Category: Artist

Canada

www.emmakateguimond.wordpress.com

Emma-Kate Guimond was born in Edmonton and is currently based in Montréal. She works in drawing, video, performance and text. Her work negotiates the real with spectacle while exploring psychosomatics, feminine narrative and body politics. In 2011 she completed her BFA in Contemporary Dance at Concordia University. She has exhibited performances at multiple Montréal galleries and venues including Articule, RATS 9 and the Red Bird. For the last year she has been working on the multi-media performance series i feel sick. Most recently she performed installment 7 in Toronto outside the AGO as part of NXNE Art and installment 8 in Edmonton as part of the Visualeyez Festival. She also works in collaboration with WIVES, an all woman performance-based collective, creating video and experimental theatre works using overhead projection. Their work Sea Foam Blue 2 was recently shown at Festival Phenomena in Montréal.

b. 1968, Ireland

Between 2002-2005, Sandra Johnston was awarded an Arts Humanities and Research Council Research Fellowship. During this research the art works were focused around core issues of trauma, in particular the concept of “Trauma of Place” – exploring how artists can make creative interventions within spaces associated in public memory with violent events. This research was instigated initially in response to the post Cease-Fire situation within Northern Ireland, subsequently evolved outwards into many different international contexts, developing the core concept of investigating relationships between processes of art, and issues of territory, trauma and commemoration. Johnston also produces video/audio installations,and durational drawing installations which are made directly onto architectural features. She has produced work at an international level since the early nineties and recently represented Northern Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2005.

Permanent post: appointed in 2005 Lecturer in Time-Based Art, University of Ulster, Belfast. Currently on a 3-year Leave Of Absence (March 2009/2012) to undertake a PhD project, titled “Beyond Reasonable Doubt”, a cross-disciplinary investigation into concepts of doubt, explored through consideration of improvisational art processes and systems of legal justice.

Additional teaching experience: Guest Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies” programme, Semester based on issues of “ART & COMMEMORATION”.

Professional Activities have included involvement as a co-director with various Artist-run collectives located in Belfast, including  Founding & Co-director of CATALYST ARTS (1993-1995) and Committee Member of BBEYOND (2002-2007). Currently she is developing projects with AGENCY, a collective initiated in January 2007.

Philippines / Canada

http://kristinaguison.net

Kristina Guison is a Manila-born, Toronto-based, Filipino-Canadian artist. She works in the realm of sculpture, installation, performance, social practices and tattoos. Her practice is an investigation of themes relating to globalization and transnational identities across geographical spaces and time (Pre-Colonial, Colonial and Post-Colonial) as they culminate in the 21st socio-cultural landscape. She is interested in identifying elements and patterns in this landscape, particularly ones that behave as catalysts and residues that simultaneously extend and limit human experience.

Canada

Suzanne Joly lives in the region of Lanaudière, situated north of Montreal. She has been making performances since 1989, and was involved for many years with the artist-run centre Ateliers convertibles. Her practice is concerned with questions of relationship to place and community, using the suburban territory and its particularities as raw material. Her work evolved from an early interest in visual prostheses made from recycled materials and everyday objects to a sustained focus on the use of sound. Recently the phenomenon of urban sprawl and its impact on the soundscape of lake areas has been of particular concern. In 2006, her performance Ça monte du marais (It rises from the swamp), presented after a spring spent gathering the sounds of marsh frogs, was presented at the Musée d’art de Joliette.

Albania/Canada

Flutura Preka and Besnik Haxhillari (a.k.a The Two Gullivers) are an artist-couple originally from Albania and currently living in Montréal, Canada. In 1997 they began calling themselves ‘The Two Gullivers’ in reference to their nomadic trajectory across Europe. Their work has been exhibited and performed throughout Canada and Europe including The Second Beijing International Art Biennale (2005), Colours of Albania in the World at the National Gallery of Arts in Tirana (2004) and the 48th International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale (1999).

