Artist
Bojana Videkanic

Bosnia and Herzegovina
https://bojanavidekanic.com/

Bojana Videkanic is an artist, curator and an art historian born in Bosnia and Herzegovina/former Yugoslavia. After becoming a stateless person, she came to Canada as a government-sponsored refugee in 1995.

Videkanic is an Assistant Professor of contemporary art and visual culture in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo, Ontario Canada. Her art historical research focuses on the 20th-century socialist art in Yugoslavia and its contributions to the rise of global modernisms through Yugoslavia’s participation in the Non-Aligned Movement and various de-colonial cultural practices. Her book Nonaligned Modernism: socialist postcolonial practices in Yugoslavia, 1945-1985 was published by McGill-Queens University Press in 2019. Videkanic has also written about contemporary artists coming from the region, most recently about Tanja Ostojić’s seven-year long project Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojić which deals with recent cultural and socio-economic histories of the post-Yugoslav region from a feminist perspective.

Her current research investigates memorial sites of the Non-Aligned Movement, in particular architecture and monuments built to commemorate each NAM summit. Her artistic practice is based mostly in performance art, but Videkanic also works in video, text and installation. Her work mines personal experiences of displacement, movement, and identity as these intersect with larger political, social and cultural questions. Her most recent work deals with the transformation of her native country into a lawless zone for the development of various neo-liberal capitalist projects and new forms of colonization.

Videkanic is a board member of 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival in Toronto, and sat on boards of galleries and artist-run centres. She has presented her work nationally and internationally at performance festivals such as Nuit Blanche Toronto, 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival Toronto, MS:T International Festival from Calgary, Hemispherica, Montreal, IPA Platform and Workshop, Bristol, IMAFestival, Serbia. 

Performance
Enter-gration curated by Nahed Mansour

FADO in cooperation with Toronto Free Gallery, is pleased to announce the latest instalment of its ongoing Emerging Artists series. In Enter-gration, curated by Nahed Mansour, a roster of local performance artists explore immigration issues.

ARTISTS
Bojana Videkanic
Idil Mussa
Jesus Mora
Karilynn Ming Ho
Rachel Gorman
Reena Katz
Rita Camacho Lomeli
Tejpal S. Ajji

North America is increasingly joining global debates on immigration as new racisms surface. Borders and boundaries are being redefined in the name of security, as movement is facilitated for some groups while others are excluded. The question is who benefits from this security regime? Who is left out? This event is a small step to building our collective awareness of the demands of movement, expectations of submission, and the struggle to fulfill challenges faced by millions with precarious status daily.

Curator Nahed Mansour writes:

Crossing the border into North American society is not a simple act for immigrants and refugees. [“It should be hard! We need safety! How else are we going to know who’s coming into our country?”] In curating Enter-gration, I’m trying to break down these well-worn myths. [“Why?”] I intend to explore ways in which integration through assimilation is a tactic aimed to make visible minorities invisible. [“But we have multiculturalism, don’t we?”].

PROGRAM

March 1, 7:00pm
Crossing Borders/Crossing Bodies by Bojana Videkanic
Illegal Migration by Jesus Mora

March 2, 7:00pm
Transit by Rachel Gorman
Suhbuhk [Lesson] by Tejpal S. Ajji

March 3, 4:00pm
Knot by Idil Mussa
Crossing Borders/Crossing Bodies by Bojana Videkanic
Order to Remedy by Reena Katz

March 4, 2:00pm
Urban Meditations by Rita Camacho Lomeli
Cowboy BeBop (Ode To My Daddy) by Karilynn Ming Ho
Illegal Migration by Jesus Mora

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer