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Series
Emerging Artists Series LAB

With the return of the Emerging Artists Series in 2025, we are initiating the Emerging Artists Series LAB. In the EAS LAB, emerging artist-curators bring forward their most pressing performance art dilemmas, queries, and wandering ponderings. Working in collaboration with the FADO’s Director, the curators of the 2025 Emerging Artists Series, and their EAS LAB cohort, our LABists work through a research project of their own devising. Questions are asked, methods chosen, and outcomes are not guaranteed. Results vary—from podcasts to public performance experiments, and everything in between.

The Emerging Artists Series LABists for 2025 are:
Christina Anna Trutiak
James Knott
Vanessa Godden


LAB #1: Threshold
A public performance series proposed by Christina Anna Trutiak

Threshold is a research project that invites local artists to make an outdoors performance on a public staircase in Toronto. Locations and details coming in April.

April 13: lwrds
April 19: Isaak Fong
April 26: Tess Martens


LAB #2: We Could Break Performance
A podcast by Vanessa Godden and James Knott
May 2025

We Could Break Performance is a podcast hosted by artists Vanessa Godden and James Knott investigating the question: “How do we evaluate the substance of tropes enacted in performance art?”

Each episode of will We Could Break Performance will feature a local performance artist and ourselves in conversation, to help us tackle our dilemma and provide perspective on the values of performance art tropes that we may share or disagree on. Does performance go harder if the performer gets harmed? Or is that negligence in disguise. Is endurance awe-worthy? Or is it sometimes used to unpoetic ends? Does nudity really bare all? Perhaps by the end this series’ run, we could break performance.

Performance
Threshold | curated by Christina Anna Trutiak

LAB #2: Threshold
A public performance series proposed by Christina Anna Trutiak

ARTISTS
Isaak Fong
lwrds duniam
Tess Martens

Threshold is a site-specific performance series that invites emerging performance artists to choose a staircase in Toronto and to develop a performance in reflection to this transitional space.

Staircases vary in shape and size and reflect the architectural and cultural norms of their time. Symbolically, a staircase suggests a continuum for human growth that unites two things; places, ideas or states of being. Stairs feature a duality; they can act as a passage facilitator or a major barrier; an aesthetic delight or a spine-chilling obstacle.

A staircase’s inherent uncertainty and duality will provide a context for progressive actions, interesting dialogues and images for the audience and for the performers themselves. Depending on their context, location, materiality and function; there is a dependence in which our mind and body considers while walking on stairs. We must imbue a sense of trust. The action and option of ascending and descending on a structure integrates a decision that the performer is driven to make in contrast to a monospace of horizontal descent.

The staircase is an odd, fluid and queer space that exists as a threshold for human growth.

Threshold features solo performances representing autonomy within a larger system of interconnectivity. These transitional spaces bridge gaps toward other destinations.

A certain step may change things.
A certain step may evoke something new.
One action will lead to another.


PROGRAM DETAILS

lwrds duniam
Date: Sunday, April 13
Start time: 3:00pm
Duration: 1 hour, RAIN OR SHINE
Location: 1755 Lake Shore Blvd West, Toronto, M6S 5A3
Sunnyside Park revetment steps, adjacent to the boardwalk south of Gus Ryder outdoor pool. Intersection of Parkside Drive & Lake Shore Boulevard West.

I often dream of stairs surrounded by bodies of water. There are spiritual interpretations for staircases that consider them symbolic for life’s journeys and the cyclical nature of death and rebirth. oneiric, atemporal, sanctuary space is a site-specific land-based performance dreamscape, collaborating with the energies of the stones in relationship to the lake, tapping into their memories, and connecting my body to the magic of the water and land. 


Isaak Fong
Date: Saturday, April 19
Start Time: 9:00am, RAIN OR SHINE
Duration: 25 minutes
Location: Harbord Street Bridge, Harbord Street & Grace Street, 400 Grace St, Toronto, M6G 3A9
Performance consists of a 10-minute field study presentation followed by a 15-minute performance. After the performance, audience is invited to join in walking the route of Garrison Creek with the artist and other “walking collaborators” to the creek head at Lake Ontario near old Fort York (approximate walk duration 1.5 hours).

A field study where artist Isaak Fong performs the role of para-anthropologist/eighteenth-century log driver to facilitate a group “re-excavation” of The Lost Giant Steps buried along the western abutment of the Harbord Street Bridge to break up the “Log Jams” that conceal the City’s buried hydrology.


