh Lewis
she/her/elle
MA student
Carleton University
Kayleigh Lewis (she/her/Elle) is a first-generation Jamaican-Canadian based in Ottawa, Ontario. Today, she is an MA candidate studying International Development Policy and specializing in Data Science at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA) at Carleton University. She previously completed her undergraduate degree in Media Production and Design with a minor in Art Business Management at Carleton.
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As an advocate, her research critiques the semantics of communication and power dynamics within policy decision-making processes, curating a reflective lens that disrupts and dismantles pre-established narratives. While grappling with the complexities of emerging technology, she is passionate about creating equitable platforms for meaningful civic engagement and representation – welcome to watching territory. Hello!
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She currently works as a Research Assistant at surveillART care-laboratory for disruptive exhibitionism co-curating watching territory (2025) with Dr. Stéfy Mcknight. She is also the social media manager for the History Department at Carleton University. In her freetime, she works as an audio-visual technician at the NAC and CTC building live events behind the scenes. To keep things interesting, she volunteers as VP of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion on the NPSIA student association. She has recently joined the Carleton Trans Advocacy Group (CTAG) after partnering with them for her capstone project.
