Category: Artist

© 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, Perú 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 “Brujería 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, Brujería Praxis honours sexuality and the erotic as key nurturing elements.

Guided by Afrodiasporic and Indigenous Cosmologies, Brujería 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.

© 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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

Canada

甄念菻 / 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.

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.

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.

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 Universität. 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.

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 xʷməθkʷəy̓əm(Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (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 Voicework® 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 Voicework® teachers. Some of her current preoccupations involve creating somatic algorithms, and exploring the relationship between voice and movement.

© 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.

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.

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.

© 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.

b. 1952, Canada
www.andrewjamespaterson.com

Andrew James Paterson is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto. His work engages in a playful questioning of language, philosophy, ‘community and capitalism’ in a wide range of disciplines, including video, performance, writing, film, and music. He has exhibited nationally and internationally for over four decades. Paterson’s artist’s book Collection Correction was published by Kunstverein Toronto and Mousse of Milan in 2016. His novelette Not Joy Division was published by IMPULSE B in Toronto in 2018. Paterson was awarded a Governor General’s Award for his work in Visual and Media Arts in 2019.

© Heather Rule, Bonny Stern’s Spicy Tomato Penne, video still, 2024.

Canada
www.uselessceramics.com

Heather Rule is a ceramicist, animator, and ‘zine maker based in Toronto, Canada Her work explores self-narrativization, drawing on memoir and self-portraiture to explore how we create our personal histories. Heather has participated in ceramic residencies in Santa Fe, New Mexico (2018, 2019) and most recently in Skopelos, Greece (2023) where she continued to develop her particular approach to incorporating ceramics and animation.

© Amélie Laurence Fortin. Photo Peter Rosseman.

Canada
www.amelielaurencefortin.com

For over a decade, Amélie Laurence Fortin’s artistry has been firmly rooted in the realms of exploration, territory, and time. Her fascination lies within the subtleties of the peripheral reality, unraveling the chaos in random and non-linear systems, and the sheer joy of serendipity. With a keen interest in bridging the pragmatic world with the richly expressive realm of art, Fortin brings forth models that translate complex information into visually engaging narratives. Her work embodies a symphony of immersive installations, each meticulously curated with elements of kinetic sculpture, resonating sounds, expressive photography, intricate light play, and thoughtfully placed objects. Through her creations, Fortin elucidates the profound relationships humans share with their surrounding spaces.

Currently, Amélie Laurence Fortin divides her time and artistic creativity between Québec City, Canada, and Warsaw, Poland. Her riveting body of work has graced numerous solo and group exhibitions, been part of artistic residencies and festivals, and is proudly displayed in both private and public collections across Québec and Europe.

© Christof Migone. Photo Marla Hlady.

Canada
www.christofmigone.com

Christof Migone‘s research delves into language & voice, bodies & performance, intimacy & complicity, sound & silence, rhythmics & kinetics, translation & referentiality, stillness & imperceptibility, structure & improvisation, play & pathos, pedagogy & unlearning, failure & endurance. Current and ongoing investigations: microphone hitting, book flipping, tongue extruding, record releasing, word hyphenating, para-pedagogical positioning, careless curating, noise-making, sequitur following, paper passing, interval counting, rhythm repeating, phone licking, machine fingering, playlist compiling, silence listening, dozens of dozens, strobosonoscopics and stroboscopsonics.

© Evamaria Schaller, IDYLL verwegt, 2022. Photo Almut Elhardt.

Belgium
https://www.efeumaria.com/

Evamaria Schaller’s work oscillates between performance art, film and installation.

I work with the media film as a documentary instrument. Film with its bodily materiality is a central theme. In my video performances I use the recordings to fragment the body into moving particles. I deal with social environment and liminal spaces and use my body as a measure. In my Live-Performances I work with daily actions and its absurdity. In this examinations I reflect and intervene with site-specific conditions and create actions or installations through simple, clear gestures. I am interested in this interaction with site-specific conditions which govern human behaviour and relationships. I transform and decontextualize daily materials or found footage and combine it. I always have to adjust my own borders—failure as a constant companion.

© Caroline Gagné. Photo Meriol Lehmann.