“As an artist couple, as a family, as individuals, we attempt to represent ourselves in a world moving at the speed of information and communication technologies, in a world that constantly redefines the body. We try to produce a work, which through different modes of expression, might activate the space between ourselves and the public, making it an intellectual and physical stimulant between the imaginary and the real, a path that can be followed in different ways, in fiction or reality, offering others the power to feel both here and elsewhere. Art proposes identities to us, and identities enable us to live life otherwise.” ~The Two Gullivers

Canada

As an artist, curator and writer, Tomas Jonsson is interested in issues of social agency in processes of urban growth and transformation. Tomas is pursuing a Masters in Environmental Studies at York University, with an emphasis on social planning. Tomas recently participated in the Border Cities Kolleg at the Bauhaus Institute in Dessau, Germany, where he developed projects with creative and precarious communities in Tallinn and Helsinki. Tomas has served on the board of Fuse Magazine, and was formally the Programming Coordinator at EMMEDIA Gallery and Production Society in Calgary, Alberta.

b. 1944, Germany

Monika Günther was born 1944 in Bad Hersfeld, Germany. She attended the Art Academy in Düsseldorf and has been making performances since 1980. Currently she resides and works in Luzern, Switzerland and Essen, Germany.

Monika Günther and Ruedi Schill (1941–2020) have been working together in Performance Art since 1995. Their performances have been presented in Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland, Mexico, Canada, Belgium, Belarus, Vietnam, Singapore, Italy, Spaing, Chile, Bali, Java and Greece. Since 1995, they have been teaching performance art at several art academies and schools. In 2004, they received the Art Price of the town of Luzern (Switzerland). And since 1998, they have shared the artistic direction of the annual International Performance Art Turbine Giswil (Switzerland).

WIKIPEDIA: Monika Günther & Ruedi Schill

artist bio

COMING SOON

artist bio

USA

Shannon Harris has been playing his music for the masses in North America traveling to urban areas like Detroit, Atlanta, New Jersey, Toronto and several cities nationwide. Releasing Soul and Jazz on the 1998 Winter Music Conference CD, Shannon is steadily producing material fusing multiple genres and cultural instrumentation. Shannon also plays afrikan percussion behind poets and vocalist at Afrika West located in Chicago. He also frequents the legendary “Bongo Beach” drummer circle on 63rd and Hayes in Chicago. He has hosted his own radio show for 4 years (WIUS 88.3 FM) and has been featured in Thousand Words Magazine, the Western Courier, Chicago Tribune Metromix and Insite Magazine. You can find his in-famed mix compilations, MZIMU, Jazzical Moods, Soul and Jazz and others, posted on several websites from North America to Japan. Shannon founded Urbanicity to introduce to the world his multi-diverse talents through the arts, along with others, focusing on newly cultivated ancestral motivated ideas. Founded in 1999, Urbanicity was formed to promote and instill ethnicity and self-awareness via the arts. The word Urbanicity is defined as, “a derived variable that categorizes a respondent as urban or rural.” The group consist of a kollektive of poets, musicians, graphic artist, writers, singers, producers, discjockey’s, remixers and culture preservationist who reside in large urban areas. He has released his first E.P. on the label in June 2001, Desperado/El Montuno and Black Asiatic Women. The two pieces represent an intellectual musical symphonic orchestration of stories in which Shannon wrote prior to their creation.

artist bio

COMING SOON

artist bio

Canada

www.weepingtruckers.com

Paige Gratland makes work in video, performance and fabrics. Previous performance projects include Free Dance Lessons: a renegade dance troupe which takes the chance to ask the world to dance; and Tit Pin: a performance production line which produces participants’ tits on a 3-inch pin. She also sings with the Hank Collective and is one part of the dance sensation Raige and Payne.

Canada

Blair Fornwald is a Regina-based interdisciplinary artist whose work encompasses a variety of media, primarily performance, installation, and video. In 2002, she graduated with a BFA in intermedia from the University of Regina and she is currently pursuing a Bachelors degree in art history. She is the visual arts teacher of the Preschool Fine Arts Co-op. Her most recent projects include Chair Garden, a semi-permanent outdoor installation.

