Over the past decade, Mockler’s contribution has come to be understood as an artistic exercise in applied ethics, drawing on the institutional critique of 1960s conceptual art, the histories of documentary practice and working-class representation, and the praxis of durational performance. Treating the institutions of art, democracy, and knowledge as experimental events, she pushes against the ways these supposedly “pure” ideals become limited by the very systems that claim to champion them. In doing so, her work has revealed overlooked power dynamics and helped redefine the conditions under which people are heard. Refusing the art world’s tendency to speak only to itself, she has leveraged the perceived novelty of her identity as an artist to collaborate with refugee rights nonprofits, ministries of education and universities, government administrations on immigration, tenant groups and housing authorities, social and natural scientists, industrial farmers and foresters, prisoners-of-war associations, workers’ unions, school teachers, police and more in Canada and abroad, including the United States, Mexico, Uruguay, the North of Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and Japan.

Mockler recently concluded a three-year artist-in-residence appointment at Concordia University’s Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance in Montreal, as part of the UNESCO Chair in the Prevention of Radicalization and Violent Extremism.

Focusing on institutional inclusion and class solidarity amid growing polarization, she developed mechanisms for difficult interviewing, collective documentaries in which subjects become authors, organizational takeovers led by youth, scores for hard listening, guerrilla internships, public-forum performances, controversial consultations, and literal “gate-openings.” She has since taken on the role of Senior Advisor at McGill University’s Faculty of Education.

For more information, including her curriculum vitae, please contact the artist directly.