Canada
www.carolinegagne.ca

Caroline Gagné lives and works in Quebec City and Saint-Jean-Port-Joli. Her work reveals a profound commitment to her practice, where network art, media art, installations, and sound art forge a multiform artistic path. She has taken part in the Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine (Trois-Rivières), the Manif d’art Biennial and Mois Multi (Quebec City), the Temps d’images festival (Montreal), FIMAV (Victoriaville), and Instants fertiles (Saint-Nazaire, France); as well as in the events the Périphéries Québec-Zagreb-Sarajevo (Zagreb, Croatia), Cités invisibles (Montreal), and C’est arrivé près de chez vous : L’art actuel à Québec (Quebec City). Her works have also been shown at Occurrence and the UQAM gallery (Montreal), the Stewart Hall Art Gallery (Pointe-Claire), Sporobole (Sherbrooke), Stryx Gallery (Birmingham, England), as well as Lieu and VU (Quebec City). In 2011, she won a Prix d’excellence des arts et de la culture de la Ville de Québec for her sound installation CARGO. In 2020, the national collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal acquired her piece Le bruit des icebergs as part of its permanent collection. Gagné is an active member of the arts milieu, and between 2013 and 2019, was artistic director of artist-run centre Avatar.​

Canada/Germany
www.adrianadisman.com

Adriana Disman is a performance art maker, thinker, and writer. Since 2010, her solo work has been presented in numerous festivals and galleries across Canada, the United States, Europe, and India. Disman’s practice searches for minor modes of resistance as she seeks liberation—an interdependent and as yet un-imagined state—through refusing to adhere to the logics of power. Her writing on performance can be found in both academic and arts publications, with a special focus on the pathologization of self-wounding in performance and a forthcoming textbook for Routledge on performance art. She has also run performance art events and spaces for the work of others in Toronto, Montreal, New York, Berlin, and Chandigarh.

Canada
www.ronnieclarke.com

Ronnie Clarke is a movement and sound artist living and working in Toronto, Ontario. Her work blends elements of choreography, dance, movement, collaboration, video and installation. Clarke is interested in how language manifests, becomes translated and is mediated in the digital age. With an interest in the poetics of digital gestures, spaces and interfaces, she often uses movement to investigate how technology plays a role in our interactions with others. Recent projects include a commissioned public performance work for the Parkette Projects (Toronto, 2021) with Gallery TPW and a group exhibition at the University of Texas at Austin (2023/2024). She holds a BFA from The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario.

© George Azzaria

Canada
www.georgesazzaria.com

Georges Azzaria became interested in radio experimentation and then devoted himself to the creation of sound objects. He was part of the Bruit TTV group, was active in the Avatar artist center, presented exhibitions of his instruments and sound performances, and produced records as well as soundtracks for films. His recent work touches more directly on the visual arts.

Russia/Finland
www.olgaprokhorova.fi

Olga Prokhorova is a performance artist living and working in Oulu, Finland. In her art she establishes presence at the place and works through the study of body, movement, and behavior, creating a visual phenomenon—alternative situations that people can observe. Prokhorova’s works have been presented internationally in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Russia, and Mexico.

USA
www.anyaliftig.com

Anya Liftig is a performance artist and writer. Her works have been exhibited at TATE Modern, MOMA, Queens Museum, Movement Research, Performer Stammtisch Berlin, Performance Space London, and many other venues around the world. As a dancer and actress. Liftig’s work has been published and written about in theNew York Times Magazine,BOMB, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue Italia, PAJ, New York, Theater Magazine, and many others. Her experimental film and video work has been screened in festivals globally. Her essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and noted in Best American Non-Fiction. She is a Connecticut Council for the Arts Emerging Arts Fellow in Creative Writing, a recipient of a Franklin Furnace Award, and fellowships at MacDowell and Yaddo. 

© Andrea Nann, Transmitting Trio A (1966). 2015. Photo Erin Brubacher.

Canada
www.dreamwalkerdance.com

Andrea Nann is a Toronto based contemporary dance artist and artistic director of Dreamwalker Dance Company. She is a graduate of York University’s Fine Arts Program and is currently a Resident Artist at Soulpepper Theatre (Toronto), and Visiting Artist at River Run Centre (Guelph), The Grand Theatre (Kingston), Burlington Centre for the Arts and Brock Centre for the Arts (St. Catharines). As creator of The Whole Shebang, a multi-arts performance platform, Andrea has developed a unique collaborative interdisciplinary engagement process, the Shebang Process, that is being shared with artists across Southern Ontario. Andrea has created over 30 works for the stage, film and various outdoor sites. As an interpreter, Andrea was a member of Danny Grossman Dance Company from 1988-2003 where she created performed and taught major roles from the works of Mr. Grossman and guest choreographers. Andrea is currently a guest artist with Peggy Baker Dance Projects, Astrid Dance, Volcano Theatre and Modern Times Stage Company.