UK

www.polarproduce.org

Teresa Dillon’s body of work includes locative-based performance, site-specific installation, sound art, and academic and applied research. She is the Director of Polar Produce, producing events and collaborations including N.I.P. research and touring network; UM: International Festival of Experimental Media (Portugal) and OFFLOAD programme. Her work has been shown and published internationally and she holds a PhD in creative collaborative processes using music technologies from The Open University, UK.

b. 1966, Poland

Dariusz Fodczuk is one of Poland’s most recognized performance artists. He has presented his works in over 200 festivals and solo exhibitions in Europe, Israel, Thailand, Singapore, Canada and USA. Apart from performance work he also works in painting, sculpture and video art. He was a co-organizer of the Interakcje International Art Festival in Piotrków Trybunalski, as well as the organizer of the Bielsko edition of Interakcje, and the curator of the performance section of Global Communication International Festival at the Elektrownia Culture Center, in Radom 2009. He is the originator of the Bielsko Festival of Visual Arts in Bielsko. Fodczuk works at the Studio of Performance and Audiovisual Art at the Art Academy in Szczecin, Poland.

b. 1985, Canada

http://davidfrankovich.com/

David Frankovich is an artist working in performance and experimental media. They hold a BFA in Film and Video from York University, Toronto (2007) and an MA in Live Art and Performance Studies from the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Their work is based in the body and its relation to others, including material, space and audience. They have exhibited internationally, including FADO Performance Art Centre (Toronto), Rhubarb Festival (Toronto), Mountain: Standard Time Performative Arts Festival (Calgary), Perform Now! Festival (Winterthur), ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival (Kuopio), CREATurE Live Art Festival (Kaunas), Cyprus International Performance Art Festival (Nicosia), Performance Studies International (Shanghai), Tonight (Helsinki) and Nomadic Arts Festival (Charciabałda and Warsaw).

USA / Mexico

www.dinodinco.com

Dino Dinco is a performance art curator and maker, film and theater director, arts educator and writer. His work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions in Paris, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and in group shows in London, Paris, Los Angeles, Santiago de Compostela, Antwerp, São Paulo, Guadalajara, Mexicali, Hamburg, New York, and Chihuahua. Dinco’s documentary film, Homeboy, explores the lives of gay Latino men who were gang members. His award-winning short film, El Abuelo, features queer Xicano San Antonio poet Joe Jiménez. Commissioned by the Fashion in Film Festival at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, the film premiered at the Tate Modern and has screened internationally. Dinco is writing a book manuscript on contemporary performance art in the major cities of the west coast of North America. His areas of research include experimentation with performance spectatorship and presentation through praxis, as well as the relationship between performance documentation and scholarship. He is currently a Lecturer in the Visual Arts Department of UC San Diego.

artist bio

COMING SOON

artist bio

Ireland / Canada

www.lindaraedornan.ca

Linda Rae Dornan is an interdisciplinary artist creating video, installation and performance art, and writing. Her work explores visuals, performativity and embodied text about place, memory and being. Language, materiality and ephemerality are the threads woven within her work. Her visual explorations using language have become increasingly non-narrative, evoking interior space, memory and loss. Her performances incorporate words and silence in a durational format. She has won the Strathbutler Award and the Linda Joy Award, has been the recipient of many grants, and has exhibited/screened works across Canada, the United States, China and Europe. She lives in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada.

Poland

www.angelikafojtuch.net

Angelika Fojtuch’s performance work deals with issues of communication, the role of body and emotions in interpersonal relations, and the creation of identity in confrontation with the mechanisms of culture. Focusing on gender inquiry and norms of an individual’s appearance in public space, she explores and crosses the borders of social conduct in order to reveal collective latent tensions, neglected fantasies or traumatic fears. Often referring to the specific social and psychological context of the performance’s site, her work is usually conceived as a process of interaction with the audience, who are often put in uncomfortable or potentially embarrassing situations. 

Angelika Fojtuch’s work has been presented at events and festivals throughout Europe, in Israel, China and most recently Miami, Florida. In 2006, she founded Port Performance – Forum for Performance Art, with artist BBB Johannes Deimling. Port Performance has conducted performance art workshops with international participants, in Gdansk, Tallin, Berlin and Tel Aviv.

Canada

www.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.