Tess Martens
Date: Saturday, April 26
Start Time: 9:00am, RAIN OR SHINE
Duration: 1 to 3 hours
Location: Baldwin Steps, Davenport Road & Spadina Road, 486 Davenport Road, Toronto, M5R 2V3

Whether it be daily workdays or nightly parties, I grind. The travel to work 9-5 grind. The nightclub genital grind. Grind on stairwell railings with a skateboard just like Tony Hawk’s video game. In this performance, I will be climbing the Toronto Baldwin Park steps and sliding down the railing until I get too tired or my vagina hurts from the “pole burn”. After each grind, using sanitary wipes to clean the public railings. Showing the play and leisure of sliding down the railings and the work and labour of cleaning afterwards. I will wear a women’s suit with a skirt and pink underwear to be a working 9-5 woman. Bridget Jones’ famous scene where a camera catches her sliding down a fire pole and the audience can see her knickers will be references. I will play Dolly Parton’s Working 9 to 5 on repeat on a boombox. Grinding 9-5 is a feminist and humorous performance about work and leisure with an absurdist take.

Performance
We Could Break Performance with Vanessa Godden and James Knott

LAB #1: We Could Break Performance
A podcast by Vanessa Godden and James Knott

We Could Break Performance is a podcast hosted by artists Vanessa Godden and James Knott investigating the question: “How do we evaluate the substance of tropes enacted in performance art?”

Each episode of will We Could Break Performance will feature a local performance artist and ourselves in conversation, to help us tackle our dilemma and provide perspective on the values of performance art tropes that we may share or disagree on. Does performance go harder if the performer gets harmed? Or is that negligence in disguise. Is endurance awe-worthy? Or is it sometimes used to unpoetic ends? Does nudity really bare all? Perhaps by the end this series’ run, we could break performance.

Episode 1: Francisco-Fernando Granados
Episode 2: Archer Pechawis
Episode 3: Erika DeFreitas

Documentation
We Could Break Performance Episode 3: Erika DeFreitas
Documentation
We Could Break Performance Episode 2: Archer Pechawis
Artist
lwrds duniam

© lwrds duniam, 2025.

Canada
www.lwrds.ca

lwrds duniam is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, independent researcher, community educator, and 2019 OCAD University graduate (BFA Integrated Media) living and creating in Tkaronto. Born in Callao, PerĂș in 1984, lwrds has been calling Turtle Island home since 2002. Their ARTivist practice is informed by frameworks of Decolonial Critical Theory and is anti-racist, anti-oppressive, sex-positive, trauma-informed, and grounded in disability justice. With a focus on Critical Design and decolonial research practices and pedagogies, they have been working as an artist & designer for over a decade.

Their studio practice—which they call “BrujerĂ­a Praxis”—conjures performance, sculptural, illustrative, sonic, poetic, and remediated mixed-media outcomes, intuitively tapping into site-specific and responsive energetic exchanges. Emerging from a foundation of transgressive witchy knowledge, BrujerĂ­a Praxis honours sexuality and the erotic as key nurturing elements.

Guided by Afrodiasporic and Indigenous Cosmologies, BrujerĂ­a Praxis moves them to seek artistic collaborations through un/learning with more-than-human beings. lwrds is invested in decolonial land-based research and creation, considering arboreal entities as living elders and keepers of knowledge, and valuing non-human consciousness and intelligence. Through their art-making and research lwrds aims to build new entry points for connection, broadening the boundaries of their own understanding regarding their place in the world, their role as an artist and storyteller, and legacy as future ancestor.

In February 2024 they began working on an ongoing collaborative project in Cape Town, South Africa alongside artists Syrus Marcus Ware and Gabrielle Le Roux, developing a series of portraits of local Queer, Trans, Intersex BIPOC, as the newly-formed Trans Africa Collective. Prior to this, they completed international residencies at Materia Abierta in Mexico City (July–August 2023) and Live Art Ireland in North Tipperary, Ireland (April–May 2023). 

lwrds has most recently been awarded the Transformative Territories Award, special category of the COAL 2024 Prize, part of the Creative Europe 2024-2026 programme and will be participating in the Creative Assembly: Transformative Territories Residency at ArtMill Center for Regenerative Arts, Czechia, in August 2025.

Artist
Isaak Fong

© Isaak Fong. not an agent provocateur (still), 2025. 

Canada

Isaak Fong (b.1999) from the prairies and foothills of Alberta, explores familial relationships and instances of the imprecise. 

Documentation
We Could Break Performance Episode 1: F-F Granados
Artist
Colin Cudmore

Canada
https://wildernessadventureride.bandcamp.com/

Colin Cudmore is a Toronto-based experimental percussionist, improviser, and performance artist. He is one half of the Ministry of Phonic Services, a music label and events organizer creating a platform for local experimental artists. His antics have led to numerous improvised collaborations under the pseudonym %%30%30, and solo performances as _53d8ZxP. His works have appeared at Electric Eclectics, The Music Gallery, Citadel & Compagnie, the docks of Trillium Park, the forests of Riverdale Park, and the Yorkville Rock.