© Michelle Lacombe, 2022. Photo Henry Chan.

Canada

Michelle Lacombe lives and works in Montréal. Since obtaining her BFA from Concordia University in 2006 she has developed a unique body-based practice that is located at the intersection of visual arts and performance. Her work has been shown in Canada, the USA, and Europe in the context of performance events, exhibitions, and colloquiums. She is the recipient of the 2015 Bourse Plein Sud and exhibited her work in the 2017 edition of Art Encounters Contemporary Art Biennial.

Her practice as an artist is paralleled by a commitment to supporting action art and other undisciplined practices. She is currently the director of VIVA! Art Action.

NON GRATA, 2012. Photo Dean Goodwin.

Estonia
http://www.nongrata.ee/

NON GRATA is an international performance group from Estonia with a floating membership. In Non Grata there have been more than 300 members during the last 12 years from all over the world. The main characteristics is anonymity in group work, ignorance of the local art world and mass media. Group has performed in Asia, Europe, South and North America with street actions, chaotic space and context specific performances, and long lasting ghetto marathons.

© Johnson Ngo, Odalisque, 2010. Photo Henry Chan.

Canada

Johnson Ngo is a Toronto-based artist who works in performance and sculpture. Ngo’s research explores connections and disjunctions between his gaysian identity and Western queer culture. Recent exhibitions include Art Gallery of Windsor, Nuit Blanche, Spark Contemporary Art Space, Toronto Free Gallery/7a*11d, Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Art Centre, Mississauga Living Arts Centre, and Hart House. Ngo completed a two year curatorial residency at the Blackwood Gallery. Currently, Ngo works in the Public Programming & Learning department at the Art Gallery of Ontario and is a board member of C Magazine.

© Cheli Nighttraveller, Untitled, 2003. reminiSCENT. Photo Miklos Legrady.

Canada / Little Pine First Nation

Cheli Nighttraveller, born in Saskatoon, explores her identity as a person of mixed cultural heritage (Métis) through performance and video. She was active in Saskatchewan’s contemporary Aboriginal arts community before moving to Montreal in 2001. She has participated in artist residencies and performance festivals across Canada, including the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art (Toronto), Latitude 53’s VisualEyez Festival (Edmonton), Sâkêwêwak Artists’ Collective (Regina) and grunt Gallery (Vancouver).

USA
www.witlopez.com

Wit López is an internationally-acclaimed, award-winning multidisciplinary maker, performance artist, and essayist who has been based in Philadelphia, PA for the past 19 years. Their creative practice combines the skills their parents taught them–fiber art, painting, collage, and photography–and elements of their formal training in theatre and classical music, including costuming, staging, and props.

Their visual work and performance art uses their background in Anthropology and Africana Studies as a lens to examine, decolonize, and reconstruct aspects of their own identity. Through fiber and imagery, López explores accessibility, queerness, gender identity, Blackness, and Latinidad, while also fully embracing absurdity and Black Existentialism and challenging the macabre.

 In addition to their art practice, Wit is the founder and artistic director of Till Arts Project, which is committed to providing resources for LGBTQ+ artists and creators to make and exhibit their work and to network and collaborate with each other. Till Arts also seeks to improve inclusion and equity in the future of the arts and culture sector, by giving LGBTQ+ youth the tools and hands-on training they need to be organizers and leaders in the fields of arts advocacy and arts management.

López is also a community archivist, art collector, and radical social change philanthropist who believes in the power that funding has to strengthen the art practices of artists from populations that have been historically, systematically marginalized.

Canada
https://jordankingarchive.com

Jordan King is an artist, curator and writer engaged in archival research of performance and intergenerational dialogue. Her formative years were spent immersed in nightlife culture which continues to influence her work. Her practice is rooted in performance, archival research and intergenerational connectivity. 

