Category: Artist

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 pathologisation 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.

© Ronnie Clarke, Hollow Objects, BAND Gallery (Toronto), 2022.

Canada
www.ronnieclarke.com

Ronnie Clarke is a Black and queer emerging artist living and working in Toronto, Ontario. Her work blends elements of choreography, dance, movement, collaboration, video and installation. 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. 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. 

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

The navigation menu contains the various categories by which FADO presents our work. The menu on the left side of your browser, where you see “about,” “performance,” “series,” “engagements,” and so on, highlights these areas. Each of the categories is color-coded and contains a description of a unique fragrance. The 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, bulletin, and the archive. 

The fragrances are conceptual and actual. Some remain on the website as a description, in the form of a digital scratch n’ sniff that you can read and imagine for yourself. Some are formulated and are for smelling. Really smelling via small editions of scented postcards. And the occasional collectible object created for selected scents in the FADO scent collection.

This, the third scent in the series, is the most important one of all: ARTIST ORANGE. Composed entirely of elements from the orange tree, this scent is the artist AND the art. ARTIST ORANGE performs itself.

ARTIST ORANGE coming in January, 2024.

Photo credit: Michael Reinhart

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

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.  

Canada
www.knottart.com

James Knott is an emerging, Toronto-based artist, having received a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Integrated Media from OCAD University. Their performance-based practice employs tactics of self-mythologizing, and auto-iconographic aestheticism, as a means to bridge personal narratives into communal ones. Their work combines theatre, video, and audio with an emphasis on movement/gesture to create immersive and emotionally resonant experiences, exploring themes of paradoxical and queer identity, archetypes of desire, and the commodification of the femme body.

An alumnus of The Roundtable Residency, they’ve exhibited/performed at XPACE Cultural Centre, Trinity Square Video, the Toronto Feminist Art Conference,  the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, Montreal’s Festival Phénomena, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. They’ve received project and grant funding from The Artist Project Contemporary Art Fair, The National Arts Centre, The Ontario Arts Council, and The Canada Council for the Arts.

© 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.

© Rita Camacho Lomeli, 2022. Deep in the Streets. Photo Henry Chan.

Mexico / Canada

Rita Camacho Lomeli is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto. Moving across visual art forms such as paintings, print works, performances, installations, and everyday events like walking and conversing, her work focuses on revealing the contemporary condition of objects and spaces. She has exhibited her work in artist-run centres, festivals, and on the streets.

Moving across visual art forms and everyday events such as walking and conversing, my work focuses on revealing the formal, the material and the contemporary condition of objects and spaces, making them visible and tangible in a different way. I create paintings, print works, performances and installations. One of my main concerns is to examine one of the most critical issues in traditional aesthetics, “the frame.”  I consider the frame an open process of interaction with the environment. Therefore, in my practice, I contest to what extent nondescript objects, quotidian events, and the randomness of the every day are part of the meaning of my work. Consequently, I am in the continuous exploration in which the boundaries of art and the environment are no longer clear, searching to create works that interrelate art and life.

www.essaysmythe.com

SA Smythe is a transmedia artist, critical theorist, and educator. Their art practice integrates (visual and text-based) poetry, soundscape composition, light sculptures, and archival ephemera to choreograph cartographies of black (un)belonging. They have exhibited their work internationally at Scuderie del Quirinale (Rome), Kampnagel (Germany), Centro nazionale di produzione Virgilio Sieni (CANGO, Florence), GXRLSCHOOL (Los Angeles), Polo del ‘900 (Turin), Berkeley Arts Centre (Berkeley), as a member of the Dark Matter Cypher under the direction of Sage Ni’Ja Whitson (Fathomers/CAAM), Mattatoio Museum (Rome), as a Africa Writes Literary Festival (London) headliner, and elsewhere in collaborative and solo projects, installations, and festivals. Recipient of the 2022 Rome Prize, Smythe is based between Tkaronto, Italy, and unceded Tongva land (Los Angeles).

© Sinead O’Donnell, Violence is in Me, 2010. Photo Henry Chan.

N. Ireland
https://sineadodonnell.com/

Sinéad O’Donnell has been creating performance, installation, site and time-based art since 1998. Encountering a place’s territoriality, and frequently referencing Ireland, Sinéad chooses actions or situations that demonstrate complexity, setting up confrontations between matter and memory, timing and spontaneity, site and space, and intuition and methodology. Sinéad O’Donnell is based in Belfast, N. Ireland and her performance work has been presented in Ireland, South America, Middle East and Eastern Europe. She is highly active in the local Belfast performance art scene, working with Bbeyond and other local organizations to foster performance art activity and mentor emerging artists in her community. This will be Sinead’s first performance in Toronto.

© Hugh O’Donnell, Invert Two, 2010. Photo Henry Chan.

