Nestler, Sunny

Sunny Nestler is a migrant, grateful guest, and queer, non-binary, ashkenazi person living on unceded Coast Salish territories belonging to the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. They live with and are conditionally disabled by a chronic illness, which informs their intertwined art and facilitation practices. Past work includes collaborative animation, community-led arts programming, volunteering at artist-run centres, a recent municipal commission, over a decade of managing community bike shops, and nine years of university-level teaching. 

Nestler teaches visual art and science classes, and is a Faculty Writing Associate at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. They are currently researching ways to use digital art in virtual reality to connect artists with chronic illness and disabilities in remote collaboration spaces. Despite their eagerness and passion for new technologies, Nestler's visual art practice is rooted in drawing. Through drawing, they study mechanisms of biological life using a process that mimics DNA replication and mutation. Their subject matter cross-pollinates biological processes and explores the idea of a parallel universe, using invented creatures based on familiar objects and symbols, rendered in brightly colored mixed media combinations of drawing, painting, and collage.