Authors & Headliners

Jolanta Lapiak is an Ameslan (American Sign Language or ASL) literary and media artist, narrator, and poet in video, performance art, photography and text.

Her works challenge the phonocentric traditions of textuality and poetry. Her work explores artistic and literary elements in ASL, grammatology (art/science of writing) and various ways of writing/speaking with a unique blend of cinematic vocabulary, lingual choreography, verbal calligraphy, poetry, and storytelling techniques, using ASL. Her works are inspired by Japanese art (calligraphy, specifically).
Jolanta received a MFA in Media Arts from NSCAD University, Halifax, N.S., 2007, and a BFA in Media Arts & Digital Technologies from ACAD, Calgary, 2005. She also earned a BA from Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. She teaches courses in the ASL/Deaf Studies and ASL interpretation programs in Edmonton, Canada.

Jolanta appears in See this/Hear Me. More information on her work is available at www.lapiak.com