Canada

Jasmyn Fyffe on the CBC

Jasmyn Fyffe is a Toronto-based dancer and choreographer. She is the director of Jasmyn Fyffe Dance since 2008 and has produced shows both independently and in collaboration with other choreographers in Montreal, New York, and Toronto. Past works include Into the Roots…Beyond the Leaves (in collaboration with Vivine Scarlett), Gimme One Riddim (in collaboration with Natasha Powell, presented at the Enwave Theatre as part of NextSteps, Harbourfront Centre) and she is the recipient of a Frankie Award (Montréal, 2013) for outstanding choreography/choreographer for Pulse which was presented at the Wave Rising Series, PULSE Dance Conference, Montreal Fringe Festival and Next Stage Theatre Festival (Toronto).

As an independent dancer, Jasmyn has performed in the touring musical UMOJA and has danced for Grammy Award winning artist Nelly Furtado. She has worked with: Gadfly, Hanna Kiel, Vanessa Jane Kimmons, Red Sky Performance, Artists in Motion, Dance Migration, K’aeja d’Dance, KasheDance, Linda Garneau and international music sensation Kirk Franklin. Jasmyn has been commissioned by Dance Ontario, Iona Secondary School, City Dance Corps youth company, Earl Haig Secondary School, Ballet Jorgen, Mayfield Secondary School, Martha Hicks School of Ballet, Pivotal Motion Dance Theatre, York Memorial Collegiate Institute, Wish Opera, Dance Ontario, Cawthra Park Secondary School, Cathedral Productions, Obsidian Theatre, Dramatic Change Youth Theatre, Oakwood Collegiate Institute and Copper Coin Arts Association. 

Canada

Julie Fiala is a feminist artist/activist working predominantly in performance and installation. Over the last two years, Julie has worked with marginally housed communities, women, and Queen’s University janitors to explore themes such as sex and class privilege, as well as notions of public/private space Recent credits include speaking at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre’s Active Practices Symposium and co-curating ARTHappens2, an evening of performances, happenings and events at Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre. Previously, she was Modern Fuel’s Program Director.

b. 1980, Spain / Germany

www.andresgaleano.eu

Andrés Galeano holds a Philosophy degree at the University of Barcelona, a Photography diploma at the FFS Stuttgart, and a Free Art degree at the KHB Berlin. He works with drawing, photography, video, installation and performance and has realized exhibitions all over Europe and Canada. He is the curating of the performance art programme Extension Series at Grimmuseum (Berlin), ¡POESÍACCIÓN! at Instituto Cervantes (Spain) and is the co-organizer of the Month of Performance Art Berlin.

Germany

http://janine-eisenaecher.de

Janine Eisenächer is a conceptual performance artist, based in Berlin/Germany, who develops concepts for group/duo/solo performances and site-specific interventions in public space. She works solo and in various constellations (e.g. in the performance art-duo Eisenächer/Harder CLAIMS), mostly on serial and research oriented performance art projects related to the topics of identity, work, gender-specific questions, (post-)colonialism and economic structures in artistic work itself.

In her performance work Eisenächer uses body, objects, text, sound and video, and she currently explores her artistic practice in the field of sound and installation. Eisenächer is a founder member of (e)at_work, a Berlin-based artistic and scientific production platform that explores object and activity related interview methods for the interaction with audiences in public space and within the art context. She is also a founder member of the performance network Emanuelle, founded as Berlin n@work. Eisenächer’s artistic practice includes curatorial and organizational work for Performer Stammtisch, a network for professional performance artists and monthly performance art and Live Art event in Berlin. Herein, she investigates forms of writing and speaking about performance art. In addition to that, Eisenächer is board member and tutor of the art association Flutgraben e.V., where she researches and develops models of organizing artistic work and alternative formats of education with a particular focus on performance art practice. Janine Eisenächer studied Theatre, Comparative Literature and Philosophy at Freie Universität, Berlin.

Canada

Danny Gaudreault lives and works in Montréal, Canada. His performance work investigates his specific relationship with an object’s personnal and symbolic association. Gaudreault’s work has been presented in galleries within the context of special events and festivals, as well as in unconventional urban spaces. He is a member of the artistic committee for Le Péristyle Nomade for wich he curated performance events in 2010 and 2011.