1978 – 2022

Belfast, N. Ireland
https://flaxartstudios.org/flax-art-artists/Hugh-odonnell

Hugh O’Donnell’s has been creating installation, video and performance works since receiving his MFA in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. His performance practice is informed by drawing, found and made objects. Often of an auto-personal nature, O’Donnell’s work is material-based and conceptual, and is concerned with notions of gender and sexuality.  Hugh O’Donnell is based in Belfast, N. Ireland and his performance work has been exhibited in Ireland and internationally in Switzerland, Serbia, Romania and Quebec City. Currently he works with Bbeyond, a Belfast based performance organization established to preserve and promote performance art exchanges within Ireland/N. Ireland and abroad. This will be Hugh’s first performance in Toronto.

Yvonne Rainer, a co-founding member of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962, made a transition to filmmaking following a fifteen-year career as a choreographer/dancer (1960-1975). After making seven experimental feature films  — Lives of Performers (1972), Privilege (1990), MURDER and murder (1996), among others — she returned to dance in 2000 via a commission from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation for the White Oak Dance Project (After Many a Summer Dies the Swan). Her dances since then include AG Indexical, with a little help from H.M., RoS Indexical, a Performa07 commission, Spiraling Down, Assisted Living: Good Sports 2, and Assisted Living: Do You Have Any Money? Her dances and films have been shown world wide, and her work has been rewarded with museum exhibitions, fellowships, and grants, most notably two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Rockefeller grants, a Wexner Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, and retrospective exhibitions at Kunsthaus Bregenz and Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2012), the Getty Research Institute, L.A. and Raven Row, London (2014). A memoir — Feelings Are Facts: a Life — was published by MIT Press in 2006. A selection of her poetry was published in 2011 by Paul Chan’s Badlands Unlimited.

Somalia / Canada

Idil Mussa is a Toronto based, Somali-Canadian artist. She is most fascinated with how social and political movements inspire people to action and the ways in which those movements shape art and culture.

Canada
www.loveless.ca

Natalie S. Loveless received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She also holds a PhD (History of Consciousness, UCSC) and an MA (Art History, Theory and Criticism, Tufts University). Previous curatorial projects include Participatory Dissent at Vancouver’s Western Front Society (2007) and Intervene! Interrupt! Rethinking Art as Social Practice at the University of California, Santa Cruz (2008). Also an interdisciplinary artist, her wall-drawing installations, performance actions and video works have been presented in festivals, galleries and artist-run centres in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. Her son, Orion, is almost two.

Canada
www.ginamiller.ca

Gina Miller is a visual artist who lives in Vancouver, Canada. Her recent work focuses on narratives surrounding growth: psychological, spiritual and physical. Family Tissues is Miller’s first foray into performance. Gina has a Fine Arts diploma from Capilano University (2003) and will graduate in the Spring of 2012 from Emily Carr University with her B.F.A. She is mother to thirteen-year old Hewitt, seven-year old Rupert, and six-year old Harper.

© Yumi Onose, they perform on friday and on saturday they respond to friday, 2011. Photo Henry Chan.

Japan / Canada

Yumi Onose was born in Japan. Yumi’s passion in traveling and learning lead to her study of visual arts and performance. She was invited to be artist-in-residence and exhibited in Poland in 2003, created art for contemporary dance piece Red Dream directed by Keiko Ninomiya in 2006, and exhibited Evolving Forms with Harvey Chan in 2007. She has performed in Something about Gender (2009), we see their work on friday and on saturday they respond to it” (2010) and 24h of butoh and it is not butoh (2010), all directed by claude wittmann in Toronto.

Bulgaria / Canada

Vassya Vassileva, performer and lecturer, is cuurrently working on her PhD in Visual Semiotics at New Bulgarian University, Sofia. Her previous studies include MA in Philosophy and Intercultural Studies, BA in Art Pedagogy at St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia. Since October 2004 she has been searching for the artist Friedrich Nichtmargen. Areas of interest: visual discourse and culture, contextual analysis, empathic reason, discourse ethics, mental mapping, geography of time-space formations, friedrichology, gargarisma, art as experience…

Canada
www.devoraneumark.com

Devora Neumark’s interdisciplinary artistic practice includes live-art, durational performative interventions, sound and photography installations, public commissions and storytellings. In 1995, she initiated and co-organised (with Regine Basha) the international symposium “Visual Art and Jewish Identity: A Contemporary Experience” at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, Montreal. More recently she initiated and co-organized (with Loren Lerner and pk langshaw) Public Art as Social Intervention…, a Montreal-based project held at Concordia University in November 1999, which included a symposium, artistic interventions and an extensive website. From 1995 to 1999 Neumark served as Vice President of Auberge Shalom…pour femmes, Canada’s first Kosher crisis intervention centre and shelter for women victims of conjugal violence. As a frequent lecturer, she has addressed a wide variety of audiences, speaking about engaged artistic practice, the authority of memory, formations of identity, and inter-generational violence and healing.

