http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/blog daily 0.75 2015-09-21 http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/blog/2015/9/01/september monthly 0.5 2015-09-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442853071413-6BX1MF6APQNNY1AJXT9T/image-asset.jpeg Blog - SEPTEMBER Headline from Forbes Magazine July 29th 2015 http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/blog/2015/9/21/july monthly 0.5 2015-09-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442854066328-TQ1OUGWNN9JOGWBEUJN6/image-asset.jpeg Blog - JULY SAM - Disguise: Masks & Global African Art - June 19 - September 7 2015 "In Touch" Performance, 2015 - Danced by Etienne Cakpo. Costume designed in collaboration with Anne Telcs http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/blog/2015/9/21/june monthly 0.5 2015-09-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442854401219-AKXAS9FHBPWPSCYDJR6J/image-asset.png Blog - JUNE SAM - Disguise: Masks & Global African Art - June 19 - September 7 2015 http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/as-one daily 0.75 2015-11-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441893263471-NULIK42V362BOZ18HVBX/2.png As One - As One   2015 The Ballet and the Museum are pivots of Western culture that have greatly shaped our image of what counts as culture. When first placed in French museums, African culture was pictured as “other”- primitive, exotic, uncivilized, etc. For this commission, I picked masks from the museum’s collection and envisioned a different process of communication. Using gestures derived from classical French ballet, two dancers address the masks with the formality and etiquette that is not how they have ever been approached before. Movements and bows in the French court were loaded with hierarchical order. Here they are offered to masks that observe these ritualized actions, but cannot dance themselves. Just as European countries like France removed masks and emptied out their meaning, these dancers now dance in a way that is deemed the epitome of elegance, but is also a representation of a power struggle. Two of the masks chosen for this duet are known to have been danced in their own distinctive way. The female mask covered with geometric designs is from another court - that of the Kuba people - and was originally worn as a the face of a female court historian who danced very carefully. The mask with a crest is from the Bobo people, and was performed as a vigorous whirlwind to portray a nature spirit with explosive energy. Credits: Video performance by Ezra Thomson and Sarah Pasch of the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Videography by Aaron Bourget. Editing by Kevin Dejewski. Sound by John Luther. Commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441893263471-NULIK42V362BOZ18HVBX/2.png As One - As One   2015 The Ballet and the Museum are pivots of Western culture that have greatly shaped our image of what counts as culture. When first placed in French museums, African culture was pictured as “other”- primitive, exotic, uncivilized, etc. For this commission, I picked masks from the museum’s collection and envisioned a different process of communication. Using gestures derived from classical French ballet, two dancers address the masks with the formality and etiquette that is not how they have ever been approached before. Movements and bows in the French court were loaded with hierarchical order. Here they are offered to masks that observe these ritualized actions, but cannot dance themselves. Just as European countries like France removed masks and emptied out their meaning, these dancers now dance in a way that is deemed the epitome of elegance, but is also a representation of a power struggle. Two of the masks chosen for this duet are known to have been danced in their own distinctive way. The female mask covered with geometric designs is from another court - that of the Kuba people - and was originally worn as a the face of a female court historian who danced very carefully. The mask with a crest is from the Bobo people, and was performed as a vigorous whirlwind to portray a nature spirit with explosive energy. Credits: Video performance by Ezra Thomson and Sarah Pasch of the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Videography by Aaron Bourget. Editing by Kevin Dejewski. Sound by John Luther. Commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441893257882-7EV0FKY7YCUAI2ZEH6C0/4.png As One https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441893187698-ML2SFY0BQDGY51M9FQX6/1.png As One https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441893252673-C15HMXYS9UPS1K9EFB3I/3.png As One https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442798064351-3PXQVL2UY1PPH6FI13QW/image-asset.jpeg As One - As One http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/new-gallery-2 daily 0.75 2017-04-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221509115-WINPO1PR2NWLF0TTOOPI/WEB_Collage_4.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221509115-WINPO1PR2NWLF0TTOOPI/WEB_Collage_4.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493219551697-37ARBUXQ0OVTC5GSI6LV/Stack.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221489252-N098YWEOEJZ525B9ROV8/WEB_Art_In_General.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221506958-LYKD025JV9PSNBIY50O1/WEB_Lost_Bodies.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221524013-IYC1KB9WYP9HHXYJ8WFX/WEB_Still_Move.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221555880-31P6JS405XHQ510H4NEO/WEB_Until_We_Fearless.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221551332-TG6D89MTEJY6ZZF86FMV/WEB_Until_We_Fearless_02.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221533448-FJC7DOR4BN41S8FW92HW/WEB_Two_New.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493219600249-9O9F9U76CRFA3XUY1A9T/Web_Collage.jpg Books http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/lost-bodies daily 0.75 2017-05-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264743401-DBQB4EJIC2ED62YUNLFI/Lost_Bodies_01.jpg Lost Bodies - Lost Bodies 2016 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264743401-DBQB4EJIC2ED62YUNLFI/Lost_Bodies_01.jpg Lost Bodies - Lost Bodies 2016 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494263071356-Y0LP2QJVSIYIXHD1PB0E/Lost_Bodies_02.jpg Lost Bodies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264731753-0TB68ZUGH3GMNIFT14JF/Lost_Bodies_02.jpg Lost Bodies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264763284-4HLR36NC2FUM3HDS987F/Lost_Bodies_03.jpg Lost Bodies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264775125-ZVDKWS9PNRZV9L7YAIBU/Lost_Bodies_04.jpg Lost Bodies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264794610-MFO0TGZCJ17LNO1O808G/Lost_Bodies_05.jpg Lost Bodies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264798167-P1ALM52EFEUQWT6FH2SZ/Lost_Bodies_06.jpg Lost Bodies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264815345-KXIG57ZUPSN136F1EKCN/Lost_Bodies_07.jpg Lost Bodies http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/no-body daily 0.75 2017-05-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264929042-LPAAX8PROW8WUB5VP59O/RCH-EKH_Monique-Meloche_011017_001.jpg No Body - No Body 2016   