Colombia
Originally from Columbia, Constanza Camelo has lived and worked in Québec City and Montréal since 1994. Her early performances examined the hybrid cultural identity of her native culture. More recently, she has turned her attention to notions of private and public space through street actions that inscribe a temporary, utopian territory over the existing landscape.
USA
Jeff Callen is a Chicago artist who creates interactive installations which he performs inside, inviting the audience to examine perception and narrative events. He received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited in India, Lithuania, Finland and Chicago.
Canada
Michael Caldwell is a Toronto-based choreographer/performer. A graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, he has interpreted roles for many of Canada’s esteemed dance creators, including Peggy Baker, Sylvie Bouchard, Danny Grossman, Guillaume Côté, Maxine Heppner, Sasha Ivanochko, James Kudelka, Louis Laberge-Côté, Laurence Lemieux, Tedd Robinson, William Yong, among others, and has performed across Canada and the United States, in Europe, Asia, and Australia. Michael was an interpreter at Le Groupe Dance Lab, studying with the iconic Peter Boneham.
Michael is quickly emerging as a skilled, and critically acclaimed choreographer. His recent works include: Ash Unravel, an acclaimed solo based on his journey to Vietnam; The Horologium, a whimsical group piece created for Dusk Dances; and Mary, a dynamic new solo for Stéphanie Tremblay Abubo. With a bachelor’s degree in film and art history from Syracuse University, Michael seeks to incorporate cinematic sensibilities in all his work. Upcoming, Michael will begin creation on a new group choreography, based on loneliness and isolation.
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COMING SOON
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Portugal / Canada
Anselmo DeSousa was born in Azores, Portugal and moved to Canada in 1974. He is a talented Deaf actor and filmmaker now living in Ontario. He is a member of ACTRA. Anselmo’s credits include TV series and commericials, films, magazines, and independent films. His work includes the TV series Sue Thomas: F.B.EYE and Firehouse Dog as an ASL Consultant. In 2010 he wrote, directed, and produced his own short film entitled, Am I Dreaming?
Anselmo is also a talented cook and baker. Anselmo achieved his PME Masters Certificate (Sugar Flowers, Rolled Fondant, and Royal Icing & Piping) from Golda’s Kitchen. His passion for baking has led him to make over 50 different kinds of case for family and friends. He became certified in order to teach others the fine art of cake decorating. He has his own cake business called Cakes by Anselmo.
Currently, he works for Deaf Literacy Initiative as Project Coordinator and H3world.tv as Special Guest Host of DeafWaves in International Sign Language.
artist bio
COMING SOON
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artist bio
COMING SOON
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Canada
[ field ] is an ongoing series of performance and installation collaborations between Toronto-based architect-installationist Brian Smith and performance artist Coman Poon.
Canada
Earning her PhD from the Social Justice and Education department at the University of Toronto in 2014, Eliza Chandler was dually appointed as the Artistic Director at Tangled Art + Disability, an organization in Toronto dedicated to the cultivation of disability arts, and the postdoctoral research fellow in Ryerson University’s School of Disability Studies from 2014-2016. During this time she was the also the founding Artistic Director of Tangled Art Gallery, Canada’s first art gallery dedicated to showcasing disability art and advancing accessible curatorial practice. Chandler is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Disability Studies at Ryerson University. She is the co-director of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded partnership project, Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life. This seven-year, multi-partnered research project considers the close relationship between art, accessibility, and social change as it contributes to the development of activist art, aesthetics, curriculum, and accessible curatorial practices across Canada. Chandler sits on the Board of Directors for the Ontario Arts Council and is a practicing disability artist and curator. She recently co-curated the group exhibitionBodies in Translation: Age and Creativity at the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery and recent publications include Disability Arts and Re-Worlding Possibilities, a/b: Auto-Biographic Studies (2018). Chandler regularly give lectures, interviews, and consultations related to disability arts, accessible curatorial practices, and disability politics in Canada.
b. 1970, Israel
Yaron David works in video and performance art. He is also a curator and is active in the performance art scene in Tel Aviv, working with and organizing events with PAP (Performance Art Platform) including a monthly performance event (2004-2007), as well as the ZAZ International Performance Art Festival (2007, 2008). He is a writer and freelance editor, working with museums and cultural institutions. David’s work has been presented at international festivals in Israel, Crotia, UK, Finland, Istanbul, Poland, France and at the National Review of Live Art in Scotland, among other events and exhibitions. This will be David’s first appearance in North America.