Turkey / Germany

www.ekici-art.de

Nezaket Ekici is an internationally recognized performance artist. A student of Marina Abramovic (MFA, Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, 2004) and a member of IPG (Independent Performance Group), Nezaket’s work has been presented at International Festivals, galleries and events around the world including Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Istanbul, Italy, Taiwan, Holland, France. In 2007 she performed at the 5th International Festival of Contemporary Dance & Eros with IPG in an event entitled The Erotic Body at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

The images Ekici creates in her work are from the everyday environment, presented with either a theatrical sensibility or the beauty of minimalist sculpture. The simple act of eating grapes is attacked with intense energy, a hoola hoop (performance video Hullabelly) is given a political spin, and the signals room in the subway is converted into the world’s smallest concert hall for 5 days (Sala dei Concerti, performance installation with 40 musicians).

Russia

www.mashagodovannaya.wordpress.com

Masha Godovannaya is a filmmaker and visual artist based in St. Petersburgh, Russia. Godovannaya completed her MFA at Bard College. After living in New York for seven years, she returned to St. Petersburg where she teaches at St. Petersburg State University. Masha’s work has been shown internationally at festivals, screenings and galleries. Her son, Timofei, turns 9 1/2 in 2012.

Iran / Canada

www.rah-eleh.com

Rah Eleh is a video, net and performance artist. Her work focuses on and critiques the visual stereotypes and performative aspects that shape female gender identity and national and ethnic identity. She is interested in how race, gender and nationalism are performed from multiple layered perspectives: exilic, decolonial, queer and diasporic. Rah is a Phd candidate at Die Angewandte in Vienna, and has lectured and exhibited extensively internationally at institutions including: NYU Tisch, The New School, Alfred University, Venice Biennale (ECC, Palazzo Mora), Images Festival (Toronto), Museum London, Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa), Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, MA), Miami Art Basel, Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem, Netherlands), Pao Festival (Oslo, Norway), and Onassis Cultural Center (Athens, Greece). Rah is represented by VTape, Canada’s leading artist-run distributor for video art. 

Canada

Brenda Goldstein graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2001 and has received several awards, including the William F. White Prize for excellence in film production, the Charles Street Video Prize, both in 2001, and the Ontario Arts Council Emerging Artist Award for Film and Video in 2005.

Her work has been exhibited in galleries and at festival across Canad and the U.S. including the 2008 World Wide Short Festival (Toronto); Herland Film Festival (Calgary, 2006); Planet in Focus Festival (Toronto, 2005); Images Festival (Toronto, 2005); and at the PDX Film Festival (Portland, Oregon, 2004). In 2006, her work was included in Atchung, Baby, a program of performance videos curated by artists Johanna Householder and Nina Czegledy. The program traveled to venues in Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. 

In spring 2006, she curated The Centre Cannot Hold at the Toronto Free Gallery (April – June 2006) and in 2007 she joined the gallery’s Board of Directors. She currently coordinates a locative media research project at the Ontario College of Art and Design, and is a member of the Toronto curatorial collective, Pleasure Dome.

Canada

Felipe Diaz is a Regina based artist whose practice includes painting, installation, video and performance. Felipe explores issues of identity as it is formed along political, cultural and social lines. He has worked for a variety of organizations including the Saskatchewan Filmpool, New Dance Horizons and, currently, the Dunlop Art Gallery. Felipe is currently finishing his Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Regina.

Canada

http://cathygordon.com/

Cathy Gordon is an interdisciplinary performance artists living and working in Toronto. Her work has been presented at The Design Exchange, Ontario Science Centre, Harbourfront Centre, Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, The Drake Hotel, The Theatre Centre, The Music Gallery, Theatre Passe Muraille and The Queen West Art Crawl, as well as many site-specific pieces. Currently she is the Managing Director of The Theatre Centre (established 1978, Toronto) and is responsible for curating and producing the mega art-party Block In One Spot and co-curates the biennial Free Fall festival (a national festival of progressive performance). Upcoming presentations include Loss In Lansdowne (Toronto Free Gallery) this August and Bouncing Bride (Nuit Blanche) this October. Cathy is the winner of the Ken McDougall Emerging Director Award and 2008 Harold Award.

Canada

Deanna Ferguson’s collection of poems The Relative Minor was recently published by Tsunami Editions of Vancouver. Her work has also been published in absinthe, Front, hole, Jag, Raddle Moon, Writing, West Coast Line and the anthology East of Main (Pulp Press).