https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264929042-LPAAX8PROW8WUB5VP59O/RCH-EKH_Monique-Meloche_011017_001.jpg No Body - No Body 2016   https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264942589-LMG10MAACUA85S9GJ200/BF16-BF00018_1.jpg No Body https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264958538-NKE8EEYX0EOO70TAVPBD/BF16-BF00018_2.jpg No Body https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264970058-U8NUMZ2EO4TEOJIHVNP0/BF16-BF00018_3.jpg No Body https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494264979600-H4GBYKGPNVVTUZFW1JPX/BF16-BF00023_1.jpg No Body https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494265005618-KWGA18O1E8LPLAK6PJFI/BF16-BF00023_2.jpg No Body https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494265010748-FG1TR3LE7NPL0V3DTJ60/BF17-Free+Fall_installatio+view+1.jpg No Body http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/performance daily 1.0 2024-04-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1446497201110-TAX2A0D5IWRGPU8JEURT/Performance_2.jpg Performance - Encomium 2011 The work Encomium is inspired by Plato's "Symposium", a classical text in which love is examined through speeches of praise. In a display of physicality, endurance and prowess, two men perform a dance as described and instructed by three narrative texts written by the artist that refer specifically to the speech of Phaedrus, in which he describes the asymmetrical love between a man and a younger male lover. In the work, I explore the way in which codes of language are articulated through classical ballet, and the way dance acts like any other language form, creating barriers that allow for understanding within specific groups and communities. Credits: Image courtesy of Diaz Contemporary. Photographer, Toni Hafkenscheid. Dancers, Robert Kingsbury, & Sky Fairchild-Waller. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1462218606558-V9YAREWF7SPQ9LZN7EKC/150910EFrossard_MGrns_window_6484_edit.jpg Performance - We As One 2015 We As One was a site specific performance and installation curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah for Mixed Greens Gallery (NY) that transformed the gallery's 26th Street windows into a public stage. The installation consisted of a text work applied by a contracted window painter, and a choreographed performance in which dancers washed the texts from the windows. The texts themselves made reference to labour slogans such as “We Move Together,” speaking to the notion of collectivity and solidarity among workers, while simultaneously nodding to the reality of Mixed Greens' upcoming closure at the end of 2015. While subtly subverting the hierarchical relationship between text, body and labour, We As One made comment on the share states of flux between galleries, artists, labourers and bodies in motion. Performed by: Oisín Monaghan and Christopher DeVita. Photographer: Chuka Chukuma. Produced by Mixed Greens Gallery. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1477864718903-YF5M5LDLA0CGV031ZIZG/29643444706_860986da68_o.jpg Performance - Art By Snapchat 2016 Art By Snapchat is a dance performance first produced in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art, NY as part of MoMA Pop Rally Ten. In the performance, Brendan Fernandes references the historic exhibition, Art By Telephone (MCA Chicago, 1969) in which conceptual artists of the 1960s submitted instructions for pieces via telephone to be instigated in the gallery. In particular, Fernandes' piece references Bruce Nauman's contribution to Art By Telephone, in which Nauman sent choreography to performers over the telephone. Updating Nauman's work, by using the contemporary smart-phone app Snapchat, Fernandes generated a performance with dancers at MoMA, via instructions and choreography he was able to send from Victoria, BC, Canada. The "snaps" - the individual photo, video and text messages sent through Snapchat - were projected in the space, and were made publicly available to the performers and international audiences through Fernandes personal Snapchat account. The performance questioned the ways in which institutional spaces choreograph viewers behaviour and etiquette. Using the popular and ephemeral media of Snapchat in reference to the information artists of the 1960s, Art by Snapchat investigated the inheritances and persistences of these artists interventionist practices, exploring a newfound porosity of institutional space made possible by contemporary technology. Performed by: Oisín Monaghan, Christopher DeVita and Rachel Meyers. Photographer: Gigi Gatewood. Produced by Recess, NY for MoMA Pop Rally Ten. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494360007161-BIG924FUNPF28BM3MHLJ/unnamed-4.jpg Performance - Stand Tall 2017 Stand Tall is a series of wire sculptures accompanied by a live performance, exploring the structures behind museological displays of African masks. Commissioned by the University of Buffalo Art Galleries, Stand Tall responds directly to the Cravens World Collection, with sculptures and ballet dancers mimicking the armatures which support the masks on display, and wearing fabricated, plastic replicas of the masks themselves. By reasserting and performing the presence of the body within the display of African art objects, Fernandes probes the collection for traces of the object's original performers, calling into question the provenance and authenticity of the collection, its histories and its authority on the objects collected. Images courtesy of the University of Buffalo Art Galleries. Photographer, Studio Avli Performances by University at Buffalo Dancers Students, Ginger Page, Savannah Sigmon, Maggie Hansen, Taylor Heaphy, Mary Pappagallo and Laura Nasca. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494359204935-HX0HJ8F0G4BQDWB0E5B5/030217+Sotheby%27s+BMW+%5BSelects%5D-14.jpg Performance - Clean Labour 2017 Created by artist, Brendan Fernandes, Clean Labor was a contemporary dance performance that made visible what is too often overlooked: the work of hospitality workers and cleaning professionals whose contributions ensure that our homes, offices, schools, hotels, and public spaces are safe, clean, and livable. Fernandes collaborated with six dancers and members of the housekeeping staff at the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to design an original, contemporary dance inspired by the movements and routines of their work. The resulting performance explored the similarities between the graceful and methodical movements of maintenance and those of dance, establishing a dialogue between the two physically demanding professions and making witnesses all the more aware of how our bodies shape and are shaped by the work we do. As the artist notes, “On stage, dancers enact romantic gestures of grace and virtuosity perceived as effortless and ephemeral, whereas in reality, these efforts leave a permanent mark on the body in the form of muscle memory, altered physicality, and injury.” hroughout the performance, the movement artists engaged with and activate the spaces of numerous spaces of the Wythe Hotel by reproducing the gestures of maintenance as contemporary dance. Even though the piece was rehearsed and scored, the live performance relied on improvised