Jaye kovach biography

Jaye Kovach (she/her; they/them) is a queer, disabled, butch trans woman, and a multimedia and performance artist living as a white settler on Treaty 4 Territory (Regina, Saskatchewan). She graduated from the University of Regina in 2013 with a BFA in Visual Art. Since then, their practice has expanded to include a growing tattoo business that, using trauma informed approaches, centers creating a safe space and comfortable tattooing experience for marginalized bodies.

They use a wide range of media — drawings, printmaking, performance, handcrafted embroideries and other artist multiples, sound art and noise, new media, and tattoos, generally produced with a raw DIY aesthetic and ethos.

Jaye’s work has received local and national recognition. In 2019, she was featured in the spotlight section of Canadian Art’s FEMME issue. In 2020, they attended the Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency. Her performance work has been presented at Queer City Cinema/Performatorium, a queer media and performance art festival based in Regina, Saskatchewan, that attracts international artists and film makers. They perform as part of Homo Monstrous and Forced Femme, bands that blur the line between music and performance art. She is a current participant of Tender Container’s Peer Mentorship Platform, Do Trans People Dream of Nonbinary Sheep?

Kovach is currently facilitating the Capacitor project, a new programming channel for transgender, non-binary, Two Spirit and gender non-conforming artists in the province, with the University of Saskatchewan (USask) Art Galleries and Collection. Funded by the Digital Now Initiative of the Canada Council for the Arts, the one-year pilot project is intended to produce the space and capacity necessary or a community that has disproportionately experienced violence, misrepresentation and exclusion within the province and its art spaces.