Canada
Suzanne Caines received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1993 and a Bachelor of Education in 1999, graduating with distinction. She graduated with her Masters of Arts (Fine Arts) from Chelsea College, the London Institute in 2004. Caines has held several solo exhibits and has participated in group exhibitions and festivals in public galleries in North America and Europe these include Trampoline, Berlin Germany, Reception Space/Meals and SUV’s, London, England,The Projection Gallery, Liverpool, England,The Nunnery Gallery, London, England, Transmediale 2006, Berlin, Germany and VertexList Gallery, Brooklyn, New York. Caines has received several Canada Council Grants, Nova Scotia Arts Grants and has participated in several international residencies including CAMAC Marnay Sur Seine, France, The Future Idea of Art, The Banff Center, Canada, local artist in residence at CFAT, Halifax, Nova Scotia and Binaural, Portugal. She is currently working on issues surrounding locality and what that means to a community.
Scotland
Rosana Cade is a Glasgow-based artist who mainly works in live performance. Whilst the form of her work varies and emerges in response to the specific context or inquiry she is engaging with, it is rooted in queer feminist discourse and straddles performance, live art, and activism.
She has been touring her acclaimed participatory performance Walking:Holding internationally for the past eight years, and has recently completed a film about the project. She regularly collaborates with her partner Ivor MacAskill, and they have recently been awarded the inaugural Diane Torr Bursary. She is part of the Take Me Somewhere Constellation of artists.
She is also co-founder of the radical performance collective //BUZZCUT// who support live art and experimental performance in Glasgow with a strong community focused ethic.
USA
Nao Bustamante is an internationally known artist, originally from the San Joaquin Valley of California; cutting her teeth as an artist in the San Francisco “Art Scene” between 1984-2001. She attended San Francisco Art Institute, where she fell under the influence of the notorious New Genres Department. Bustamante’s at times precarious and radically vulnerable work encompasses performance art, video installation, visual art, filmmaking, and writing.
Bustamante has presented in Galleries, Museums, Universities and underground sites all around the world. She has exhibited, among other locales, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the New York Museum of Modern Arts, Sundance 2008, 2010, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. Her movies have been shown at venues and festivals across the globe, including OUTFEST – Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, MIX New York City, MIX Brasil, and the London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Bustamante is popularly known for her appearance in the Bravo Network television show A Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, where she made her mark as a messy and complex character.
The Theatre Communications Group in the book, Out of the Fringe, as well as the Theatre Drama Review, published by the MIT Press, has published Bustamante. In 2000 she received the GLBT Historical Society Arts Award. In 2001 she received the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship and in 2007 named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, as well as a Lambent Fellow. In 2008 She received the Chase Legacy award in Film (In conjunction with Kodak and HBO). And was the Artist in Residence of the American Studies Association in 2012. In 2013, Bustamante was awarded the (Short-term) CMAS-Benson Latin American Collection Research Fellowship and also a Makers Muse Award from the Kindle Foundation. Currently Bustamante is the Queer Artist in Residence at UC Riverside and preparing for an upcoming solo exhibit at Vincent Price Art Museum in Los Angeles. Bustamante’s video work is in the Kadist Collection.
Bustamante is alum of the San Francisco Art Institute, New Genres program and the Skowhegen School of Painting and Sculpture as a Video Fellow. Currently she holds the position of Associate Professor of New Media and Live Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Tamyka Bullen is a POC Deaf feminist based in Toronto who is a social conscious artist and a social activist. She was involved in different organizations to educate about women issues/Deaf issues/Deaf LGBT issues for many years. In 2015 she launching a body care business that sell soaps, lip balms, body creams and other items to honour the Mother Earth.
Canada
Born and raised in Saskatchewan, Adam Budd is a recent graduate of the BFA Media Production program at the University of Regina, where his film “Avery Jones” won Best Graduating Film and Director awards from the University. His video performances include U/O, Blair and Adam, Moral Relativism, and Dear Rejeanne.
Switzerland
Claudia Bucher studied sculpture at the City & Guilds of London Art School and Fine Arts at the Lucerne School of Art and Design. Since 2001 she has been working as a freelance artist in the mediums of Performance Art, Installation, Drawing and Printmaking.