© Colin Cudmore, 2025. Photo Alexander Arvelo McQuaig.

Artist
Sasha Singer-Wilson

Canada
www.sashasingerwilson.com

Sasha Singer-Wilson (she/her) is a Tkaronto based multidisciplinary artist of Lithuanian, Italian, Irish and British ancestry who works in performance, theatre-making, research, writing, music, and facilitation. With a practice rooted in the project-specific exploration of creative form and process and the tensions and play between them, Sasha’s work explores climate justice, place, intergenerational relationships, caregiving, ritual, and the voice. She has co-created performances in basements, alleyways, bathrooms, lofts, schools, theatres and online. Together with Lou Jurgens, Sasha co-ran the artist-driven performance company the blood projects, co-creating immersive and site-specific performances in intimate spaces. With a BFA in Acting from York and an MFA in Theatre and Creative Writing from UBC, Sasha is a research-creation PhD student in Theatre & Performance Studies at York. Her research explores relationality, ancestral and land connection, and decolonization in scholarship, creation and performance. Sasha teaches voice and speech at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre and York, and she has facilitated workshops in theatre, creative writing, and voice across Turtle Island.

© Sasha Singer-Wilson. Photo Khanya Alexis.

Artist
Amy Hull

Canada

Amy Hull is a Toronto-based dance artist, scholar, and death doula. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Communication and Culture. She holds a MA in Dance and BFA spec. Hons. in Dance, Choreography and Performance. Hull has worked internationally with AVA Dance Company and locally in Toronto with Balancing on the Edge, with which she choreographed A Study in Exile/Home is not a place on a map, with mentor Rebecca Leonard and composer Juro Kim Feliz. Her recent work includes a music video for Buffy Sainte-Marie through the Virtual Creative Native project, an original work choreographed and performed in collaboration with Shannon Pybus for Free Flow Dance Theatre’s International Dance Week, and modelling for Kent Monkman.

© Amy Hull. Photo Marlowe Porter.

Artist
Trish Lanns

Canada

Trish Lanns is a sound bath meditation facilitator, restorative yoga guide, and EFT practitioner in training who creates nurturing spaces that invite deep rest, balance, and clarity. Her gentle approach supports nervous system regulation, mindfulness, and relaxation, supporting individuals to navigate life’s challenges with greater ease. Guiding with love and compassion, Trish believes in the profound healing power of movement, breath, and stillness. Known for her calming presence and inclusive spirit, she fosters a soothing environment where all are welcome to slow down, reset, and reconnect with themselves.

© Trish Lanns. Photo Tyrone Warner.

Artist
Vanessa Godden

Canada
https://vanessagodden.com

Vanessa Godden (they, them) is a queer Indo-Caribbean and Euro-Canadian artist, educator, and curator. They are based in Tsí Tkarón:to/Toronto, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, including Mississaugas of the Credit, Chippewa, Haudenosaunee, and Wendat peoples. Godden’s transdisciplinary practice explores how personal histories and the body in relation to geographic space can be conveyed through oral and somatic storytelling in art. They draw from their multi-ethnic diasporic experiences to build multi-sensory performances, videos, sound installations, book art pieces, and net-art that unfurl the impacts of trauma on the body, connections to community, and tethers to culture.

Artist
Brigita Gedgaudas

Canada

Brigita Gedgaudas is an emerging, interdisciplinary, trans*, and diasporic-Lithuanian artist working in so-called Toronto. Coalescing from a life-long practice of Lithuanian folk dance, a recent involvement in the Punking/Whacking/Waacking community, and training in new media art and vertical dance techniques—Brigita amalgamates these histories into one human shell. Finding home in a glitch’s persistent ability to reconfigure and reframe a person’s approach to digital systems, Brigita extends this into explorations of the queer body in heteronormative reality. Their work is in constant conversation with trans*mutation, translating the body between physical and digital/human and alien through interactive and immersive installations. 

Artist
Camille Kiku Belair

Canada

Camille Kiku Belair (they/them) is a composer, classical guitarist and interdisciplinary artist. They are interested in working with field recordings, creating handmade artist books, and exploring connections between music and art making. A graduate of OCAD University’s Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design MFA program, they previously completed a BMus specializing in composition at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, and studied at California Institute of the Arts in both the Performer-Composer and Experimental Sound Practices MFA programs. Current work involves developing handmade book-objects that function as compositional tools and generating grid-based visual patterns from melodies. 