Canada
http://janpeacock.net/

Jan Peacock is an experimental media artist and writer and Professor Emerita of Expanded Media at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where she also directed the Master of Fine Arts Program. In video and installation work she uses narrated, animated and performed elements to contemplate experiences of place. Her work is in public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Ludwig Museum in Köln, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and Fukui Museum in Japan. Retrospective screenings and exhibitions of her work have been organized at the Festival International du Film sur l’Art, La Cinémathèque Québécoise (Montréal), Dalhousie Art Gallery (Halifax) and TIFF Bell Lightbox (Toronto). Her video work has won awards at the Atlantic Film Festival, the Chicago International Film & Video Festival, and the Atlanta Film & Video Festival. In 2012 she became a Governor General of Canada Award laureate in Visual and Media Arts.

Naseh Kamgari is a writer, director, educator, and set designer. He studied set design for performing arts and holds a master’s degree in Dramatic Literature from the University of Tehran (2000). His books include Three Plays on One Set (2022), Three Animal Plays (2021), The Ceiling of this Home is Low (51 short stories, 2018), A Song at the End of a Dark Alley (six plays, 2017), The Boar (a story, 2000), and The 366th Day of the Leap Year (four plays, 2001), all published in Farsi. Forthcoming books Eastern Night (two plays) and In the Absence of Farhad (three plays) will be published in 2023. Notable works as set designer include I Can’t Remember Anything by Arthur Miller (2001), The Condemned of Altona by Jean-Paul Sartre (2006), Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (2006), and over 20 Iranian plays. He has directed his own plays, Eastern night (2016), A Song at the End of a Dark Alley (2014), Snowman and Spring (2010), Poem of a Queenless Ant (2007), In the Absence of Farhad (1999), among others. Most of his plays engage anti-war themes and criticize socio-political matters. He lives and works in Tehran, Iran.

© Enok Ripley, 2023. Photo Lorenza Cini.

Canada
www.enokripley.com

Enok Ripley [they/them] is a Canadian Visual artist and Performer currently working in Quebec, Canada. Ripley completed their Studies in Studio Arts at Concordia University, and now works internationally in performing arts and installation, presenting their works all over Europe, Canada and the United States. Ripley has received several Grants and bursaries to participate in international performance festivals including the Venice International Performance Art Week, Summerworks Canadian Performance Festival, as well as others. Ripley’s performances examine their physical and metaphysical bodie/s in all its possible iterations both lived and imagined.

Through transformations transcribed in flesh, cloth, paint, and clay, they create hybrid creatures of self-exploration, to be embodied, held lovingly or worn as armour. Ripley creates a sanctuary within themselves, in which the bittersweet feelings of hope and grief exist simultaneously; reaching out to others through limbs that can move, decay and regrow as needed.

Colombia/Canada
www.thepopshop.org  

Alejandro Tamayo is a visual artist originally from Colombia, currently living and working in Windsor, Ontario. Often taking a conceptual approach, Alejandro employs sculpture, drawing, text, photography, and installation as vehicles to reflect about contemporary modes of art production and systems of meaning. His work has been exhibited individually and collectively in Canada and abroad. Tamayo completed a practice-based doctorate in Visual Arts at York University in 2018 with a dissertation that explored experiential notions of time and space through sculpture, drawing and installation. 

Canada

Born in Montréal, David was educated at Concordia University and York University. Writer, performer and musician, David’s one-man shows played locally and toured to Montréal, Western Canada, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Cyprus, Greece. David Roche Talks To You About Love (later a prize-winning first film by Jeremy Podeswa) and 1969 & 1975 (inspired by Spalding Gray). For Tarragon Theatre: the 5-hour Wagner’s Rinse Cycle. Toronto City Opera: featured roles for ten seasons. Toronto Fringe Festival: Tyrolia. Film: John Greyson’s Zero Patience and Nick Sheehan’s No Sad Songs. With David Bateman: People are Horrible Wherever You Go, Solar Stage. Currently: Pandemic Poetry at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

© Myriam Laplante, Fly Me To The Moon, 2018. Photo Adelaide Cioni.

Canada/Italy
www.myriamlaplante.net

Myriam Laplante is a Canadian artist currently based in Bevagna, Italy. She works with performance, installation, video, painting, sculpture, drawing, etc. Her work has been widely exhibited from squats to museums in North America, Europe and Asia. She has been a member of the performance collective Black Market International since 2001.