“I perform in order to engage with my thoughts – and my questions, too. I think in images. I focus on the space surrounding me, myself as sculpture within that space, and on how an action can change the relationship between my body and my environment. As I interact intensively with a material in the here and now, a transformation occurs. I‘m interested in the moments of transition—when beauty changes into ugliness, when clean becomes dirty, when gentle turns aggressive—and the opposing associations they evoke.” ~Claudia Bucher
Cuba
Tania Bruguera produces political artworks through installations and performances. In January 2003 she opened Arte de Conducta, an artistic–pedagogical project in Havana. Her work has been shown at several international exhibitions including Documenta XI, the 49th and 51st editions of the Venice Biennale, the V and VII Havana Biennale, and the 23rd Sao Paolo Biennale, among others. She has had solo shows at the Kunsthalle Wien, Casa de las Americas, and Museo de Bellas Artes. Tania Bruguera was a participant in Documenta 11 (Germany) as well as in several biennales such as Venice (Italy), Sao Paolo (Brazil), Shangai (China), and Site Santa Fe (USA). Her work has also been exhibited at The New Museum of Contemporary Art (USA); The Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (USA); Boijmans van Beuningen Museum (The Netherlands); Museum für Moderne Kunst (Germany), among others. In 2000 she received the Prince Claus Prize (The Netherlands).
Her work is part of the collections of the Museum für Moderne Kunst (Germany); Daros Foundation (Switzerland); JP Morgan Chase Bank (United States); Museum of Modern Art, artist book collection (United States); Bronx Museum (United States). Bruguera was featured in Fresh Cream (Phaidon, England); Performance Live Art Since 1060’s (Thames and Hudson, Ltd., England); Art Tomorrow (Terrail, France); Holy terrors: Latin American women perform (Duke University, USA); Corpus Delecti -Performance Art of the Americas (Routledge, England), among others. She has been written about in The New York Times, Le Monde, The Village Voice, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, and reviewed in Art News, Artforum, Flash Art, Art Nexus, The Nordic Art Review, Beaux Arts, Performance Research, Kunstforum among others.
She is the founder / director of Arte de Conducta, the first performance studies program in Latin America, hosted by Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and she has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA.
Canada
An artist and writer, Joanne Bristol has presented installations, performances and video work across North America for the past 15 years. Current projects include bentaerial.net, a work for the web about technology, obsolescence and invention; and the Institute for Feline & Human Interaction, a matrix for ongoing projects in inter-species communication and cohabitation. In the fall of 2009, Joanne starts a practice-based PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture (London, UK). Her thesis, titled Performance Spaces for Domestic Animals, combines research in spatial culture with the emergent field of animal studies.
Scotland
Laura Bradshaw is an artist working in performance and movement. As a performer and devisor Laura has worked with a number of companies and artists including Uninvited Guests, Fish and Game and most regularly under the direction of Nic Green. Her practice foregrounds collaboration and to reflect this initiates performance work under the name of Scrimshaw Projects. Scrimshaw Projects focuses on the body and its histories, memories and inheritance, the performance work is made across generations using movement as its primary art form. Laura supports other artists through mentorship, dramaturgy and Somatic Movement Education practices. Laura is also a lecturer in Contemporary Performance Practice at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Canada
Michelle Bourgeois is a Deaf and disabled queer educator, community organizer and activist who will sometimes jump at opportunities to perform here and there. Their/her previous performances include “Vagina Monologues” (2009- Bellville, Milton, and Toronto) and “Drag’ing ASL to Pride”, a Deaf queer and Trans* show that was held prior to Pride week in Toronto for several years. Michelle also was part of a comedy skit with comedian partner and actor Lisa Faria at Yuk-Yuk’s (2012). She currently works as an ASL Literacy Educator for K-8 students at EC Drury School for the Deaf in Milton, Ontario and has a side business Hands On ASL! which runs recreational ASL classes and annual ASL summer retreats for the queer and Trans* community (on behalf of the Ontario Rainbow Alliance of the Deaf).
Canada
Diane Borsato is a visual artist working in performance, intervention, video, installation, and photography. She has exhibited nationally and internationally with exhibitions and performances at galleries and museums including Skol, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Montreal), Gallery TPW, the AGYU, and the The Power Plant (Toronto), eyelevel (Halifax), TRUCK (Calgary), Saw Gallery (Ottawa), Artspeak (Vancouver), and a residency at Villa Arson, National Centre for Contemporary Art in Nice, France. Diane Borsato is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary studio at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario.