Artist
Kendell Yan

Canada

ç”„ćż”è» / Kendell Yan (she/they) is a multifaceted and multidisciplinary trans girl artist on the precipice of tomorrow. In one hand she holds grace and in the other she holds steadfastness. Emotive, sure and firm, Kendell sings to the tomorrow we all deserve. Combining intergenerational culture and liberationist dreams, Yan strives for a collective future. Take her hand and trust the journey, this is an epic created together.

Performance
On View | curated by Jordan King

ARTISTS
Brigita Gedgaudas
Camille Kiku Belair
Kendell Yan

Throughout 2020, performance for online audiences (via livestream, Zoom, and other social media channels) became increasingly common. Unseen viewers tuned in on laptops and smartphones, from anywhere in the world. The presence of a camera—for artists and audiences alike—dictated the frame. 

The prompt to invited artists in this first project in FADO’s Emerging Artists Series for 2025 was minimal: “You are on view.” Performances will take place in the glass cube meeting room located at The Commons @ 401 which is visible from the corridor. Simultaneously, the performance will be streamed in the adjacent screening room. Audiences are free to take up whichever view suits them.

For the artists, the camera takes up a position in the performance space, but this is not a performance for the camera. Is it possible to be oblivious to (or to obliterate) the presence of the camera? How might the camera inform considerations for movement or activity (or perhaps lack thereof) that you engage in for the performance, while not performing for this all-seeing eye, the camera?

An additional intention for the curator was to develop new collaborative relationships and dialogues with artists working in performance through this project. Toronto is generally seen as an inhospitable metropolis, and as housing costs as well as operational costs rise, challenges for artists committed to creating performance also increase. The Emerging Artists Series is the perfect platform for a small number of artists who do not have lengthy histories of performing in Toronto to create a new small-scale work.

Kendell Yan
Performance: Saturday, February 22 from 1:00–5:00pm
Artist talk: Sunday, February 23 at 2:00pm

Camille Kiku Belair
Artist talk: Friday, February 28 at 5:00pm
Performance: Saturday, March 1 from 1:00–5:00pm 

Brigita Gedgaudas
Performance: Saturday, March 8 from 1:00–5:00pm
Artist talk: Sunday, March 9 at 2:00pm

Series
Emerging Artists

After a 10-year hiatus, FADO’s emerging Artists Series is back in 2025!

A much-loved staple of FADO’s programming year from 2003 to 2014, FADO’s emerging Artists series was created to provide a platform for younger artists to develop and present a performance piece in a professional context, often for the first time. As the series developed, the opportunity it provided extended to nurturing new performance curators. Each new project in the series has interpreted in its own particular way the central term of its mandate reformulating who/what should be considered ‘emerging’ in the context of performance art practice as presented through the FADO frame.

For the 2025 Emerging Artist Series, ‘emerging’ is discarded as a label that reveals age, defines time spent or as a qualification of perceived depth of experience. Instead, from February through May two curators and three series researcher residents develop performance installations, performance events and research projects that bring the notion of ‘emerging’ into relationship with community and forms of practice.

2025: On View | curated by Jordan King
2025: not knowing is the most intimate | curated by Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan
2025: EAS LABists: Christina Anna Trutiak, James Knott, Vanessa Godden
2014: 11:45 P.M. | curated by Kate Barry
2013: .sight specific. | curated by Francisco-Fernando Granados
2011: Extra-Rational | curated by Gale Allen
2009: Misinformed Informants | curated by Lisa Visser
2008: VivĂȘncia PoĂ©tica | curated by Erika DeFreitas
2007: Enter-gration | curated by Nahed Mansour
2005: Open Airway | curated by Elle McLaughlin
2005: Feats, might | curated by Alissa Firth-Eagland
2004: Home Repair by One Night Only
2004: Game City | curated by Craig Leonard
2003: Gestures | curated by Tanya Mars

FADO’s Emerging Artists series was initiated in 2003 by Canada’s own performance art matriarch and educator Tanya Mars, who recognized that the best way to encourage young artists was by offering them a professional presentation opportunity. Her vision was one of mentorship, targeting an interesting mix of new and emerging artists, many of them former students, whom she commissioned to develop new works responding to a thematic context. The first event, curated by Mars, included ambient, conceptual and cabaret-style performance art gestures. This event later developed into the Emerging Artists Series. FADO’s intention with this on-going series was to nurture new work and ideas, provide direction and mentorship, and showcase the work of the city’s newest perspectives in performance art.

As the series developed, it became clear that this was an opportunity to nurture not only emerging performance artists, but also emerging curators, allowing FADO to encourage new curatorial voices in performance art, and introducing FADO to new communities of artists (and new artists to FADO). The series has continued to develop and change, later including the work of artists not just from Toronto, but regionally as well. This way, the series exposes local audiences to the range of performance work happening in the emerging performance scene across Canada.

