Tag: Johannes Zits

LA FAAS is back!
June 14–17, 2023
Kathleen Street, Sudbury

For its seventh edition, the Sudbury Alternative Art Fair (FAAS 7 / Foire D’Art Alternatif de Sudbury) takes place on Kathleen Street in the Donovan neighbourhood. Under the theme of neighbourhood, some twenty artists will create original installations, artworks and performances in unusual locations. With a schedule and map in hand, you are invited to stroll down Kathleen Street all week to follow the evolution of the pieces. FAAS 7 concludes with a festive vernissage of the installations and a presentation of the performances. Free and open to all.

The Donovan is home to many ethnocultural, marginalized groups, as well as a new wave of communities who have come to call it home. With the theme of neighbourhood, it is a great opportunity to rally a community of proximity, to be in solidarity with the changes it is facing and to highlight its considerable contribution. Inspired by the desire to create a place for discussion and exchange and to propose activities of popular reappropriation, this art fair aims to shed light on the logics of our urban and economic systems.

Every two years since 2008, la FAAS has celebrated a public space in the Nickel City’s downtown. Invited artists are challenged to complete new works over the course of the festival and according to each edition’s concept and theme.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Alanis Magali Rodriguez Beaudoin
Alegría Gobeil
Alix Voz
Alyssa Scott
Annie-Claude Deschênes
Connor Lafortune
Debajehmujig Storytellers
Fauxciles
Félix Hallée-Theoret
Florencia Sosa Rey
Geneviève et Matthieu
Géronimo Inutiq
Jessica Karuhanga
John Boyle-Springfield
Johannes Zits (presented by FADO Performance Art Centre)
Nico Glaude
Rotchild Choisy
Violaine Lafortuna
Emilio & Elyse Portal, Clayton & Tara Windatt
Laurie McGauley, Cora-Rae Silk & Tracy Gregory

MORE INFORMATION

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.

ARTISTS
Amber Helene Müller St. Thomas
[ field ] (Brian Smith & Coman Poon)
Holly Timpener
Johannes Zits
lo bil
Madeleine Lychek
Nicole Lynn Deschaine
Randa Reda
Sadie Berlin
Sheri Osden Nault
Simla Civelek
Tess Martens

Curated by Holly Timpener

Pi*llOry is an event for Queer, BIPOC and Feminist performers to show case their work, focusing on trauma. Pi*llOrists are examining how we personally and politically dismantle heteronormative hegemony and engage in healing that puts an end to the repetition of communal trauma. Pi*llOry’s performers are liberating queer bodies as a primary agency that can harness the transformative power of presence, space, politics, shame and (dis)/ability while refracting their infinite incarnations. Pi*llOry’s artists renounce the binary and traditional gender roles, they not only create new ones for themselves, but give space for others to create their own as well. Through oral, visual and visceral mediums, Pi*llOry explores the depths of fragmented gender/queer identity, pushing beyond labels and classifications. On the edge of complete uncertainty, with only the already structural, limited and bound ways of description and discrimination of queerness, Pi*llOrists arm themselves with the unknown to disrupt inherited historical trauma invoking a lasting communal cultural healing.

Pi*llOry would like to thank FADO for their sponsorship and support of Pi*llOry Part 3 and 4.

Pi*llOry on Instagram
Pi*llOry on Facebook

Read Holly Timpener’s publication on the full Pi*llOry series, below!
Publication includes thesis dissertation, plus interviews with artists from the series:

Featuring interviews with Aisha Lesley Bentham, Amber Helene Müller St. Thomas, B Wijshijer, Brian Smith, Claudia Edwards, Coman Poon, David Frankovich, Enok Ripley, Holly Timpener, Johannes Zits, Leena Raudvee, lo bil, lwrds, Madeleine Lychek, Matthew Moir, Nicole Nigro, Racquel Rowe, Raki Malhotra, Randa Reda, Sadie Berlin, Santiago Tamayo Soler, Sheri Osden Nault, Simla Civelek, Sophie Traub, Speranza Spir and Tess Martens.