movements, taking inspiration from and engaging with the spatial elements of each site, and the social/psychological environment introduced by spectatorship. Clean Labor included performances by Christopher DeVita, Charles Gowin, Madison Krekel, Erica Ricketts, Oisín Monaghan, Khadijia Griffith with Wythe Hotel housekeepers: Angie Sherpa, Tenzin Thokme, and Tenzin Woiden. Special thanks to Eric Shiner, and Amanda Jane Graham for their work as key consultants. Photographer, Chester Toye Produced in collaboration with More Art https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1504786055194-LEK4BPSFAA2A4NFHHAT6/35651358094_b5473f1852_o.jpg Performance - Emergency Rave 2017 Emergency Rave was a one night event that took place during Steady Pulse, a summer sessions residency at NY non-profit, Recess. During the session, the space at Recess was transformed into a club that played host to a diverse range of happenings and interventions. At the centre of the space was an architectural and sculptural dance floor which shifted appearance and function as a platform for the varied events. During Emergency Rave, a club lighting system was installed and programmed to playback the flashing red and blue lights of police and emergency vehicles. The aggressive lighting was timed to the beat of disco music DJ'd throughout the event. In reference to the mass shooting of the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, FL, June 12, 2016 a team of dancers performed throughout the night. At times, they would solicit audience members to dance with them. At others, they would fall, or arrest their performance in reference and in memorial to the halted motion of club attendees at Pulse. Their performance cycled between enacting stillness and free, self-expression on the dance floor. In the presence of the emergency lighting system their performance evoked a tension between catharsis and control. Unsure about their own participation, attendees were confronted with their own desire for release on the dance floor, and the unease of being in a space illuminated by the presence of State and the insinuation of danger. Images courtesy of Recess. Performers: John Alix, Khadija Griffith & Oisín Monaghan. Uniforms by the Rational dress society. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1523451138927-1I934EM3NX3A2Y16UTTT/1-IMG_3480.jpg Performance - Free Fall 49 2017 Free Fall 49 is an ongoing series of live, dance-based performances and installations responding to the June 12th 2016, Orlando Shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, FL. The work poses the falling body as metaphor for queer politic, and the dance floor as a space for resistance and experiencing agency. Shown here is documentation of Free Fall 49 as it was performed at the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. During the performance dancers performed on raised platforms to a DJ'd soundtrack responding to the set performed at Pulse the night of the shooting. Over the course of the performance, the music stops and the dancers fall to the floor a total of 49 times: once for each fatal victim of the attack. In the performance, the music always starts again and the dancers stand-up again to dance. In the work, dancing and standing back up figure as acts of resistance. Dancing again, in this context, represents an act of reclaiming agency and reclaiming a sense of freedom in spaces (queer nightclubs) whose sense of sanctuary was shaken by the Orlando Shooting. Standing back up and dancing in their stead, honours the lives of those effected by the attack. Working with this challenging context, the work makes visible the political dimensions of spaces often viewed as outside of, or ignored in contemporary political conversations. It explores the dance floor as both a space and a surface that supports, and also as a space and surface that can penetrate, harm and ultimately hold still fallen bodies. At the Getty, the duration and act of dancing fostered a unique celebratory and reflective atmosphere in which audiences felt and joined in with the performers: dancing, falling and standing back up – together. Images courtesy of the J Paul Getty Trust. Photographers, Sarah Waldorf and Tristan Bravinder.   https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1520169810261-HP2N7B07RZAAU7X9J2XE/01-25-18_GF_BF_076.JPG Performance - The Master and Form 2018 The Master and Form is a live performance and series of sculptural pieces that explore themes of mastery and discipline within the culture of Ballet. Originally conceived and created during a residency with the Graham Foundation, Chicago, the installation is made up of objects that enable dancers to perfect and extend iconic positions. Fernandes worked with Norman Kelley Architects and dancers from the Joffrey Academy of Dance to develop the sculptural devices that would make up the installation and act as sites for intense endurance-based practice. The installation at the Graham Foundation supported a large number of live performances, including open rehearsals at which a choreography specific to the Graham Foundation's Madlener House was developed. During the performances audio was also recorded of the dancers moving within the spaces, and mounting and dismounting the devices. In the dancers' absence the audio is played back, reactivating the space around the objects. By foregrounding labour and physical exertion in both presence and absence, Fernandes attempts to queer the traditionally illusionistic and hierarchically idealized spaces of Ballet. Posing new, metaphoric spaces of pain, pleasure, sacrifice, oppression and agency in their place. Images courtesy of the Graham Foundation, Chicago. Renders courtesy of Norman Kelley. Performers: Satoru Iwasaki, Yuha Kamoto, Andrea de Leon Rivera, Antonio Mannino, Leah Upchurch. Photographers: Brendan Meara, Milo Bosh and RCH. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1540748705653-RZMTYQOHLT91CPX0YTHK/0054+Photo+by+Liz+Ligon_1.jpg Performance - Open Encounter 2018 Exploring the intersections of dance, visual art and architecture, Open Encounter was a performance choreographed by Fernandes for New York’s Highline Park. The work investigated the site's history of being a working subway line, using its trajectories of movement to inform and make a new dance. In this work a quote by Lincoln Edward Kirstein, co-founder of the New York City Ballet, was central. In referenced to an argument with dance critic, Martin John, a proponent of the modern dance movement, Kirstein said, 'we have entered the ballet modern wars." This quote was published in Mark Franko's "The Work of Dance" in which the two –John and Kirstein– argued over the hierarchical differences between ballet and modern dance techniques. During this time, modern dance revolted against the formalities and rules of ballet, giving dancers new ways to express and move. In the dance for the Highline, Fernandes referenced this history, working with both Modern and Ballet techniques in tension with one another. Dancers moved across the Highline ending up in a collision. Through this encounter, a space was created in which the distinct forms of Modern and Ballet had to work together to find a mutual way to dance together, as one. Voice, sound and costumes further enhanced and engaged the work. Kirstein's quote, "we have entered the ballet modern wars" suggests a social and political struggle, one that can be considered and questioned in today's precarious political moment. This performance used dance as a metaphor for social change, with the goal of creating hope, and an experience of joy and newness. Dancers: Charles Gowin, Toni Carlson, Jordan Isadore, Oisin Monaghan, Simon Courchel, Mei Yamanaka, Doug LeCours, Madison Krekel, Ambika Raina & Nico M Brown. Photographer: Liz Ligon. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1513351230495-4SB95IJXGZN1SSAEONM9/3.24.17_imdown18.jpg Performance - I'm Down 2017 Commissioned by the 18th Street Art Centre, I'M DOWN was a two part project consisting of a series of participatory public actions and a large-scale mural. Both took place in and responded to the changing social and economic movements of Santa Monica's Pico Neighbourhood. The actions took place at locations around the neighbourhood, responding to the architecture, public spaces, the daily movements of residents and the larger scale movements of immigration and gentrification in the area. The actions took aesthetic cues from contemporary protests, employing social media as a tool for engagement and low-cost branding techniques such as printed T-Shirts and printed banners. Locations and invitations to participate were text-messaged to interested persons on a daily basis. These ephemeral actions were paired with a permanent, large-scale mural for the facade of the 18th Street Art Centre. The mural, featuring a text translated into several of the languages spoken in the area, remains onsite as a witness to what changes will later come to Pico. Images courtesy 18th Street Art Centre. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1540750645527-U1H11SCRAELB1AEJEVV8/Lights1.jpg Performance - On Flashing Lights 2018 On Flashing Lights is a light and sound installation commissioned by Nuit Blanche, Toronto. A barricade of police vehicles lined Bay Street creating space around a central stage. Throughout the evening, DJs from Toronto’s queer, immigrant and racialized communities performed music in an uneasy relationship with the lights of police cars, signalling the historic tension between these groups. The audience was invited to participate in the performance through dance, an expression of solidarity and community in the heart of the city. The work built on Fernandes’ ongoing investigations of queer bodies and dance as acts of resistance. On the 49th minute of every hour the music was stopped to honour the the victims of the Pulse Orlando shooting; queer victims of violence past and present; and those who continue to fight for and create space for queer being today. For many people, especially those in queer and racialized communities, the dance floor can be both a sanctuary and a space of anxiety. The music and lights were prompts to move and to reflect. Is this an emergency or a rave? What constitutes a “safe” space in Toronto, and for whom? Featuring DJs: Nino Brown, Maneesh Bidaye, Bambii, and Karsten Sollors Photographer: Andrew Williamson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1551880920833-MM0IBSJ71JUM16TI70Q9/flubacker_expochicago2018_reverencedialogues_low-res-148.jpg Performance - Révérence 2017 Révérence is a performance that intervenes at cultural events and in public spaces where the dynamics of watching and being watched take place. The piece consists of a team of Ballet dancers, who preform a choreographed routine of bowing. Based on "the révérence" the traditional end to a Ballet where dancers make a procession of bows to each other and the audience, this performance breaks the fourth wall and puts the audience in the ambiguous position of being bowed to by dancers who move through and occupy the same space as the audience does. In this way the performance questions notions of social hierarchy; class; privilege; and the often tense relationship between art worlds and their audiences. Equally, Révérence interrogates the foundations and origins of the Ballet institution itself, which began as a way for courtiers to bow to King Louis XIV. Ever since, the ritual of the révérence has been performed at the end of each stage sequence as well as at the end of each class as a sign of gratitude towards the teacher, pianist and audience. In this way, the Baroque gestures employed by Fernandes calls into play historical hierarchies between bodies in order to question the provenance of contemporary social hierarchy. Reversing the concept of this "ending" Fernandes reimagines the révérence as a beginning, whereby this gesture of gratitude literally sets the stage for the series of conversations to follow. Images courtesy of EXPO Chicago. Photographer: Kyle Flubacker. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1569607563521-PF1T28GI9I4B1CVY5KOS/IMG_0727.JPG Performance - Master and Form II 2019 The second iteration of the Master and Form was staged for the 2019 Whitney Biennial. From the Whitney: “Brendan Fernandes’ installation explores the dynamics of mastery and discipline as embodied by ballet. The sculptural installation—comprising five structures that he calls “devices,” ten hanging ropes, and a central cage—is animated at times by a group of dancers. Both assisting and encumbering the performers, the minimalist objects enable poses that test their endurance in overt displays of physical tension and self-control. Even while it may confine them, the structure also offers the dancers a space in which to rest and stretch. Fernandes has likened the project to S&M culture, noting that each places “an emphasis on trust and confidence within a space where roles of mastery and submission are in play.” When the dancers are absent, the installation includes recorded sounds of the performers.” Images courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Photos by Paula Court. Exhibition design in collaboration with Norman Kelley. Dancers, Allison Walsh; Amy Saunder; Charles Gowin; Hector Cerna; Jennifer Whalen; Josep Maria Monreal Vida; Mauricio Vera; Tiffany Mangulabnan; Tyler Zydel; Violetta Komyshan. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1570448206533-MEUA5RSZ34L4ZLDBMZRG/19-20190910-Brendan-Fernandes-Contract-and-Release-Noguchi-Museum-Installation-View-Photo-by-Nicholas-Knight-INFGM-ARS.jpg Performance - Contract and Release 2019 An ambitious, multidisciplinary collaboration, Contract and Release was originally commissioned by the Isamu Noguchi Museum (Queens, NY) as part of the Noguchi Museum’s collection installation, Noguchi: Body-Space Devices. In this exhibition a group of about thirty of Noguchi’s works that motivate and modulate our physical understanding of space is reconfigured and responded to as a set for the performance of Contract and Release. In addition to dancers intervening in the space, the space itself is reconfigured in collaboration with architecture and design firm, Norman Kelley; chairs fabricated by Jason Lewis, and costumes by Rad Hourani. Contract and Release, which takes its title from a Martha Graham technique, is the second iteration in a developing series of autobiographical examinations of movement vocabularies in Fernandes’s work. The first, The Master and Form, commissioned by the