France
Mathieu Bohet lives and works in Paris. In 2001, he joined the School of Fine Arts in Rennes under the direction of Jacques Sauvageot. He met artists who use video while highlighting the artist’s gesture. He has worked with Marcel Dinahet, Luc Larmor, Lydie Jean-Dit-Panel, and Robert Cahen. During a student exchange he discovered the classes of Bartolomé Ferrando, Faculty of Fine Arts in Valencia. This meeting confirmed his interest in action art. With other artists from Valencia, he founded the association Sinberifora which aims to promote action art. He helped to organize the performance cycle entitled “Arrt d’acccio” which allows three performance artists meet every month.
He holds a DNSEP at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Valencia, where in 2009 he wrote his master’s thesis on the topic of performance in relation to the idea of metamorphosis of narrative and image-movement. Often using video in performance as a strategy to play with the boundaries of fiction and reality, his actions are engaged with social or political concepts that address the psychology around archetypal figures. In addition to his personal practice, he has developed several projects with the Action Group ESOC and recently delved into experimental music with the band Romatkin.
USA / Canada
https://johngboehme.weebly.com/
John G. Boehme identifies as a cisgender white male from the Kumeyaay territory what is now La Jolla, California and currently is a settler on the Lekwungen speaking /Songhees W̱SÁNEĆ territory what is known as Victoria BC. He holds an MFA from University of Victoria), BFA from Emily Carr University (VAL) and Diploma Visual Arts from Camosun College. His the early art practice included painting, sculpture, performance video and digital technology, installation and photography. Boehme describes recent work as “trans-disciplinary” often employing performance, video, audio and objects in a number pieces simultaneously, Boehme is not constrained to any particular creative mode and therefore utilizes integrated approaches to realize the work. John continues to have exhibitions, screenings and festivals across Canada, the Americas, United Kingdom, Europe and China. John is and Artist and Educator teaching Performance Art, Ceramics and sculpture as a continuing faculty of the Visual Arts Department at Camosun College.
Canada
Lori Blondeau is Cree/Saulteaux/Métis from Saskatchewan. Since the 1990s, Blondeau’s artistic practice in the fields of performance, photography and installation, along with her curatorial work and activities as co-founder and Executive Director of the Indigenous art collective TRIBE, has proved decisive to the ever-increasing centrality of Indigenous art and knowledge production in Canada.
With her performances, which include Are You My Mother? (2000), Sisters (2002) and States of Grace (2007) and photographic work, including COSMOSQUAW (1996), Lonely Surfer Squaw (1997) and Asinîy Iskwew (2016), Blondeau’s practice, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with fellow visual artists demonstrates a clarity of focus which is remarkable for its precision, humour and strength. She has collaborated with artists James Luna on a series of installations and a performance titled Dead Fall Revue (2000). In 2006, Blondeau had a solo exhibition Grace at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon and in 2007 she was part of the Requickening project with Shelly Niro, which was presented in the Venice Biennale.
Since 2018, Blondeau has been Assistant Professor of Indigenous Art at the University of Manitoba School of Art. Blondeau was a recipient of the 2021 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Canada
Charlie Black is a Toronto-based painter who has been exploring the possibilities of performance art. He graduated from the University of Toronto’s Visual Studies programme in 2004 and is currently working and living.
Cameroon
Michel Bitimbhe is a Cameroonian artist and performer. He studied at the Université de Yaoundé II in Sao and has collaborated with many artists based in Douala and Yaoundé. Bitimbhe is known for his work producing and co-hosting cultural programs broadcast on various radio stations in Yaoundé. Since 2008, he has been director of the RAVY festival (Rencontre des Arts Visuels de Yaoundé). He was also one of the coordinators of the Bakassi Peninsul’art artistic intervention project held in 2012 in Limbe and again in 2014 in Tiko and Idenau in southwestern Cameroon as well as in Limbe. In 2016, he participated in a performance art training workshop that explored the subject of the environment. He is currently studying art history at the Institut de formation artistique (IFA) in Mbalmayo.
USA
Spoken word rapped with music bringing images to consciousness. Chicago performance poet Marlon Billups won a spot on the Bellwood, IL 1998 National Poetry Slam team. He is the co-founder and host of Third Floor Poets and has been featured at the Chicago Cultural Center. Marlon’s poetry has braced the audiences at the DuSable Museum, Chicago State University, Guild Complex, and Afrika West to name a few. His work has been published in the Eagle and Egg: A Literary Journal. Look for Marlon’s poetry in his forthcoming collection Breathing, in addition to the soon-to-be released Urbanicity Spoken Word CD. He is a member of Chicago Writers Collective: A Community of Writers and Seven Plumpp* Poets (*Blues poet Professor Sterling Plumpp).