Performance
Future Dances

TWO chances to experience FUTURE DANCES!!
March 12–14: video installations, 10:00AM–4:00PM, free
March 15: 12:00–5:00PM, see program below

ARTISTS
Freya Björg Olafson
Johnny Forever
Laura Taler
Lee Su-Feh
Margaret Dragu
Nova Bhattacharya
Ravyn Wngz
Ronnie Clarke
Travis Knights

PROGRAM for March 15
ALL welcome, lots of snacks, accessible building
ASL Interpretation on request (email info@dancemakers.org)

PWYC, RSVP HERE

12:00PM: Doors open
12:30PM: Welcome & reading of work by Laura Taler
1:00PM: Performance by Ravyn Wngz
1:30PM: Performance by Margaret Dragu & friends
On-going–5:00PM: Freya Björg Olafson, Johnny Forever, Lee Su-Feh, Nova Bhattacharya, Ronnie Clarke, Travis Knights

Dancemakers and FADO Performance Art Centre are teaming up for FUTURE DANCES, a speculative choreography project in which 9 artists have been tasked with creating a dance for 50 years into the future. We want to know, now, what dance might look like in 2074. What will happen to dance, choreography and stops in between over the next two generations. This is a thought experiment and a real exercise that considers what the role, purpose, form and potential of dance (as well as performance, choreography, movement, or adjacent and related forms such as performance art) might be at this critical convergence of the climate crisis, violent international conflicts and political upheaval.

Established in 1974, Dancemakers considers the context of how dance is presented. We support independent dance curators through innovative and customized presentation opportunities. By providing flexible and adaptable platforms, various dance practices can be shared with diverse audiences.

Thanks to Vtape for their support of FUTURE DANCES.

Artist
Laura Taler

Romania/Canada
https://laurataler.ca/

Romanian-born Canadian artist Laura Taler began her career as a contemporary dance choreographer before turning her attention to filmmaking and visual art.  Throughout her career Taler has explored the links between movement, voice, memory, and history by using cinematic and choreographic devices to articulate how the body is able to carry the past without being oppressed by it. Her work has been praised for its unique combination of emotional resonance, wit, and striking visuals. Awards include a Gold Hugo (Chicago International Film Festival), the Best Experimental Documentary award (Hot Docs!, Toronto), Best of the Festival (Dance on Camera, New York), and the Dennis Tourbin Prize for New Performance (SAW, Ottawa). Her new public art audio work MONAHAN was awarded the 2024 Creative City Network of Canada’s Public Art Legacy Award.

Artist
Nova Bhattacharya

Canada
https://www.novadance.ca/nova-bhattacharya

Nova Bhattacharya is an award-winning artist, cultural innovator, and unapologetic trailblazer based in Tkaronto. A Bengali-Canadian and Scarborough rocker with a rebellious edge, she draws on a kaleidoscope of influences to create vivid, genre-defying works that fuse technical mastery with raw, emotional resonance. Fearlessly reinterpreting traditions and reinventing rituals, Nova’s creations challenge expectations and celebrate community.

In 2008, she founded Nova Dance, a diversiform company dedicated to transcending perceived boundaries of form, technique, and culture. From intimate solos to large-scale spectacle, her work reflects a deep commitment to experimentation and inclusivity. Her current explorations navigate the intersections of Bharatanatyam, Butoh, and Burlesque while cultivating her latest creative obsession: a rock opera.

The pandemic brought unexpected silver linings, inspiring Nova to rediscover the totality of her practice. This period saw her embrace visual art, beading and film, expanding her artistic language and reaffirming the power of multidisciplinary storytelling. With an unwavering belief in art’s potential to bridge divides, Nova continues to challenge conventions and reimagine what dance—and community—can be.

Artist
Freya Björg Olafson

Canada
https://www.freyaolafson.com/

Freya Björg Olafson is an intermedia artist who works with video, audio, animation, motion capture, XR, painting, and performance. Olafson’s work has been exhibited and performed internationally at the Bauhaus Archiv (Berlin), SECCA – SouthEastern Center for Contemporary Art (North Carolina), LUDWIG museum (Budapest), and The National Arts Center (Ottawa). Olafson has benefitted from residencies, most notably through EMPAC – Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center (New York), Oboro (Montreal), and Counterpulse (San Francisco). In spring 2020 Olafson was one of the long-list Sobey Art Award recipients through a nomination by Video Pool Media Arts Center and in July 2021 Olafson’s work MÆ- Motion Aftereffect was selected for the Lumen Prize for Art & Technology long-list. Olafson holds an MFA in New Media from the Transart Institute / Donau UniversitĂ€t. From 2017–2021, Olafson was Assistant Professor in Screendance within the Department of Dance at York University. Beginning in July 2021, Olafson joined the University of Manitoba School of Art as an Assistant Professor in Digital Media.

