bio
Stef Lenk is a Canadian artist and writer.
She lives in Berlin.
For graphic design and medical illustration work visit www.medical-visuals.com
grants | awards
2017 | Sociological Review Foundation | travel bursary & graphic novel Workshop
Manchester Digital Laboratory (UK)
2015 | Autodesk Pier 9 artists residency program (San Francisco, USA)
2012 | Best Exhibit (dissertation work) University of Dundee (Scotland)
2011 | Institute of Medical Illustrators | student scholarship
2011 | Institute of Medical Illustrators | Pat Turnbull travel award
(UK)
2009 | Ontario Arts Council | exhibition assistance grant
(CA)
2008 | Xeric Foundation | self-publishing assistance grant
(USA)
2008 | Ontario Arts Council | emerging artist grant
(CA)
2005 | Book Publishers’ Professionals Association | scholarship (CA)
panels | teaching
2022 | Anarchic scribbles with ballpoint pen: a drawing workshop and ode to the bicycle | Freilauf Fahrrad Festival (Berlin)
2019 | ‘a Dialect of Images: Examining the translation of text to comic in an adaption of Kafka’ | (seminar workshop leader) | Freie university (Berlin)
2018 | ‘Sisyphus in graphic narrative and the academy: building bridges between practise and theory in artistic research’ | Drawing Yourself In and Out of It: 2nd International Comics Conference | speaker. | (Amsterdam)
2018 | ‘Constructing Space, Building Place: Topographies of Comics and Visual Narration’ poster presentation
University of Cologne (DE)
2018 | ‘Illustrating and illuminating
the space between process
and product in graphic narratives’ |
Graphic Medicine conference | Center for Cartoon Studies (White River Junction, Vermont, USA)
2017 | Sketching in Practise Symposium | workshop leader | Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, CA)
2017 | ‘An Alphabet of Peripatetic Lines: on reading (and ‘writing’) wordless stories‘ | (workshop leader) Graphic Medicine conference (Seattle, USA)
2017 | Sociological Review Foundation Graphic Novel Workshop
Manchester Digital Laboratory (UK)
2017 | ‘Understanding wordless comics’ | Anatomy of the Image conference
speaker | Monash university (Melbourne, AUS)
2016 | Transitions: New directions in Comic Studies | workshop leader
University of London | Birbeck College | (London, UK)
2016 | Pathography and Graphic Medicine: The Genres of Pathographics
workshop | Freie university (Berlin)
2009 | ‘No Rules, No Budget, All Fun! How and why you should make comics’
invited panelist | Word on the Street literature festival (Toronto)
2007 | Nuit Blanche “Graphic Novel Cabaret” (event organized by the Toronto Public Library and the Beguiling) | invited panelist (Toronto)
2007 | Art Gallery of York University and
“The Spot” community centre
workshop (leader) in DIY, small press, comics
and book-making (Toronto)
bibliography (selected)
2021 | Anatomy of the Medical Image (contributor) | Brill press
2018 | PathoGraphics: Narrative, Aesthetics, Contention, Community
(interview and comic) | Penn State university press
2011 | The Beginning is the End
| contributing illustrator (X-Lab Gallery)
2010 | No More Potlucks 10 (magazine | contributing illustrator)
2010 | Descant literary journal (dance issue)
2006-10 | Brick Literary Journal
issues 77/78/ 81-85
2009 | nomediakings.org |
a self-publishing comics primer
2009 | Top Shelf 2.0 | guest artist
2006-08 | Kiss Machine magazine
2008 | Queer Zines | survey anthology by Philip Aarons and AA Bronson of Printed Matter NY (collage/illustrations)
2008 | THIS magazine | ”[Read This] TeaTime“
2008 | Rue Morgue (issue 79) | “Blood in Four Colours” spotlight on The Details
2007 | Broken Pencil magazine (issue 37) |
The Haircut (excerpted)
2007 | Broken Pencil magazine (issue 35)
The Alteration (reviewed)
2007 | Geist magazine issue 66
exhibitions (selected)
2024 | Seelenräume | curated group exhibition | Haus 5 der LVR-Klinik Düren
2021 | Brave New World (Berlinklusion | online curated group show and presentation)
2020 | This is an intervention (group exhibition/art event) (Berlin)
2019 | Fiction Canteen | reading from The Ones that Got Away (Berlin)
2019 | Medical Comics
| University of Vienna medical school (Vienna)
2018 | Fumetto Comix Festival | Satellite exhibition (Lucerne, CH)
2017 | SICK! Kranksein im Comic
| Berlin Museum of Medical History (Berlin)
2015 | Pier 9 Artists-in-Residence
final exhibition | Autodesk San Francisco (USA)
2014 | Fabrica Vitae | Group Exhibition |
part of the Vesalius Continuum (Zakynthos, GR)
2012 | Masters Exhibition
| University of Dundee (Scotland)
2011 | Stroke Art Fair Berlin
| exhibitor with X-Lab Gallery (Berlin)
2011 | Random Acts of Graphite |
solo show | X Lab Gallery (Berlin)
2011 | The Reading Raum
| group show at Etsy Labs gallery (Berlin)
2010 | The Wunderkabinett
| group show at La Bastellerie (Berlin)
2009 | Derailed | curated group exhibition
| Sacred Heart University Gallery of Contemporary Art
(Connecticut, USA)
(sponsored in part by the
Ontario Arts Council)
2009 | Comics to the Rescue: Comic Artists and Writers Save Literature
Scream Literary Festival
(Toronto)
2007 | Playing Doctor | York University Gallery of Contemporary Art (Toronto)
2006 | Alley Jaunt
| Curated group show
(Toronto)
2006 | Mercer Union
members show
(Toronto)
2005 | Bobby Five Gallery
| exhibit with Julie Campagna
(Toronto)
comic festivals etc.