Canada

Rachel Gorman has presented her performance work at the Winchester Street Theatre, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, and Artword Theatre. Rachel has created several site-specific pieces, and is currently exploring mixed-race identity through dance on video. Rachel has been a member of the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists since 2001.

Canada

Keith Fernandes is an arts management student at the University of Toronto, majoring in Drama. His recent credits include an original adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and an original clown performance entitled The Golden Ball, which was awarded Best Production at the University of Toronto Drama Festival.

Canada

Ayumi Goto is a performance apprentice, currently based in Toronto, traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabe, and Missisaugas of the Credit First Nations. Born in Canada, she identifies as Japanese-diasporic and often draws upon her cultural heritage and language to creatively challenge sedimented notions of nation-building, cultural belonging, and activism. Inspired by collaborative work, she also explores inbetweeness, land-human relations, and (beyond) space-time beingness. She has served as the art facilitator at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre in Vancouver, Traditional Coast Salish Territories. Ayumi has performed in London, England, Berlin, Germany, Naha, Okinawa, Kyoto, Japan, and within and outside of artistic institutions across this land currently called Canada. Ayumi has a Ph.D. in Communication Studies at Simon Fraser University. In her thesis, she investigated and presented a practice-based sense of collective responsibility and creative critiques of reconciliation through forming a personalized performance art training in response to the art works and lives of Cree Métis multi-media artist, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Siksika interdisciplinary artist, Adrian Stimson, and Tahltan performance artist, object maker and best friend, Peter Morin. Ayumi is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto.

b. 1953, Canada

http://margaretdragu.com/

Margaret Dragu is a warm-hearted, fearless and indomitable spirit who has left her mark across disciplines and across the country. Dragu’s astonishing output of work spans back to 1969 and includes forays into theatre, film, video, writing, choreography and above all, performance art. Her performances span relational, durational, interventionist and community-based practices.Margaret Dragu is a 2012 recipient of a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.

b. 1977, Poland

Arti Grabowski graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland, where he obtained a Diploma (MA) with distinction of the Multimedia Department of Professor Antoni Porczak. He also holds a degree of the Universidad Castilla la Mancha in Cuenca, Spain. 

At present he is a teaching assistant at the Department of Intermedia – Studio of Performance art run by Professor Artur Tajber. He is one of the most appreciated performance artists of his generation. In 10 years of his artistic activity he realized over a hundred of actions—always strong, full of energy and sense of humour, as well as thoughtful criticism. 

His work has been included in many of the most Performance Art Festivals, Theatre Festivals, Video Art Festivals in Europe, Asia, North and South Amercia. For the last several years he has also collaborated with Body Snatchers Alternative Theatre.

Italy

www.francescafini.com

Francesca Fini is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Rome, Italy. Her live works often address social and political issues, and are a mixture of lo-fi technology, homemade interaction design devices, and live audio and video. Primarily interested in video and live art, she also creates artworks assembling performance art ‘relics’.

“I am basically a performer. The action of a body, generally mine, in space and time is essential in my work. My videos and my tangible works are the chapters of a never-ending story of which I am the protagonist. I believe that all art should be “gesamtkunstwerk”. My body, the ship on which I make this long exploration, has always been a battlefield. Former anorexic, eternal feminist, still and always a lone wolf in search of the moon between the branches of the trees.” ~Francesca Fini

Canada

Alicia Grant is a choreographer and dancer working in various constellations with other makers in Toronto and Berlin. After earning a BFA from York University, her work in performance, video, and sound design has been presented in Canada, USA, and Europe from stages to swimming pools to abandoned factories to galleries. She is one half of WITCHTITS along with Zinzi Buchanan, and has worked alongside Zoja Smutny, Andrea Spaziani, Ellen Furey, Anna Fitoussi, Ivan Björn Ekemark, Jacinte Armstrong, and Inky Lee, amongst others. She has shared why-am-i-alive dance practices at Studio 303 in Montreal, Love-In in Toronto, Ponderosa in Stolzenhagen and TanzFabrik in Berlin. Interested in power dynamics, transformation, and intimacy, Alicia is currently working on saxophone solos and a fantasy travel noise album.