Artist
Lee Su-Feh

Lee Su-Feh (she/they) is a dancer, choreographer, performance-maker and teacher of voice and movement. She splits her time between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where she was born and raised; and xÊ·məξkʷəy̓əm(Musqueam), Sáž”wx̱wĂș7mesh (Squamish), səlilwətaÉŹ (Tsleil-Waututh) Territories, a.k.a. Vancouver, Canada, where she makes her home. Over the past 35 years, she has created a provocative body of award-winning trans-disciplinary work that interrogates the contemporary body as a site of intersecting and displaced histories and habits. As Artistic Director of battery opera performance, (“fearlessly iconoclastic”, “brainy and bawdy”), she has worked both alone and in collaboration with others. Alongside this trajectory in performance-making, she has pursued a lifelong study and practice of Chinese martial arts, Qigong and Daoism, all of which informs her approach to dance and movement. Since 2010, she has been a student and practitioner of Fitzmaurice VoiceworkÂź and is currently a certified Lead Trainer of the work. She is a member of the Advisory Group of the Fitzmaurice Institute and participates actively in the international community of Fitzmaurice VoiceworkÂź teachers. Some of her current preoccupations involve creating somatic algorithms, and exploring the relationship between voice and movement.

Artist
Christina Anna Trutiak

© Christina Anna Trutiak, Abrasive Butterfly, 2024. Photo Alexandra Hickox/April Hickox.

Canada
www.xristiak.com

Christina Anna Trutiak is a Toronto-based performance artist and curator with an MFA from the University of Victoria. In addition to her studio practice, she has completed residencies and workshops nationally and internationally. She performed, Untitled (To Carry), at the Venice International Performance Art Week in 2019 with support from the Canada Council for the Arts. Trutiak was a selected participant for The Power Plant’s RBC Emerging Artist Network, 2022–2023. Survival and destruction, resilience and resistance are significant themes within Trutiak’s practice. Trutiak performs grotesque yet fragile interpretations of the uncanny. She creates psycho-spatial environments consisting of slightly skewed hyper-realistic images. Body parts, sounds, landscapes and objects feed her unusual assortment of counter-repressive gestures that revolve around permutations of psychic and social repressions.

Performance
not knowing is the most intimate | curated by Shalon Webber-Heffernan

ARTISTS
Amy Hull
Claudia Edwards
Joyce LeeAnn
Sasha Singer-Wilson
Trish Lanns

Curated by Shalon Webber-Heffernan

not knowing is the most intimate explores themes of collective and personal grief, and the ways in which we might connect through shared vulnerability. Inspired by the Buddhist koan, “not knowing is the most intimate,” the project embraces the uncertainty of our contemporary emotional landscapes, inviting both artists and audiences to move into the discomfort of uncharted waters.

While reading Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s Hospicing Modernity, I was struck by the idea that domination often involves a deliberate denial of relationships and a suppression of the senses. Drawing on Dwayne Donald’s assertion that sensory atrophy is central to this process – disrupting traditional knowledge systems and relational connections—I began to consider how deeply this numbness has seeped into the fabric of modern life. What would it mean to counter this—to resist detachment—through intimacy and attunement? This question sits at the heart of this curatorial series, exploring how performance can reawaken connection through embodied presence and shared vulnerability in times of grief.

Bringing together artists whose work grapples with death, mourning, collective grief, climate anxiety, somatics, and rituals of healing, the series unfolds across live performances, an immersive book installation, a sound bath and guided meditation inspired by the tradition of living funerals. It is an experiment in shedding emotional armour – to feel, to connect, to soften. It is an invitation to let grief become a shared language that unites rather than isolates—guiding us beyond knowing and into the realm of embodied presence and relationship.


Saturday, May 10
What Will I Tell Her? by Sasha Singer-Wilson
6:30PM start, please arrive at 6:20PM

Embracing the Waves of Grief: A Sound Healing Meditation with Trish Lanns
8:00PM–9:30PM
Limited number of spots available. Please REGISTER HERE.


Saturday, May 17
2:00PM: Performance by Amy Hull
7:30PM: Performance by Claudia Edwards


Sunday, May 18
3:30PM: somethymes grief goes for a walk, a virtual talk with Joyce LeeAnn
Check back for details in May.

All performances are FREE. Accessible building.