Canada
Shanker Bhardwaj’s most recently participated in the Annual Alternative Design Event at the Gladstone Hotel where they designed a room in collaboration with Lisa Young Kutsukake, along with Anitra Hamilton, Luis Jacob, Jeremy Laing and Jade Rude.
Canada
Sadie Berlin is a theatre and performance artist who documents how social intolerance and oppression shape ever-mutable and fluctuating aspects of self-definition. In her sometimes racialized work, Berlin uses her many intersections to reflect cis-straight whiteness back to audiences. This telegraphing of oppression as an infection that engraves itself onto and inside marginalized bodies, interrogates notions of free will and freedom to create/conjure/imagine without boundaries. The gifts in the added textures and modalities of marginalization have in them the constraints of oppression, and, how the marginal and marginalized artist navigates this complex path is a major preoccupation of Berlin’s work.
Canada
Originally from the Gaspé area of Quebec, Sylvette Babin lives and works in Montréal, Canada. Sylvette Babin has been the head of Esse arts + opinions magazine since 2002. She has an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University. As a performance artist, between 1997 and 2015 she participated in a number of art events in Canada and internationally. As an author, she has published in several magazines, artist catalogues and books and was the curator for events such as Les Convertibles, produced by Culture pour tous (2006), Infraction 08 (Sète, France, 2008) and Il Nostro Gusto (Saint-Hyacinthe, 2009). She has also taught ‘art and urban theatre’ at Collège Shawinigan, and visual and media arts at Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe.
Canada
Randy & Berenicci are Toronto-based artists who have been collaborating together for 30 years producing a unique body of site-specific art. Their work, which includes various public art commissions as well as an extensive history of recognition in art venues around the world, incorporates performance, video, sculpture and installation. This will be their first major performance event in Toronto in more than a decade.
Tunisia / Canada
At 5 years old I am an artist. At 10 years old I am a detective. At 15 years old I am a searcher. At 20 years old I am a student of mathematics and physics. At 25 years old I am a hydraulic engineer. At 30 years old I am an immigrant in Canada. At 35 years old I am free. At 40 years old I am an artist.
I was lucky enough to cross and live in multiple cultures, societies and professional environments between Tunisia where I was born, France where I studied and Canada where I live now. This path allowed me to live a transformational identity, and question the perception gaps and the foundation of oneness and existence. My art practice is interdisciplinary. It uses what comes to it to achieve a research, face a question, encounter what is here. To receive the present. It is at the intersection of performance art, site specific action, installation, writing, drawing, movement, relational esthetic, participatory projects. Being in relation/in relationship to, attentive to, present with, is at the foundation of my work. The relationship between oneself and one other offers a field of presence, a field of consciousness that facilitates transmissions. As such, I am interested in the way relationships reflect our perception of the world while offering opportunities for transformation. Influenced by a scientific background, my work points links between art, philosophy and science. Through the performance, installation and art pieces I offer experiences that question the subjectivity of each one perception, beliefs and reference systems.
Canada
A member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), Rebecca Belmore is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist.
Rooted in the political and social realities of Indigenous communities, Belmore’s works make evocative connections between bodies, land and language. Solo exhibitions include: Facing the Monumental, Art Gallery of Ontario (2018); Rebecca Belmore: Kwe, Justina M.Barnicke Gallery (2014); The Named and The Unnamed, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, (2002). In 1991, Ayumee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother was created at the Banff Centre for the Arts with a national tour in 1992 and subsequent gatherings took place across the Canada in 1996, 2008, and 2014.
In 2017, Belmore participated in documenta 14 with Biinjiya’iing Onji (From Inside) in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany. In 2005, at the Venice Biennale, she exhibited Fountain in the Canadian Pavilion. Other group exhibitions include: Landmarks2017 / Reperes2017, Partners in Art (2017); Land Spirit Power, National Gallery of Canada (1992); and the IV Bienal de la Habana (1991).
Belmore received the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation’s VIVA Award (2004), the Hnatyshyn Visual Arts Award (2009), the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2013), and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2016). She received honourary doctorates from OCAD University (2005), Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2018), and NSCAD University (2019).