Canada

Artist Alissa Firth-Eagland graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design Integrated Media Dept. in 2003 where her studies focused on curatorial practice, critical writing, performance art and conceptual video art production. Committed to critical analysis and discussion, she is currently exploring the curator’s commission as an artistic practice. She uses curatorial practice to create space for innovative methodologies & fringe trajectories, commissioning experimental works from artists. She’s recently organized exhibitions for Tranz<—>Tech 2003 Toronto International Media Art Biennial, the first annual Toronto Alternative Arts Fair (2004) and The 2004 Junction Arts Festival. The Junction Arts Festival exhibition Sorry for the Inconvenience (co-curated by Firth-Eagland and Emelie Chhangur) was recently nominated for 2004’s Best Curated Exhibition at the Toronto Untitled Art Awards. From April 2005 to March 2006 she will be working and conducting independent research at the Walter Phillips Gallery as she has been invited to participate in a Curatorial Work Study position through the Banff International Curatorial Institute.

Poland / Canada

www.johnnyforever.ca

Johnny Forever Nawracaj is a nonbinary Polish­born writer, performer and multidisciplinary artist currently based in Montreal. Their work weaves surrealist narrative through soft sculpture, video, gesture and drag-inflected performance to explore love, loss, and labour with a particular investment in these themes as a part of radical queer and trans cultural production. 
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Forever has shown video work at groups shows at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, in San the National Queers Arts Festival in San Francisco, The Coming Societee in Hong Kong, and the Seoul 12th International New Media Festival in the curated series Queers Can’t Wait (2012). In 2016, they held a residency at Struts & Faucet Media Arts Centre in Sackville New Brunswick with collaborator Gambletron. They have performed at 10th Encuentro presented by the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in Santiago, Chile; La Real Periferica in Valparaiso, Chile; the Miami Performance International Festival; HTMelles Feminist Festival of Media Arts and Digital Culture in Montréal; the Rhubarb Festival in Toronto; as well as other festivals, galleries, and DIY spaces internationally.

They have recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from USC Roski School of Art and Design as an International Artist Fellow.   

Canada

Iris Fraser-Gudrunas is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker. As a DJ and party-thrower she haunts art openings and artist run venues such as Double Double Land as well as events like AGO first thursdays and Electric Eclectics. She’s also known to take a simple gig and transform it into performance by employing a group of improvising male back-up dancers, outfits commissioned by artists along with a slew of installations and environs to create the right mood. That mood is sensual and optimistic and very committed to dancing.

Canada

www.theafitzjames.wordpress.com

Anthea Fitz-James is one-part academic, one-part journalist, and one-part theatre maker. She holds a masters degree in Theatre Studies from York University (Toronto), a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of King’s College (Halifax), and a Bachelor of Honours English from McGill University (Montréal). Her work and interests usually have something to do with craft, feminism, and explicit body art. She is interested in how textiles and nudity perform on stage. Her performance work explores alternative feminisms, embodiment, and the place where theory and practice meet. Recent performances including Needle Piece (an endurance piece in which she explored the gendered divide between tailors and seamstresses) and NAKED LADIES (a lecture meets dance-of-the-seven-veils) combined personal narrative, history, and performance theory to question why women get naked on stage.

Canada

Kirsten Forkert is a performance artist, writer, and teacher at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. A graduate of the Fine Art Masters Program at Simon Fraser University, Forkert has produced a number of performances and installations across Canada, working solo or in collaboration with other artists, including Peter Conlin and John Dummett. Her work, which is often site-specific, explores our relationship to larger social and economic structures, especially as they get played out in urban space. She is also interested in exploring alternative conceptions of community. Audience participation is an important part of her work.

