Tag: Tess Martens

POOLBODY is a new multi-site performance series unfolding across Toronto from August 6–9.
Pools are complex spaces—sites of leisure and competition, public gathering and private escape, play and surveillance, intimacy, memory, access, exclusion, and joy.

POOLBODY brings together performances, conversations, workshops, and site-responsive projects that move through these tensions.
Featuring Aisha Sasha John, Aysia Tse & (H)annah Kryworuchko, Hannah Palmer, Mikiki, Nyda Kwasowsky, Ranganathan Rajan, and Tess Martens. PLUS, a Seniors Movement Workshop with Roxy Menzies, and a Kids Pool Art Exhibit & watercolour workshop with Richa Baghel.

This series is made possible with support from Toronto Arts Council | Toronto Arts Foundation – Arts in the Parks, FADO Performance Art Centre and Dancemakers Curators in Community Fund.

PROGRAM – all events are FREE and OPEN to all

THURSDAY, AUGUST 6
(1) FADO Performance Art Centre, The Commons, 401 Richmond St. W. (MAP)

6:00 PM: Performance Lecture & Opening Reception
Pool Maintenance by Hannah S. Palmer

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7
(2) Flagstaff Park, 42 Mercury Rd, Rexdale (ACCESS INFO & MAP)

12:30–1:30 PM: Kids’ Pool Art Exhibition & Kid’s Watercolour Workshop with Richa Baghel
1:00–2:00 PM: Seniors’ Movement Workshop led by Roxy Menzies

2:30–4:00 PM: Performances
Lifelines (a pilgrimage with, to and for the waters) by Nyda Kwasowsky
Phantasmagoria by Ranganathan Rajan
PAPER. BAG. SAG. DOLL… by Tess Martens

SATURDAY, AUGUST 8
(3) Hart House Pool, University of Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle (ACCESS INFO & MAP)

6:30–8:30 PM: Performances
pool notes and (mis)alignments by Aysia Tse & (H)annah Kryworuchko
SPLASH PAD by Mikiki

SUNDAY, AUGUST 9
(4) Private Pool (Baby Point Road)

6:00 PM: Performance
my astonishing wealth by Aisha Sasha John

ACCESS INFORMATION

(1) The Commons
@ 401 has a barrier-free entrance on the northeast side of the building, with an automatic door. The Commons is on the fourth floor and can be reached by elevator. Accessible washrooms are available on the first and fourth floors.

(2) Flagstaff Park and pool deck is wheelchair accessible. Some activities will take place on grass, which may be uneven or difficult to navigate with a mobility device. The pool washroom has one step at the entrance and is not fully wheelchair accessible. ASL interpretation will be available for the seniors’ movement workshop and the pool performances.

(3) Hart House Aquatic Centre
has barrier-free entrances and an elevator that serves all floors. The pool is on the lower level. A universal washroom is available on the basement level, near the Arbor Room. On weekends, visitors using the barrier-free entrance should enter from Tower Road. ASL interpretation will be available for the performance.

(4) Baby Point Road
location is a private home and backyard pool. Unfortunately, the venue is not wheelchair accessible.

For access questions or to request additional accommodations, please contact Shalon at shalonwh@gmail.com

© Poster image: Manny Trinh (@mannytrinh), Acrylic on paper, 2026.

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

ARTISTS
Isaak Fong
lwrds duniam
Tess Martens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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PROGRAM DETAILS

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

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

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

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

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

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

Canada
www.tessmartens.com

Tess Martens (she/her) was born and raised in Guelph, Ontario. She graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Master of Fine Art focusing on performance art in 2018. In her art practice, personal experiences are re-contextualized through performances. Between 2019-2020, she traveled and performed in 4 performance residencies in 4 different countries. She worked closely with Marilyn Arsem, La Pocha Nostra, VestAndPage and Andrigo & Aliprandi. In 2024, 7A*11D, an international festival of performance art, invited Martens to perform in Toronto, Ontario. She actively performs in Ontario and Quebec; may it be an official performance for festivals, galleries and artist run centers or performing more underground and relying on self to just create!

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.