Cameroon
Ruth Belinga specializes in art history and conducts research on contemporary painting in Cameroon. She is currently pursuing doctoral research at the Université de Dschang. She also curates exhibitions and teaches art history at the Institut des Beaux-Arts de Foumban. Belinga has published many articles in national and international newspapers and magazines. In addition, she is active as a painter, video artist and performer. She has produced and participated in many exhibitions in Cameroon, Algeria, Mali, France, Brazil, the Netherlands and Congo-Brazzaville.
Canada
Martin Bélanger is a Montréal-based dancer and artist. He has been active on the professional art scene since 1992. His approach is characterized by a broadened practice. As a performer, actor, collaborator, counsellor, and choreographer, he takes part in projects that range from experimental theatre to contemporary dance, including the interdisciplinary, He completed a bachelor degree at Université du Québec à Montréal in 1997. His work has been presented throughout Canada as well as in New York City, Berlin, Geneva, Bergen (Norway), Helsinki, France and Japan. Parallel to his own creations, he collaborated with Jacob Wren, Benoît Lachambre, Carole Nadeau, kondition pluriel, Line Nault, Isabelle Schad, Michael Toppings, Epsilon Lab et Oli Sorenson. A lot of these engagements led to national and international touring. In 2004, he founded his company Productions Laps. He has been commissioned by several institutions such as Montréal Danse, LADMMI l’école de danse contemporaine, the School of Dance of Ottawa, Dancemakers, and by several independent artists such as Peter Trosztmer, Sarah Williams and Ève Garnier. He directed creative workshops with Le Groupe dance Lab, Studio 303 and at La B.A.R.N. (10 Gates Dancing, Tedd Robinson).
England
Dickie Beau draws on performance traditions including clowning, theatre, vaudeville, dance and mime. He merges the sensibility of contemporary culture with queer twists and informed echoes of the past, realizing an exquisite interplay of digital content.
A pioneer of playback performance, emerging from the drag tradition of lip-synching, Dickie Beau is influencing the practice of a whole new generation of performance-makers. His work is increasingly studied on contemporary theatre and performance courses in the UK and he’s in demand as a workshop leader and visiting speaker. Dickie has worked as artistic mentor for SPILL Festival’s National Platform as well as for MA students at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Chichester. In October 2015 Dickie joins Queen Mary University of London Department of Drama as an Associate Research Fellow. He will also continue to hold an Associate Research Fellowship at Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre at the University of London. In 2014 Dickie was the recipient of the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust award.
Canada
Julianna Barabas is a performance and video artist based in western Canada. Her work explores embodied experiences of gender, identity and spirituality, as informed by feminist concerns and theory. A central theme in her work is the dynamic of exchange between performer and audience and the politics of care and attention it implies. Recent works include: Gorilla Jane, a feminist tour of the exhibition PAINT at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2006), Antidote, a ritual hand washing first shown at Latitude 53 Visual Contemporary Culture as part of Visualeyez, then again at the ‘Bathhouse’ as part of Exposure Festival (2008), and Reframed Refrain, a live nude interaction and extension of the Alberta Art Gallery’s Leaving Olympia exhibition detailing the use of the nude in contemporary art.
Her video works have been shown at the Victoria International Film Festival and Out on Screen Queer Film and Video Festival in Vancouver. Her most extensive project is an ongoing performance called ‘seamline’. Beginning in May of 2003, she invited audiences to witness her process of having a line tattooed around the full lateral circumference of her body. These public events continued once a month for a year, evolving into a truly contemporary ritual. Since the physical completion of the work, Barabas has positioned the ongoing conversations that result from living with a full body tattoo as a life time performance, cataloguing the interactions which will be released in an exhibition catalogue/artist’s book in 2010. Barabas received a Bachelor of Political Science from the University of Western Ontario in 1991 and Bachelor of Media Arts from Emily Carr Institute in 2006.