Canada
www.johanneszits.com

My work uses the expressive capabilities of the human body to investigate the connection between personal and public and the various constructs that shape this connection. My artistic approach involves incorporating improvisation and random elements, both in my process-oriented work and in my longer durational performances. By setting boundaries and constraints for myself, and by working with specific sites and references, I encourage the audience to critically examine their own assumptions and beliefs.I have been collecting second-hand clothing for fifteen years, using this material present work that reflects a conflicted relationship with fashion and grapples with phrases like “socially acceptable” and “age-inappropriate.”  Should I be conscious about what to wear and what is considered to be in vogue? All of my performance-based works with clothing have, in one way or another, dealt with this dilemma, either in metaphorical ways or by directly addressing issues such as the influence of mass media, fashion trends, pride, labour, excess and burden.

Johannes Zits is a Toronto-based performance artist. Since graduating in 1984, Johannes has shown work across Canada and internationally. In 2013, he featured a collection of his videos at FIFA in Montreal and the following year presented the performance, Island, at M:ST Festival, Calgary, as well as venues in Shanghai and Chongqing, China. His photographic and collage work has been featured in Vienna, Berlin, Shanghai, Hamburg, Caen and Mexico City. In 2016, Johannes presented Body Traps, at the 7A*11D Festival, in Toronto, and also performed with the group No Object at the AGO Toronto. In 2019 the Copenhagen Contemporary Museum commissioned him to create a score for their permanent collection and he performed at the International Biennial of Asuncion, Paraguay. In 2020, Johannes was the artist-in-residence at the McIntosh Gallery, Western University, in London, Ontario, presenting the exhibition Listening To Trees. In 2022, he attended a residency at the Joy Kogawa House; performed at Centre A, Vancouver; and presented work for Treewilder, Oundle, U.K., as well as Como un Jagüey, in Havana, Cuba.

© Abedar Kamgari, Another Country (still), 2017.

www.abedarkamgari.com

Abedar Kamgari is an artist, curator, and arts worker based in Hamilton and Toronto. In her practice, Abedar considers contexts and conditions of displacement and diaspora using site-responsive, performative, and relational approaches. Her current projects explore body memory, border spaces, complicated inheritances, and the idea of distance, inspired by a play written by her father and garments passed down from her grandmothers. Abedar holds a BFA (2016) and an MFA (2022) in interdisciplinary studio and has performed, screened, and exhibited her work in a range of institutional settings across Ontario.

© Holly Timpener, There is a dissonance and density within my body, 2019. Pi*llOry part one. Photo Aedan Crooke.

Canada
https://hollytimpener.wixsite.com/hollytimpener

Holly Timpener, MA, is a queer, non-binary performance artist working in-depth with themes of queer resistance and transformation. They use performance to challenge and understand their place in this world while investigating how queer people and communities are connected. Performance allows them to confront issues related to gender, intimacy, trauma, and the body by engaging themes of trust, power, control, and resistance. Balancing their personal experience, knowledge, and memories with insight gained through queer community research, Timpener embodies “the personal is political” in a modern sociopolitical context. They believe it is within the embodiment of affectual transformation that Queer resistance is created through performative action. Within their works, they claim ownership of their own body and reflect on the lived and intermingled experiences of being Queer. Timpener’s work communicates identity, sexuality, gender, and community and creates strong images that transmute the space, public, and themself into a new awareness. 

Situated in Canada, Timpener works nationally and internationally. They have presented work for Month of Performance Art Berlin, The Art Gallery of Ontario, SummerWorks, The Bronx Museum, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, and the Venice International Performance Art Week, among others. They are also honored to have worked several times with La Pocha Nosta at Montreal Arts Interculturels, the Taos Paseo Festival, and Encuentro in Mexico City.  

© James Knott, Legs Toronto, 2023. Photo Henry Chan.

Canada
www.knottart.com

James Knott is an emerging, Toronto-based artist. Their performance-based practice employs tactics of self-mythologizing as a means to bridge personal narratives into communal ones. Combining theatre, video, and audio their work places an emphasis on movement/gesture to create immersive and emotionally resonant experiences, exploring themes of queer identity, archetypes of desire, and the commodification of the femme body.