Library
Library Digital Catalogue

FADO is now pleased to offer a publicly accessible digital catalogue representing our Library and Archive collections held at the 401 Commons Research Centre.

To view our most up-to-date catalogue, click on the book icon below or follow the hyperlink.
Scroll to end of page for a PDF version, updated periodically.

https://www.librarything.com/profile/FADOPerformanceArt

  • The Library Collection features our shelves of books, artist publications, exhibition catalogues and DVDs related to performance art.
  • The FADO Archive Collection details our exclusive holdings of photographs, objects and ephemera produced by artists, which have been commissioned and presented by FADO throughout its 30+ year history.
  • Additionally, the FADO website hosts our vast collection of performance documentation and archival materials in a range of mediums, including video footage, photos, essays, reviews, interviews, and much more.
  • FADO’s original publications and artist books are also available for online purchase through the Shop page.

Documentation
The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: A Travelling Circus (No. 4) by Cason Sharpe

Documentation
The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: A Travelling Circus (No. 3) by Cason Sharpe

Documentation
The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: A Travelling Circus (No. 2) by Cason Sharpe

Artist
FADO SCENT #3 – ARTIST ORANGE


The FADO website, created by the unique minds at I Know You Know, is guided by colour and scent.

Each of the categories on this website’s navigation menu—all the ways FADO presents our work—is colour-coded and contains a description of a unique fragrance, a kind of conceptual scent. Each scent illuminates the qualities of the various ways FADO works. You can read the description of the categories/colours/scents in the footer of each web page. The notes of each scent (top, middle, and base) conjure the elements, memories, and characteristics of our performances, artists, engagements, writing, e-bulletin, and the archive. 

The FADO fragrances are conceptual and actual. Some remain on the website as a description, in the form of a digital scratch n’ sniff that you imagine for yourself. Some have been formulated and are for experiencing via small editions of scented postcards mailed directly to your door (with the occasional collectible object).

We are excited to announce the third scent in the series—the most important one of all—is now available. ARTIST ORANGE is composed entirely of elements from the orange tree. The scent is the artist and the art. ARTIST ORANGE performs itself.

How does it do that, you might ask? By being worn by artists—by you! ARTIST ORANGE was formulated as a wearable scent. Sign up to receive a sample of ARTIST ORANGE in the mail today!

If you have already received the other scents on special limited edition postcards in the mail, then there is no need to do anything. ARTIST ORANGE will be coming to your mailbox this month. If you have yet to receive any of FADO’s signature scents, sign up to our mailing list with your address (or update your current profile) and start getting scented mail right away. DO THAT HERE.

Performance
The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: A Travelling Circus by Cason Sharpe

Join writer and artist Cason Sharpe for four public ribbon-cutting ceremonies to commemorate the partial unveiling of Alexandra Park, a neighbourhood that’s been under re-construction for the past decade. Each ceremony will occur live in four different locations around Alexandra Park, bordered by Dundas Street West, Augusta Avenue, Queen Street West, and Cameron Street in Toronto. Combining the civic rituals of the walking tour and the ribbon-cutting ceremony, this series of performances turns a neighbourhood stroll into a travelling circus, a spectacle through which we may catch a glimpse of an ever-changing city. 

Four ceremonies. Four opportunities to witness. See you at the circus.

The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: A Travelling Circus is part of FADO’s newest on-going series, Walk-and-Talk, put together by Francesco Gagliardi and Julian Higuerey NĂșñez.

CEREMONY 1: Saturday, September 21 at 3:00pm
Meet at the foot of Kensington Avenue (one block west of Spadina Avenue), by the construction hoarding on the south side of Dundas Street West.

CEREMONY 2: Saturday, September 21 at 7:00pm
Meet outside the basketball courts on the corner of Cameron Street and Paul Ln Gardens.

CEREMONY 3: Sunday, September 22 at 3:00pm
Meet outside 75 Augusta Square, in front of the rose bushes across the street from Randy Padmore Park.

CEREMONY 4: Sunday, September 22 at 7:00pm
Meet on the corner of Augusta Avenue and Grange Avenue (one block south of Dundas Street West), by the construction debris next to the dumpsters.

Performance
part of the ramble that remained in the end without by Mark So

part of the ramble that remained in the end without explores the nexus of inner and outer worlds through a dual writing/recording practice: daily list-form notebook writing and a tapeloop of recorded fragments, both accumulated from reading. The reading, writing, and recording aspects of the work are free to diverge and intersect across a kind of roving open privacy, producing a coherent field of potential performance or realization marked by characteristic modularity and switches between discrete modes of action. This work stems from So’s longstanding use of field recordings and performed readings, but with a deeper connection and contiguity with wherever he happens to be working–creating an evolving register not only of recorded and written surfaces, but his movements through a changing field.

part of the ramble that remained in the end without manifests in two parts. The first part takes place on-line throughout the month of November. The second part, an in-person live presentation in Toronto, will take place on December 7.