Graham Foundation (Chicago, IL) examined ballet form and its relationship to pain and pleasure. The third, opening in 2020 at the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, CA) will explore Shibari rope bondage. With Contract and Release, Fernandes explores the ways in which physical demanding techniques such as Graham’s fetishize the body and in turn are fetishized themselves. Through a series of sculptural devices, Contract and Release explores how that fetishization and the challenges it poses to bodies can be manifested in sculpture. Dancers are challenged to hold positions from Graham technique on chairs which are designed to rock. Inevitably, the dancers exertion–their subtle contractions and vibrations–are amplified in the rocking of the chairs. A tension develops between the evoked movement of Noguchi’s sculptures, and the dancer’s efforts to emulate their effortless stillness. Photo: Nicholas Knight. Copyright The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, NY / ARS. Performers: Tiffany Mangulabnan, Victor Lozano and Oisin Monaghan (pictured); Hector Cerna, Violetta Komyshan and Amy Saunder (not pictured). Costumes by Rad Hourani. Scaffolding and exhibition design in collaboration with Norman Kelley. Training devices fabricated by Jason Lewis. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1570451022589-3AC01470T9E19Z78YROJ/Commons_Fernandes_20190619_6969.jpg Performance - Call and Response 2019 Brendan Fernandes’ dance-based installation in The Commons at the MCA Chicago titled, A Call and Response, explores the ways society sees and values different kinds of bodies. Using language, architecture, and gesture to understand the nature of being seen, Fernandes encourages dancers–and visitors–to collaborate and generate new forms of physical language that move and attract other bodies in space. A text-message-based game of call and response was devised to encourage audience participation in the sculptural installation. Encouraged to take on the same challenges of choreographing their behaviour and understanding their behaviour as choreography as the dancers, viewers of A Call and Response were posed new questions about their mutual visibility. Photography by Nathan Keay. Copyright MCA Chicago. Performers: Benjamin Wardell, Cameron Lasater, Elijah Richardson, Kara Brody, Michelle Reid, Samuel Crouch, Samuel Horning, and Simone Stevens. Graphics designed by Platform. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1607034742219-ZZGKGL8NDRAUHJKDFJSY/Brendan_Fernandes_Fall_20208.jpg Performance - The Left Space 2020 In a time of global political uprisings, we have had to learn to self-isolate and maintain physical distance from one another. Faced with a global pandemic, we have had to re-imagine the ways that we gather, protest and how we achieve critical mass. The Left Space is a new digital commission for the AGO, that considers how we, the global left, have found ourselves in this predicament. Developed and choreographed for webcam and the grid formation of Zoom, custom backdrops by graphic designer Jerome Harris and on-and-off camera sequences will intervene and aesthetically connect a team of dancers from Hit and Run Productions performing from their homes around the world, with a score by DJ Karsten Sollors. Reaching out and signalling to one another with the choreography and engaging with protest slogans incorporated into each’s changing background, the performers and audiences will question the potential for online platforms to re-create the social solidarity experienced in physical gatherings. The backgrounds use historically significant patterns to tell stories of power, camouflage, and resistance. Evoking a sense of urgency and emergency, “dazzle” patterns, which were painted on war ships to intercept their target, are coupled with purple and magenta plaid, which at once symbolizes British colonial rule in Kenya, a warning to predators in the wild, and the flashing of police lights. CREDITS Originally commissioned by the Art Gallery of Ontario. Choreography in collaboration with Hit and Run Production. Sound by DJ Karsten Sollors. Graphic design in collaboration with Jerome Harris. Dancers: Benjamin Landsberg Anisa Tejpar Jennifer Nichols Dedra McDermott Robert Halley Shawn Bracke https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1569670955021-XRMAAM4VLVA44EI55YXB/GUG_041219-0104.jpg Performance - Ballet Kink 2019 In Ballet Kink at the Guggenheim, Fernandes tasks dancers with developing a choreography under the restraints of Shibari rope bondage. A bondage master ties dancers with rope into positions that both support and hinder their range of motion and their endurance in poses from Ballet technique. Under these binds the dancers must re-negotiate their agency. As such the performance embodies metaphors for contemporary situations in which we too might find ourselves redefining freedom, movement and solidarity under social and political restraints. Ballet Kink was staged as part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim’s Young Collector’s Party in April of 2019. Images courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum. Photographer, Scott Rudd Events. Performers, Abigail H. Simon; Allison Walsh; Elina Miettinen; Violetta Komyshan; Nico Brown; Tyler Zydel; Jonatan Lujan; Josep Maria Monreal Vidal; and Mauricio Vera Nuńez. Rope bondage by Master Ming (Ming Chang) assisted by Vincent Tiley. DJ’d by Karsten Sollors. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1625238877545-4TFZSMXS680L17J458PZ/IMG_7754.jpg Performance - A Solo Until We Can Dance Again 2021 A Solo Until We Can Dance Again (2021) is a new commission for Portals by Brendan Fernandes. At the crossroads of the social and political repercussions of the pandemic, the work deals with the human need for communication, contact and intimacy. Fernandes’ Solo regenerates the courtyard area of the former Public Tobacco Factory. Scaffolding and ballet barres surround three elevated pedestals. For the duration of the exhibition visitors will be able to access these platforms/dance-floors and write their answers to the question: ‘Imagine/Without Fear/What Is Tomorrow?’ on them. Through these inscriptions, the pedestals will become memorials – places to leave behind trauma, struggle and difficulty. At scheduled times, a dancer will activate the platforms with an improvisational choreography based on the public responses. They will read and incorporate a selection of the texts into a solo dance. In this way, the dancer will embody a ‘living monument’. They will transmit the ideas and experiences left by the public until the day comes when we can all celebrate and dance together again without worry or fear. Performance: Duration: 20 min performances throughout the run of the exhibition Installation: Precast concrete slabs, painted steel structures, painted wood, pic flooring Dimensions variable. Installation design: Fanis Kafantaris, Nikolas Arnis — NEON Architecture & Design Department. Production: Efi Syrigou, Antonis Kourkoulos, Ioanna Mimi —NEON Exhibition Department. Assistant Curator: Maria Tavlariou Graphic Design: Dimitra Chrona-Schema Costume Design: Eleftheria Arapoglou — DIGITARIA Project Associate-Coordination: Pavlina Andriopoulou Participating Dancers: Nodas