Canada
https://kristyndunnion.com/

Kristyn Dunnion‘s dystopic Tarry This Night made CBC’s top 20 fall fiction list and Bitch’s November must reads. The Dirt Chronicles (also with Arsenal Pulp Press) was a 2012 Lambda Literary Award finalist and ALA Over the Rainbow selection. Recent fiction appears in The New Guard, Cosmonauts Avenue, and The Tahoma Literary Review. A performance artist and local musician, Dunnion’s provocative work incites critical questions about identity, justice, and power.

b. 1948, USA
www.adrianpiper.com

Adrian Piper is a first-generation Conceptual artist and analytic philosopher. She began exhibiting her artwork internationally at the age of twenty, and graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1969. While continuing to produce and exhibit her artwork, she received a B.A. in Philosophy with a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Musicology from the City College of New York in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1981. Adrian Piper produces artwork in a variety of traditional and nontraditional media, including photo-text collage, drawing on pre- printed paper, video installation, site-specific sculptural installation, digital imagery, performance and sound works.

b. 1985, Canada
www.nadege-grebmeier-forget.com

Nadège Grebmeier Forget’s interdisciplinary practice unfolds via durational, live, live-streamed and private performances, which sometimes result in drawing, photography or installation works. In these performances, she models and hybridizes herself to defuse expectations of beauty and explore the effects (and affects) of the concerned gaze on the unfolding identity as it is observed and analyzed by others, including oneself. Seeking to confront desires and ideals (aesthetic, commercial, sexual, etc.) through an empowered and performative manipulation of her own image, she intrinsically questions the labour of making and becoming; including the ways in which performance (of self or art) can be documented, shown, disseminated or exhibited.

Engaged within both of Montreal’s visual and live arts communities—as an artist, freelance project coordinator, creative consultant or artistic director. She has participated in numerous events, festivals, panels, residencies, and exhibitions across Canada, the US, and Europe, and is the first performance artist to receive the City of Montreal’s Prix Pierre-Ayot (2019), awarded in partnership with the Contemporary Art Galleries Association (AGAC).

Canada
https://genevieveetmatthieu.bandcamp.com/

The duo Geneviève & Matthieu, from Rouyn-Noranda in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, started working in the late 1990s, blending visual art, performance, music and everyday life. Geneviève & Matthieu play on interdisciplinarity—happening, musical composition, performance art and installation—to create group performances and productions of social tableaux that are at times festive but always human.

Beginning in 2001, their discography includes five titles. Between the baroque, abstract expressionism and arte povera, their works have been presented over forty times in Québec, across Canada, the United States, France, Belgium and Spain. Actively involved in their community, Geneviève & Mathieu have been developing the artist-run centre Écart and the Biennale d’art performatif de Rouyn-Noranda for over 20 years.

The duo takes a critical look at past and current artistic movements: DIY culture, conceptual art and performance art. Through residencies, public dissemination and the experience of a body that bounces, transforms and blends into art, their works are constantly evolving. Propelled by the human spirit, their creative approach favours a living art that challenges usual modes of presentation through the change of the place, duration, and manner of exhibiting and performing.

Image: Jehan Roberson. Photo © Jay Bendett.

USA
https://www.jehanroberson.com/

Jehan Roberson is a queer writer, scholar, artist, and memory worker using text as the basis for her interdisciplinary practice. Born and raised in Memphis, TN, Jehan’s work explores text as a site of liberation, place making, and historical intervention for Black peoples in the Americas. Her art and research have informed her previous work in archives and cultural sites such as the National Civil Rights Museum and the Center for Southern Folklore in Memphis, Kismet Productions in Chicago, and the Borges Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Jehan is a PhD student in English Language and Literatures at Cornell University. She holds a MA from NYU’s John W. Draper School of Humanities and Social Thought and a BA in English Literature with a double minor in Spanish and Journalism from the University of Missouri.

Canada
https://mathieulacroix.jimdofree.com/

Mathieu Lacroix is a Montreal-based artist from Drummondville, Québec. He holds a BFA from UQAM in Montreal. He has recently exhibited at Clark Center in Montréal, Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges in Montréal and CIRCA art actuel in Montreal. He has performed in many locations, for example at 7a*11d, the International Festival of Performance in Toronto. His works can be found in the collection of La Ville de Montréal. Mathieu Lacroix has been invited to participate at the Off Biennale of Contemporary African Art in Dakar, Senegal, and he performed in a group exhibition at Dazibao, Montreal.

Mathieu Lacroix’s multidisciplinary practice comprises drawing, sculpture, installation and performance. The notion of the “sketch” is central to his work, employing it as both a conceptual approach and a literal technique across a spectrum of media, helping to subtly unify his wide-ranging intellectual and formal interests. He creates unusual environments borrowing from both the domestic space and the commercial. Lacroix’s interventions question the complex relationship between the individual and his environment, habits, and identity. His work touches lightly but profoundly on issues from many areas such as politics, economics, personal and collective identities, and perceptual experience. 

https://joeculpepper.com/

Joe Culpepper is a magician, consultant and researcher. He is an associate researcher at Montréal’s National Circus School, is a member of London’s Magic Circle, and has adapted magic effects for Cirque du Soleil, Concordia University, and others.