PART 1: November 2024 (on-line)
Throughout the month of November, So will post to FADO’s Instagram page with a selection of recordings, images, and writing as he goes about his work along walks in urban and suburban areas of greater Los Angeles.

Part 2: December 7 | 7:30pm start time, The Commons @ 401
Mark So’s part of the ramble that remained in the end without culminates in a unique presentation at FADO, featuring a performance of writing and recordings made along walks in Toronto as well as around Los Angeles during the month of November.

part of the ramble that remained in the end without is part of FADO’s newest on-going series, Walk-and-Talk, put together by Francesco Gagliardi and Julian Higuerey NĂșñez.

Artist Talk with Nickeshia Garrick

Click here to register on Eventbrite!
FREE, all welcome

Please join us as we kick-off DanceWorks’ 2024–2025 Season with an Artist Talk featuring our inaugural Emerging to Mid-Career Fellow, Nickeshia Garrick.

The artist will be in discussion with Co-Executive Artistic Producer and Fellowship Facilitator, Dedra McDermott, to talk about the initial months of the Emerging to Mid-Career Fellowship, her archival research interest and recent discoveries supporting her developing research and choreographic project, the ties that Bind us, the ties that Bond us.

Nickeshia is currently exploring the socio-political, cultural and artistic influences on Black Performance Art from the 1960s to now across Turtle Island. the ties that Bind us, the ties that Bond us (working title), aims to excavate the context of the aforementioned influences and the role they potentially play(ed) in shaping Black performance art movements. Through this inquiry, Nickeshia is interested in locating any sites of disruption or a critical challenge of the traditional theatre milieux in Canada beginning in 1960.

With thanks to our partner Centre for The Study of Black Canadian Diaspora. This artist talk is presented with support from FADO Performance Art, Vtape, and ArQuives.

Series
Walk-and-Talk

Curated by Francesco Gagliardi and Julian Higuerey NĂșñez

There’s a storytelling technique, originated in procedural TV and later adopted by narrative films and videogames, in which two or more characters have an important conversation while walking between places. The technique is generally used as a way of conveying large volumes of information in a dynamic way, while introducing the audience to the relative placement of various locations and communicating a sense of urgency. As a narrative device, it effectively functions as a way of combining two distinct vectors of a narrative (the visual and the aural) into a more compact and efficient whole. 

This technique is referred to as Walk-and-Talk. 

While there isn’t anything analogous in the realm of performance art, walking (to and from the site of a performance; as a component of the performance itself; as a stage of the creative process) and talking (as part of the performance or around it, like in the “artist talk”) are, for artists and audiences alike, such commonplace components of the experience of making and watching performances, that they tend to be taken for granted and disappear from view.

In this new, ongoing series, FADO highlights and investigates these foundational gestures of the performance art vocabulary—walking, talking—through performances and discursive interventions that explore their intrinsic mutual imbrication. After all, isn’t the stroll of the flñneur always also the articulation of an argument? Aren’t the verbal excesses of every character in a classic novel who pines for an unattainable elsewhere just another way of getting there?


2024: The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: A Travelling Circus by Cason Sharpe
2024: part of the ramble that remained in the end without by Mark So
2025: Walk-And-Talk, the audio podcast series (coming soon!)

Artist
Mark So

USA
http://mark-so.com/

Mark So works at the cusp of experimental music and poetics. His work has been presented around the world in formal and informal contexts, with recent performances, installations, listening rooms, and streetwork in L.A., Portland, Marfa, and Mexico City, including ongoing collaborations with composer Manfred Werder and others. His work has recently appeared in print in Walking from Scores (edited by Elena Biserna), Peripheries Journal No. 5, The Open Space, and with poet Tim Johnson, Pathetic Literature (edited by Eileen Myles). Marfa Book Co. published A Box of Wind, collecting nearly 300 scores from his Ashbery series. Recordings have been released on caduc, editions wandelweiser, winds measure, The Open Space, and his own death-spiral. He lives in and out of Los Angeles.

Artist
Cason Sharpe

© Cason Sharpe, 2024. Photo Luke Albert.

Canada
https://read.cv/casonsharpe

Cason Sharpe is a writer and artist based in Toronto. He has presented work in collaboration with various friends and institutions across the country, and his fiction and criticism have appeared in various places in print and online.

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Documentation
Sing, Sync, Sink by Ieke Trinks

Documentation
iPerformance by Andrés Galeano