Damopoulos, Myrto Grapsa, Candy Karra, Georgios Kotsifakis, Cecile Mikroutsikou, Joseph Nama, Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Olivia Thanasoula, Yiannis Tsigkris Commissioned by NEON Installation and Performance View Portals, Hellenic Parliament + NEON, Photography Natalia Tsoukala. Courtesy NEON https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1632497811690-5X1XB9VNA06IOMQYFLDY/Photo_by_Chris+Balestra_00005.jpg Performance - Together We Are 2021 Together We Are (2021) is a new commission realized through the Walker Hotel Greenwich Village and Visual AIDS. As New York City recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, New Yorkers are called to reflect on the impact of human connection, whether that is thanking those they leaned on in isolation or rediscovering relationships in the aftermath. Through a series of open-to-the-public rehearsals, Brendan Fernandes and a team dance artists developed a new choreography to explore this idea of community reconnection and what physical closeness feels like in the wake of social distance. Developed site specifically for the Society Cafe at the Walker, the piece engages high touch and high traffic areas, asking viewers to reflect on the ways that COVID demanded we consider the traces each of us leaves on our environment. The open rehearsals lead up to a finale performance on World HIV/AIDS Awareness and Aging Day. This performance became structured around moments of physical closeness between the dancers and the willing-to-participate public. It provided a chance for all to reflect on the connection between touch and human closeness, and on the powerful memory of the first global pandemic to sweep the arts community—the HIV/AIDS Crisis. Throughout, the performances drew parallels between the challenges posed to physical intimacy during the HIV/AIDS Crisis and during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Exploring how touch was similarly politicized, stigmatized and lost during both of these times. Commissioned by Walker Hotel Greenwich Village in partnership with Visual AIDS. Photographer, Chris Balestra Dancers, Héctor Cerna Chris Tabassi Khadija Griffith Charles Gowin Violetta Komyshan Ragin Smith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1446492584445-35W8FHOVA4YSPJSMQDMI/Closing_Line_7.jpg Performance - Closing Line 2014 The Metropolitan Museum in the 60’s used to close the museum by having security guards use their bodies to push out museum visitors without touch or speech. As the posturing guards emptied out galleries and deemed the spaces secure, the guards gathered on the main staircase of the museum and slowly formed a human chain. They walked together down the grand stairs pushing people out of the space and stood at the door where one guard would announce, “the museum is closed.” I am curious about the political ramifications of this gesture; where bodies direct, control and move other bodies without physical force or verbal direction. In this work I am interested in borders, accessibility and the use of the physical body as a device to create a barrier. It references sociopolitical events, such as protest and gatherings of critical mass, where bodies are controlled and limited by a hierarchy system. Closing Line uses performers dressed in uniforms to slowly push visitors out of the gallery space. Together they form a human chain in the museum where they rest in silence before ushering attendees out of the space. Then they simultaneously move forward in a sequenced, choreographed line every few minutes that makes the exhibition space smaller and less accessible to viewers inside. The space behind them is left emptied and the space in front of them becomes smaller and more crowded. Credit: performed in In Practice: Chance Motives. Courtesy Sculpture Center, 2014. Photographer, Megan Mantia. Original score, Thomas Ian Campbell. Performers, Angela Freiberger, Katie McQueston, Ethan David Wilson Lester, Timothy Hospodar, Moira Williams, Michael Mahalchick, Jessica Karuhanga, Suzan D. Polat, Chris Boiga, Jorge Sanchez, & Brendan Mahoney. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1655664579593-C33AJVZJ3A8FO67BUWC3/Inaction-image.jpg Performance - Inaction 2019, 2020, 2021 Inaction addresses the potential for change through collective action. The installation comprises a commissioned series of nine sculptural works and the two-channel video projection Free Fall: for Camera. Fernandes has designed a set of dance supports and platforms for activation by local dancers. In public performances throughout the exhibition, Fernandes’ choreography guides dancers to utilize the sculpture objects in movements, referencing a mix of childhood play and professional dance warm-up exercise. Performance Locations: Zilkha Galleries, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT (2019); Tarble Art Center, Charleston, IL (2020); Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond, BC, (2021) CREDITS Inaction, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University October 2 - December 8, 2019 The exhibition at the Zilkha Gallery included a single-channel installation of the film Free Fall for Camera (2019/2021), an installation of “play” sculptures, and performance. Installation designed in collaboration with Norman Kelley. The “play” sculptures were fabricated by Jason Lewis. Gender-neutral costumes by Rad Hourani. Dancer: Charles Gowin Student Dancers: Kiara Benn, Camille Britton, Zachary Farnsworth, Georgia Garrison, Gabe Hurlock, Annie Kidwell, Sophia Meloni, Sarah Norden, Katerina Ramos-Jordan, Iris Ridley, Spenser Stroud, Chris-ann Walker Inaction, Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond BC, Canada February 12 - April 3, 2021 The exhibition at the Richmond Art Gallery included a two-channel installation of the film Free Fall for Camera (2019/2021), an installation of “play” sculptures, and performance. Installation designed in collaboration with Norman Kelley. The “play” sculptures were fabricated by Jason Lewis. Gender-neutral costumes by Rad Hourani. Dancers: Kevin Fraser, Bynh Ho, Rachel Meyer, Zahra Shahab https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1669059291276-YJGBGMWIJ7W7Z5UMEXZY/Munch_JH_Brendan_fernandes-1769.jpg Performance - in/visible 2022 in/visible is a performance with five dancers created site-specifically for the Munch museum in Oslo Norway's Amphitheater. The audience is invited to participate and explore within the optics and eight channel sound of this work, becoming part of the piece and experiencing the performance both inside and outside the amphitheater. The performance makes use of the amphitheater’s glass walls – specifically examining the relationship between visibility and invisibility, as a common experience of marginalized groups. In this work, dance becomes a social-political vehicle and a form of protest. in/visible addresses the need to build communities and safe spaces for queer people and other minorities and is a celebration of club culture in the aftermath of the mass shooting at London Pub during Oslo Pride in the summer of 2022. Live performance and installation, choreography for 5 dancers, eight channel sound piece, custom costume my T-Michael Performers: Katlin Bourgeois, Ornilia Percia Ubisse, Judith Arupa, Jonathan