steflenk.com

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