A member of the 7a*11d Toronto Performance Art Collective, and alumnus of The Roundtable Residency and Buddies In Bad Times Emerging Creators Unit, they’ve exhibited/performed at Xpace Cultural Centre, Trinity Square Video, the Toronto Feminist Art Conference, FADO Performance Art Centre,  the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, Montreal’s Festival Phénomena, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

© Keith Cole. High Tea with Keith Cole and Jeanne Randolph, FADO, 2022. Photo Henry Chan.

Canada

Keith Cole is a Toronto-based artist, performer and writer. He holds a BFA from York University (1989) and an MFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design (2012). His interdisciplinary artistic practice is a collision of the forms of theatre, dance, film and performance, and the intersections they create. Cole has appeared in films, television and performance events worldwide and is a recipient of a Harold Award (1999) a National Tap Dance Award (2004), the Roberto Ariganello Award (2007) a Dora Award Nomination for Outstanding Male Performance in a Musical (2008) a Pink Triangle Award (2000), XTRA! Magazine Mouthiest Queer Activist Award (2010). In 2010 Keith Cole was a leading contender in Toronto’s Mayoral Election. He placed 8th in the overall election putting him in the top 10 of well over 80 candidates. He has written for FUSE Magazine, KAPSULA Magazine, The Dance Current, XTRA! dailyxtra.com, Fab Magazine, The BUZZ and has contributed writing to three academic anthologies. In 2014 and 2015 NOW Magazine readers voted him Toronto’s Best Performance Artist. As an independent scholar his research work explores gossip, hearsay, rumours, theft, speculation and appropriation within the contemporary art world. 

© Laura Paolini, Make Your Bed, 2020. Photograph Adrienne Row-Smith.

Canada
www.laurapaolini.com

My practice stands between historical interrogation, personal experience, and the conceptual trajectories of contemporary art. I am interested in complex overlaps and fleshy folds: the space where the “political” person and “personal” person meet, merge and overlay. My work’s exploration concentrates on performative actions and the methods we use to engage with objects and spaces. Throughout my practice, bodies and objects work together as a scale, not exclusively measuring distance through space and time, but also a scale that includes functions, habits, and the conditioning of a body through these means.

Laura Paolini (she/her) currently lives in Ottawa, unceded and unsurrendered Anishinaabe Algonquin territory. Her artwork is primarily conceptual and manifests through installations, videos, and performances, often unfolding where these forms meet, merge and collapse. She has exhibited in various Canadian institutions including Hamilton Artists Inc, The Ottawa Art Gallery, and Art Mûr during the 17th edition of Fresh Paint/New Construction (2021). She recently performed during PERF; a performance art Biennale hosted by AXENÉO7 (evening curated by Anna Khimasia and Thomas Grondin). Paolini earned an MFA from the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa (2021). In addition to previously published writing, she is currently a member of the editorial committee for Peripheral Review, an independent platform for critical and experimental art writing in Canada. Her video works are distributed through Vtape (Toronto).

Canada
https://menshealthproject.wixsite.com/mikiki

Mikiki is a performance and video artist and queer community health activist of Acadian/Mi’kmaq and Irish descent from Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland, Canada.

Mikiki has worked as a high school Sex Educator, a Bathhouse Attendant, Drag Karaoke Hostess, in various capacities in the Gay Men’s Health and HIV response, in Harm Reduction Outreach and HIV testing all over Canada. Mikiki is currently producing a quarter century retrospective of their drag performance art in August 2023 at The Rooms in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

© Paul Couillard. Duorama #129 (performance with Ed Johnson), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, 2020. Photo Fausto Luna.

Canada

Paul Couillard has been working as a queer artist, curator, and performance art scholar since 1985. He has created well over 300 performance works in 26 countries, often with his husband and collaborator, Ed Johnson. Paul was the Performance Art Curator for FADO from 1993 until 2007, and is a founding co-curator of 7a*11d. His main areas of interest include site-responsiveness, building community, and addressing trauma through explorations of our bodies as shared vessels of sensation, experience, knowledge and spirit. He is the editor of the monograph series Canadian Performance Art Legends, and has been a lecturer at McMaster University and the University of Toronto Scarborough. He recently completed a doctorate through the York Graduate Program in Communication and Culture. His dissertation Rethinking Presence with a Thinking Body: Intra-active Relationality and Animate Form offers a meditation on presence from the perspective of a thinking body, integrating insights from continental philosophy, popular neuroscience, and interactive performance art practices.