Israel
Adina Bar-On is widely recognized to be Israel’s first performance artist, creating work since the 1970s. Her performances are remarkable for their sensitivity, emotional depth, and for Bar-On’s willingness to tackle difficult and controversial subjects. Bar-On lives and works in Tel-Aviv, dividing her time between teaching (performance and visual communication) and her art practice, which includes performance art and video. In the past several years she has toured extensively in Europe and Asia. This is her first trip to Canada. A book about her work in English and Hebrew was published in 2001 with the support of the Herzliya Museum of Art in Israel.
b. 1940, Canada
Anna Banana interview with Artexte
A conceptualist, rather than an image maker, Anna Banana’s activities spiral out, one project giving rise to another, utilizing whatever media the concept requires. For starters, her Town Fool project 1971–72, (in which she attempted to raise consciousness about the foolishness of consumerist pursuits by engaging them in playful, creative activities), spawned the Banana Rag news letter, which in turn connected her to the International Mail Art Network (IMAN) and thirty years of mail art exchanges, writing and publishing. Her mail-art activity has been constant, and while not always her main focus, it has provided materials and ideas for other work, and an ongoing connection to an international community of artists who are, like her, more interested creating and exchanging ideas and small artworks than they are in producing “market products”. Mail art is a system that is inclusive rather than exclusive, providing artists with positive interactions, feedback and exchanges of their works.
While she is known as a performance artist, and has performed Dada and Futurist scripts, she has long favoured, and continues to create interactive events. A major object of these works, is to engage the audience in the action, rather than have them passively observe a performer, whether it be a parody of an Olympic contest, a fashion show, or a “scientific” research project. Through this approach, she blurs the boundary between stage/performer, and audience; performance and “real life.”
From such events come video and audio documentation, photos and texts, which she edits for presentation in installations, lectures and publications, or uses in her visual artworks; artistamps and most recently, Artist Trading Cards (ATC’s). In 30 years of mail art activity, she has created and mailed many collages and sheets of artistamps; recycling visual material from her events, from other mail-artists, and from mass media magazines and newspapers. While interaction is what motivates her work, she has also exhibited her collage works in conjunction with documentation from her events. Since 1998, she has presented several exhibitions of artistamps selected from her collection, at the Sunshine Coast Art Center, the Richmond Art Gallery, and Open Space in Victoria. This exhibit is still available for other bookings.
Her first published writing came out in the book, Radical School Reform (1969), of her experiences as a teacher in the New School in Vancouver. Since then, her main focus has been the art and artists of the IMAN, published in various mail-art ‘zines and catalogues, VILE Magazine, Correspondence Art, Artistamp News, and more recently, Rubberstampmadness magazine.
Canada
Yvonne Bambrick is the primary photographer for Green Power Magazine and has over ten years experience shooting events, direct actions and portraits. She is a contributing photographer (and occasional writer) to numerous publications, including cycling magazines Momentum and Dandyhorse, Post City Magazine, Spacing Magazine, NOW Magazine, Toronto Star, as well as various websites and business publications. Yvonne has been commuting by bicycle since age 16 and believes that cities and streets are for people (not cars). She has spent the past six years using her degrees in communications (MA) and physical geography (BA) to help her native Toronto become a more pedestrian and cycle-friendly city through activism, community initiatives, municipal politics (she was on local councillor Adam Vaughan’s first campaign team), and most recently, as the first Executive Director of the Toronto Cyclists Union.
Canada
Mary Balint is a native Newfoundlander, and has lived in Ontario since 1961. She holds a BA from Brock University and spent her career working in county and public libraries. Currently retired, she spends her time volunteering in her community. Theatre is one of her passions, and Silent Dinner will be her premiere performance.
artist bio
COMING SOON
artist bio
Canada
Rachel Echenberg is a visual artist who works in performance, sculpture, photo and video. Since 1992 Echenberg’s work has been exhibited, performed and screened across Canada as well as internationally in Belgium, Chile, Czech Republic, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Northern Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland and the United States. Her videos have been represented by Vidéographe Distribution since 2002. Rachel Echenberg is vice-president and programming member of the biennale performance art festival VIVA! art action as well as a board member of Optica, centre for contemporary art. She is a teacher in the Fine Arts department of Dawson College in Montréal, Canada.
Canada
Reona Brass is a Saulteaux performance installation artist living in Regina, Saskatchewan. Trained at the Ontario College of Art & Design, Brass has shown across Canada and in the US since 1993. Recent exhibitions include Signified: Ritual Language in First Nations Performance Art in collaboration with Bently Spang at Sâkêwêwak Artists’ Collective in Regina (2002); and, A Gathering For Her at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Hamilton, Ontario (2002).