Canada

Tagny Duff is an artist, curator, producer, writer and researcher. She holds a PhD from the Humanities Program at Concordia University. Her background is in media art with a focus on video, performance, biological art, net art, social sculpture and installation. Her research/creation interests focus on visual culture, viral media, interdisciplinarity, art/sci production and collaboration, post-studio art practice, and the relation between art, science and technology. Topics of interest include surveillance and biopolitics; queer(ing) culture and temporality; posthumanisms and changing perceptions of bodies; waste creation and ecology; scale, duration and spacetime; performance, liveness and documentation. Recent published texts include, FFWD, RWND and Play: Performance art, video, and feminisms in Vancouver, published in Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian Women (co-edited by Tanya Mars and Johanna Householder, YYZ Books); and an essay entitled Codpieces: Phallic Paraphernalia Revisited published in From Ironic to Iconic: The Performance Works of Tanya Mars (2008), a book in FADO Performance Art’s Canadian Performance Art Legends series (edited by Paul Couillard). Duff’s installations, web based and networked projects, offsite performance and video works have been presented in artist-run centres, performance and media art festivals, and universities across Canada, the United States, Cuba, Costa Rica, Germany and Finland.

Canada

https://erinflynn.ca/

Montréal-based dance artist Erin Flynnhas toured across Canada & Europe with Trip Dance and Le Groupe de la Place Royale. She is currently embarking on her fourth season with Corps Secrets. She teaches at the University of Montréal and is a member of the multimedia collective Vertice, which presents the third edition of the Pixel Projects in 2005. Her performance, Alcove, will be featured in April 2005, at Tangente.

USA

Andrew Cook is a teacher in the Falun Gong movement in Chicago.

1963–2018, Spain

https://www.maria-cosmes.stidna.org/

Maria Cosmes’ work focuses on the relationships, interpersonal relationships, links and ties with one another. Using rope, string, thread, rubber bands, Cosmes builds her performance in collaboration with the audience, each performance is informed by time, space and place. As an anthropologist, she is particularly interested in these differences, and at times, similarities.

Carlos Pina and Maria Cosmes have collaborated on many works since 1998 under the name Collective Stidna, most notably the series, To Leave The Closet. The works in this series ranged from installation to performance and urban intervention. To Leave The Closet focused on both personal and societal psychotherapeutic imagery, informed by both Maria and Carlos’s own experiences in treatment, asking the question, “If so many people in our society need medication, who is the ill? The people or the society?” The aim of the Stidna Collective, through these works and others, is to create a forum for the artists to relate to each other and the audience on an intimate, person-to-person basis, not as a nameless faceless collective. This aim was in keeping with the earnest and cathartic nature of the works in the series To Leave The Closet, which sought to unveil and cast light on the shadow of judgment, fear and misunderstanding around madness and taboo. Not only are Pina and Cosmes long standing collaborators, they also work together on eBent International Performance Art Festival which takes place each year in Barcelona and Madrid.

Canada

www.sylviecotton.ca

Sylvie Cotton is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Montréal. She has studied literature, arts and museology. Her work, which includes installation/situation and performance, focuses on the relation between social and individual identities, and between public and private spheres. Her projects take place in the street or other public spaces, including galleries and festivals. Sylvie Cotton is also an author of narrative texts and critical articles and has written for esse Arts + Opinions, a Québec art magazine, among others.

b. 1969, UK / Finland

www.johncourtnow.com

John Court has been living in Tornio, Finland, since 1997. As a durational performance artist, time is one of the most important elements in Court’s work. Often, he performs for 8 hours, the length of a working day. Other times he performs throughout an entire event or during the opening hours of the specific venue (museum, institution), in which the event takes place. Lately he has been interested in letting the objects and materials that he uses in his performances determine the duration of his work. He does not consider his performances as a solo piece, since the element of collaboration is inherent in them, be it through his engagement with curators, organizers, artists, viewers, objects, spaces and time.

Court’s works are responsive to the site and often the continuous, repetitive action creates a rhythm that runs parallel to that of the site. In all his works, he is fundamentally concerned with drawing or writing, as drawing connects line, movement, space and time. He has exhibited extensively in Scandinavia, and has been invited to perform at major events such as, 2017: UP-ON Live Art Festival (Chengdu China), SIGNAL Festival (Brussels, Belgium); 2016: Beijing Live (China): 2015: Viva! Art Action (Montréal, Canada) ; 2014: 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art (Toronto, Canada), DigitaLive (Guangzhou, China); 2012: SpaceX Gallery (Exeter, UK); 2010: Guangzhou Live Art Festival (China), ANTI Contemporary Art Festival in Kuopio, Finland); 2005: Venice Biennale (Italy); 2004: Liverpool Biennial (UK).