Cara Tierney
Captured by François Mittins
Phantom Tits
In this talk, Cara Tierney doesn’t tell a straight story. Instead, they move through moments, images, and memories that slowly assemble into the making of Phantom Tits, a three-volume graphic novel created with illustrator Pascal Arpin.
The talk shifts between timelines: a hospital visit that opens unexpected doors, an early move to Ottawa, years spent performing professionalism, and the gradual return to art through teaching, performance, and research. Pieces appear out of order, then begin to connect. A password chosen during recovery becomes a title. A phantom sensation becomes a narrative device. A long-held discomfort becomes something that can finally be named.
Rather than presenting identity or process as fixed, Cara shows how meaning often forms sideways. Through performance work, collaboration, and repeated experimentation, art becomes a way to test language, challenge systems that restrict the body, and sit inside uncertainty long enough for something honest to emerge.
Collaboration sits at the centre of the talk. Cara traces how working with Pascal Arpin transformed the project from a single idea into a sustained practice built on trust, humour, and time. What took years to begin accelerated once the process became shared.
The talk closes by circling back to beginnings. To predecessors, to chosen family, and to the people who hold space for stories to exist in the open. What remains is not a conclusion, but an invitation to follow tension, allow stories to form slowly, and make room for what comes next.
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