Nina Arsenault is Canada’s most celebrated transsexual. As a multidisciplinary artist, she has honestly and unapologetically documented her physical transformation through live performance, photography, film and print.
She has been at the centre of numerous artistic pieces, including The Silicone Diaries, which revealed her sex work, endless surgeries and redefinition of what a woman can be, and I Was Barbie, her true story about playing the famous doll at a Toronto gala celebrating Barbie’s 50th birthday.
A frequent speaker on gender, sexuality, the fine arts and the rights and dignity of transgender people, Arsenault has been tearing down the walls of our culturally constructed notions of sex and gender through her vulnerable, complex and deeply personal accounts of her own life.
In 2007, she received the Unstoppable Award from Pride Toronto for her transformative contribution to Canadian’s understanding of sex and gender.