A performance/installation artist and feminist, Brass trained at the Ontario College of Art and the University of Regina. Her work draws upon traditional Saulteaux rituals and beliefs to address the elevation of linear thinking and homogeneity in society today. Addressing flesh as the only repository of true humanity, she negotiates emancipation of a society increasingly bereft of shame. Her work with other artists remains critical to her exploration of native feminist art practices. Brass was the First Nations officer for the Ontario Arts Council with artist Rebecca Belmore from 1996 to 1997.
b. 1959, Japan
Shin-Ichi Arai lives and works in Tokyo. He studied Chinese modern literature at Tokyo Metropolitan University and later majored in printmaking (Intaglio/Copper printing). Since 1982 he has been creating performances as well as experimenting in sound, voice and language performance actions. As a Japan Overseas Cooperative Volunteer he taught at Nyumba ya Sanaa Art school in Zanzibar, Tanzania for two years from 1992 to 1994 where he experienced various insights into the relationship between culture and politics in contemporary society. This led to the radical social-political performances that are exemplary of his work. In his raw and direct style, Arai’s body appears as a site of social tension presented with humour, yet biting criticism, often exposing the conservative and xenophobic cultural tendencies and contradictions in global and local situations. He has performed regularly in Japan and has also presented his works internationally in China, Canada, Korea, Thailand and elsewhere.
Thailand
Chumpon Apisuk studied art at Changsilpa School, Silapakorn University (Bangkok) and at the Museum School of Fine Arts (Boston, Massachusetts, USA). Since 1986, he has performed more than 200 times in Germany, England, Canada, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, Hong Kong, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, USA and in Thailand. He founded Concrete House in 1993, an art and community space, the only on-going performance art venue in Thailand. He is also a founder of Asiatopia – an International Performance Art Festival in Thailand, established in 1998. His audio installation work, ALIVE – a conversation with a friend living with HIV was selected for exhibition at the Sydney Biennial in 1998. Known for his his art practice with activism in the areas of AIDS and Human Rights, Apisuk is also involved with EMPOWER Foundation, an organization that advocates for the rights of sex workers in Thailand. Apisuk’s article, The Politics of Art in Thailand, 1970 –1999 was published in Art Action 1958–1998 by Éditions Intervention (Inter, Québec City, Canada).
USA
Moe Angelos is a theatre artist and writer. She is a core member of The Builders Association, an internationally touring, New York-based theatre company that has been making innovative large-scale, media infused performance work since 1994. Recent Builders projects include the critically acclaimed SONTAG: Reborn and Elements of Oz. She’s one of The Five Lesbian Brothers, an Obie-Award winning theatre company whose works include, Oedipus at Palm Springs, Brave Smiles and The Secretaries, and she has been a member of the Wow Café Theater since 1981. She has collaborated with many downtown New York City luminaries including Lisa Kron, Carmelita Tropicana, Anne Bogart, Holly Hughes, Lois Weaver, Kate Stafford, Brooke O’Harra, Half Straddle and The Ridiculous Theatrical Company. She is a Mentor in the Queer/Arts/Mentorship Program in New York City.
Canada
Pauls and the Band of Outsiders are a non-profit organization feuled by subtitled VHS and dead-end jobs. Immigrants in their own city, singing love and death. Pauls or Nothing the verdict with a cap gun from the dollar store aimed at their own dreamy heads.
Palestine / Canada
Basil AlZeri is an interdisciplinary, Toronto-based Palestinian artist working in performance, video, installation, food, and public art interventions/projects. His work is grounded in his practice as an art educator and community worker. He is engaged with the intersection of everyday actions and life necessities with art. Given the context of a space, his work strives to interact with the public through gestures of generosity in social interactions and exchanges. AlZeri’s performance work has been exhibited in Toronto (Nuit Blanche, Whipper Snapper Gallery), Quebec (Fait Maison 14), Winnipeg (Central Canadian Centre for Performance), and Mexico (Transmuted International Performance Art Festival, Performancear O Morir). Upcoming projects include a public performance project with the Ottawa Art Gallery/Creative Cities Conference, and performances in Chile And Argentina in 2013.
Argentina
Gabriela Alonso is the co curator of Zonadearte Gallery, an artist run centre in Quilmes, Argentina. She has been an acting professor at the University I.U.N.A in Berisso, Argentina. She specializes in performance art, painting and drawing. She has exhibited and performed extensively throughout Latin America and Europe, including a recent intercambio (exchange) between Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Santiago, Chile. Gabriela Alonso has also presented her work in Québec City at Le Lieu.
Just as a performance artist uses their body as their medium, this is a fragrance composed entirely of the orange tree: fruit, leaves, bark, roots, and flowers. Artist Orange performs itself.
neroli, blood orange
fresh orange juice, petit grain
orange twig, orange seed