2023 | Graphic Novel Day artists’ alley (part of the international literature festival Berlin)
2023 | Comic Invasion festival Berlin
2018/2020 | Settel und Stift Skizzenfestival (Görlitz, DE)
2018 | Graphic Medicine comic festival | Centre for Cartoon Studies (Vermont, US)
2018 | Grafit Skizzenfestival (Erfurt, DE)
2018 | Fumetto Comix Festival | Satellite exhibition (Lucerne, CH)
2010 | Erlangen International Comic Salon |(Erlangen, DE)
2008 | Festival International BD Angoulême (Angoulême, FR)
2007/09 | Toronto Comic Arts Festival
(Toronto)
2007/08 | Waysgooze book arts fair
(Grimsby, Ont)
2007/08 | Expozine indie book festival (Montréal)
2007/08 | Speakeasy Comic show
(Toronto)
2006-10 | Museum of Comic/Cartoon Arts (MoCCA) festival (New York)
2006-09 | Canzine indie arts/book festival (Toronto)
2006-09 | Word on the Street book fair
(Toronto)
2007 | This is Not a Reading Series
book launch of The Haircut
Gladstone Hotel
(Toronto)
2006 | Ontario College of Art and Design
book arts fair
(Toronto)20
art | graphica | writing
2024 | two tiny comics about being Anxious (part of the Seelenräume Exhibition in Düren)
2023 (in progress) | Lonely Planet | a traveller’s guide through a Kreuzberg apartment (graphic novel)
2022 | Packing it in: the hipster’s guide to hitting the road with two wheels and dreams of a better kind of holiday | (self-published ‘zine)
2021 – present | The Taboo Symposium | (event curator/facilitator)
2021 | Zimmerreisen | various artworks and writings based on journeys through the apartments of strangers
2020 | brave new world | drawings | group show/online exhibition
2020 | Bunny goes to Copenhagen: a picture book for Very Large Children (graphica)
2019 | the Ones that Got Away | (full-length graphic novel about online dating)
2019 | Sisyphus (graphica)
2019 – 2020 | death café | event organiser/facilitator
2018-2019 | drawing-a-day project (instagram)
2018 | still-lives | artworks/artists’ residency Kunsthalle Below
2017 | The Quickening (graphica)
2017 | Sick: Kranksein im Comic (exhibition design/co-curation/production/contributing artist)
2016 | The Visitor (graphica)
2015 | Pier 9 Autodesk four month artists-in-residency program (San Francisco)
2015 | online sketches drawing project
2014 | what’s in a head (Vesalius Continuum)
2014 | tinker tailor stef lenk (blog about DIY and misc. nonsense)
2014 | Zerzaust but Unbowed (blog)
2012 | Two Obstetric Dolls and Dr. Smellies Mechanical Device (MSc Medical Art dissertation)
2011-2012 | Old Coot Draws Dead Things in Scotland (blog)
2011 | Random Acts of Graphite (solo show / drawings)
2010 | Winter (graphica)
2009 | The Dictionary Project (drawings)
2008 | Teatime 1&2 (graphica)
2008 | Tea and Symphonies (blog)
2008 | The Brick Oddities (limited edition book | editor/co-writer)
2007 | Playing Doctor (art event)
2007 | The Haircut (graphica)
2007 | The One-Night Stands (graphica)
2007 | The Upper Canada Chaps Society (blog and ‘zine)
2006-2008 | stef lenk blogs again (blog)
2006 | The Alteration (graphica)
2005 | Meanderings through a world-weary synapse (blog)
2005 | Carnival (graphica)
2004 | Inside Sylvia Plath’s Oven (paintings)
2003 | City in a Suitcase (art installation | Derby, England)
2003 | Gravely Disturbed (paintings)
2002 | Single Wise Female (astonishing trousers and haberdasheried goods)
2002 | Fourteen reasons I wasn’t allowed to sharpen my pencil in Kindergarten (drawings)
All material copyright © stef lenk 2023