Ibsen, Putli Jasmine Hellesen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1504784900499-IKSWO8OQEDRK1CCOCRDI/recessbrendan404.jpg Performance - Hit Back 2017 Hit Back is a sculptural and performance-based installation developed during Steady Pulse, a summer sessions residency at NY non-profit, Recess. During the session, the space at Recess was transformed into a club that played host to a diverse range of happenings and interventions. At the centre of the space was an architectural and sculptural dance floor which shifted appearance and function as a platform for the varied events. Hit Back (one of these events) was a series of open dance rehearsals, in which the valences of the dance-floor's impact on the dancer's body were explored. In response to the mass shooting of the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, FL, June 12, 2016, a vocabulary of movements and gestures were developed to explore the social and political implications of the fallen body and the dance floor as a space for resistance. As rehearsals, the works were open-ended and evolved over the course of several weeks. As a movement vocabulary was developed through improvisation, collaboration and instruction from the artist, the dancers' agency and labour was highlighted. With each rehearsal the dancers were given agency to rearrange the sculptural elements of the space, and to select their own music for the rehearsal, allowing them to creating new conditions for their bodies to move with and resist against. Images courtesy of Recess. Modular dance floor designed in collaboration with NAKWORKS. Performers: John Alix, Khadija Griffith & Oisín Monaghan. Uniforms by the Rational dress society. Photographer: Wendy Ploger. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1680810019547-OCOPGLF71RHSE12NUQ68/TLS_Still_PERF_2.jpg Performance - The Left Space II Presented as part of the Nuit blanche à Montréal, The Left Space is a performance took place at the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art, both in person and virtually. The Left Space was originally conceived as a commission for Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario, and premiered online in 2020. This marks the first time that The Left Space is performed in front of a physical audience. Developed and choreographed for webcam and the grid formation of Zoom, The Left Space includes custom backdrops by graphic designer Jerome Harris, in front of which multiple choreographed sequences are performed by a group of dancers. Their movements are simultaneously conceived to be seen online, via livestream, and onsite at the PHI Foundation. Reaching out and signaling to one another through choreography, and engaging with protest slogans that are incorporated into each other’s changing backgrounds, the performers and audience question the potential of online platforms to re-create the social solidarity experienced at physical gatherings. The custom backdrops use historically significant patterns to tell stories of power, camouflage, and resistance. Evoking a sense of urgency and emergency, “dazzle” patterns, which were painted on warships to intercept their target, are coupled with purple and magenta plaid, which at once symbolizes British colonial rule in Kenya, a warning to predators in the wild, and the flashing of police lights. CREDITS Originally commissioned by the Art Gallery of Ontario Choreography in collaboration with Hit & Run Dance Productions Sound by DJ Karsten Sollors Graphic design in collaboration with Jerome Harris Dancers Justin de Luna Jennifer Nichols Sophie Qin Kunal Ranchod Anisa Tejpar https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1684865555060-1HHH4MBFDJ4YDP2TMTV0/230204_00205224.jpg Performance - Hard Return Hard Return: 9 Experiments for this Moment was organized by the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY, and co-curated by Purchase College faculty members Kate Gilmore, a renowned performance artist, and Jonah Westerman, an art historian who specializes in performance art. For the exhibition, Fernandes developed a dance piece in response to African art in the Neuberger collection. Working with vogue expert Jason Rodriguez and a cast of Purchase College students, the performance considers the transmission of cultural forms and knowledges across time and space and from body to body. This work, which changed and grew over the week, also considered questions of rest and repose. In addition to developing original choreography, related movement workshops were offered to museum visitors throughout the week. Generous financial support for this exhibition has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art, and the Purchase College Foundation. Additional support of the student participation in Hard Return has been provided by Ivan Bart & Grant Greenberg and Ava & Paul Zukowsky. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1656010444231-LRNKU3N16LX8BMYROJ7Y/e7ee58b5-5644-4529-b3b1-fa8599cfe80d.JPG Performance - Mog Asundi 2020 Mog Asundi is a multipart performance project by Kenyan-Canadian artist, Brendan Fernandes. The performance took place in Panjim as part of the fourth edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival. The work consisted of a series of posters, t-shirts and other multiples featuring the affectionate Konkani greeting, "mog asundi", meaning, "let there be love (between us)". The multiples feature this message translated into five scripts: Devanagiri, Roman, Kannada, Malayalam, and Perso-Arabic. Accompanying these multiples was a series of unannounced dance performances by the dancers of the Goa Dance Residency. The performances were based on a choreography by Fernandes, that emphasized group improvisation and flocking in order to highlight the agency and collectivity of the dancers. Their creativity and their relationships to one another were a key part of the performances, charging them with social solidarity. The performances took place at key locations, often marked by wheat-pasted compositions of the posters, such as the Adil Shah palace on the Panjim waterfront. Both the choreography, the printed matter and the locations worked together to highlight the multilayeredness of Goan identity––Fernandes himself being a part of the Goan diaspora in Kenya, Canada and now the United States. Mog Asundi with its collective gestures and collective scripts reflected this multilayeredness, all the while calling for audiences to embrace love between and across the differences. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1655666287133-IF59NE3J0AVKGDWOIC83/72+Seasons%2C+2021_1.jpg Performance - 72 Seasons 2021 72 Seasons engages with ballet history to envision the same passages of time demarcated by seasons for the twenty-first-century. Initiating the project in the Lurie Garden within the City of Chicago’s Millennium Park, the movement-based piece brings together a group of dancers in acts of utilitarian choreography. The movement of the dancers, informed by practices of tending, foraging, and propagating, positions an ethos of sustainability within its score. Rethinking humans’ relationship to nature within the context of Chicago’s prairie landscape, the title of the work is derived from the Japanese calendar—a changing of the world that is divided into micro-seasons known as kō, each lasting around just five days. With seasons such as “fish emerge from the ice,” “mist starts to linger,” “caterpillars become butterflies,” “distant thunder,” “swallows leave,” and “rainbows hide,” the minute description of ecological phenomena in this calendar comes closer to a sense of time that is lived instead of passed. Departing from a Western vision of phases, where the division of all perceptible change in our environment is collapsed into four categorical types, Fernandes encourages a deeper observation of humans’ relationship to the natural world. Photographers: Dabin Ahn, Sophia Lee, David C. Sampson Curated by Ellen Hartwell Alderman & Stephanie Cristello Costumes by Rad Hourani Dancers: Katlin Bourgeois, Kara Hunsinger Brian Martinez, Michelle Reid, Meghann Wilkinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1680806477736-L7RGOBSJMZS6STXSBPLP/image-asset.jpeg Performance https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441913730966-TBXIFZCXGHIGOZRONJT0/Performing_Foe_1.JPG Performance - Performing Foe 2009 A sequel to my video Foe, in which I received voice accent lessons from a acting coach, this time I have taken on the role of teacher and begun to instruct my students on how to enunciate and speak in the accents of my cultural backgrounds. The video features a group of students standing before me like a choir, reciting sounds that become abstracted in their repetition. The work plays on the notion of pedagogy through mimicry and disguise. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442793771560-XUFKR4XS70R3P8KY3WWK/In_Touch_1.jpg Performance - In Touch 2015 I want to question what it means to act badly or misbehave within the conventions of the museum. I created the chance for audiences to have an odd encounter with someone who is designed to instigate a sense of uneasiness and curiosity about how another person is reacting to masks on view. This person enters the museum wearing a costume; they are already recognized as being othered. The costume resembles an outfit that Louie the XII might wear in the time of his court. The performer walks around the space of the museum, observing and then approaches a mask and begins pointing to it in a confrontational gesture. The gesture of pointing in a museum is deemed inappropriate as the movement might instill a touching of an artifact or art work. This is the beginning of the choreography. Suddenly, he is no longer the usual visitor, but transforms into a masquerader who dances to reunite masks with body and the movements that they haven’t seen due to the many years of confinement on museum pedestals. Performance documentation of In Touch at Seattle Art Museum for Disguise: Masks and Global African Art, Summer 2015. Credits: Choreography and concept by Brendan Fernandes. Performed by Etienne Capko of Gansango Dance, Seattle. Original costume by Anna Telcs in collaboration with Brendan Fernandes. Documentation filmed and edited by Aaron Bourget. Commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum   https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1446493079318-AR94FTKI4ZZ5P3SCCAQI/01_Standing_Leg.jpg Performance - Standing Leg 2014 Through this endurance solo I am making reference to my past research on the “exotified other”, acknowledging issues of power dynamics throughout histories of colonialism, post-colonial violence and struggle. Within ballet’s hierarchical order, one strives to attain a certain type of perfect body aesthetic. This may require tools and devices that manipulate and stretch the body to form an “ideal” shape, which over time the body recalls and takes on. A Ballet Foot Stretcher, a wooden device with a “perfectly” formed arch, is used by some dancers to bind their foot over the arch and manipulate the foot’s anatomy. Its aim is that in time the foot will take on this ideal form. In this work I am making reference to my past life as a dancer who was forced to leave due to injury. Within this solo my labour gestures are minimal, but I endure and perform in a constant space of active pain. This tension is apparent in the piece, showcasing a sense of vulnerability and fragility as the body tires and endures pain. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1446494487315-5DXAMWYOQDX7G1ZUKV6M/In_Postion_Varley_42.jpg Performance - Inverted Pyramid 2014 Inverted Pyramid unites my research in classical dance with questions of ethnicity and migration within the charged framework of Orientalist ballet. The piece’s point of departure is a famous scene in La Bayadère, choreographed by Marius Petipa to the music of Ludwig Minkus, which debuted at the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1877. La Bayadère (“the temple dancer”) follows the story of star-crossed lovers, the bayadère, Nikiya and the warrior, Solor, whose happiness is thwarted by a High Brahmin who desires the dancer for himself. In The Kingdom of Shades (one of the most memorable scenes in ballet) the warrior, distraught at the death of his love, sees an apparition of her in an opium-induced dream. The entire corps de ballet enters the stage one by one, performing a long series of arabesques, over and over, creating an image of undulating lines for the audience to gaze upon. In this work a single ballet dancer from the American Ballet Theatre corp de ballet dances the sequence with 2-D cut-outs of herself, which are made to her size and scale. She competes with them until she falls. She continues this, moving the cut-outs in the dance pattern of the sequence. Another name for the arabesque is the “Inverted Pyramid”. As the ballerina holds her body balanced on the point of her foot, while her other leg and arms reach out she forms a triangle, an "inverted pyramid". The assembled works question notions of labour, power and hegemony using the structure of the Ballet company as an allegory for the Capitalist structures the Ballet parallels. Credits at Abrons Art Centre: Dancer, Lauren Post of American Ballet Theatre. Photography, Stephan Sagmiller. Credits at Varley Art Gallery: Dancer, Jenna Savella, Soloist with the National Ballet of Canada. Photography, Toni Hafkenscheid. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441894174608-PJVGRZLVLKLZ96MOQYK1/01_Fernandes_Night_Shift.jpg Performance - Night Shift 2013 Night Shift is a durational performance inspired by Le Ballet de la Nuit, a 13-hour court ballet that was most notable for the involvement of the young Louis XIV, who performed many roles, including the title of the "Sun King". Danced throughout the night, the ballet acted as a performance with night (darkness) cast as a metaphoric plague on society. The dance is performed as an offering to call upon daylight, when the Sun King exiles the darkness, and the dawn (light) signifies a new beginning through the start of a new day. I have re-contextualized the ballet into a contemporary dance performance in which dancers endure from dusk until dawn, dancing and making gold confetti in anticipation of the new tomorrow. The dancers are given agency by having the ability to change the music in the piece using 14 original tracks, and moreover may speak to their audience using a microphone, yet speaking only in the collectivity of “we”. At dawn in celebration of the new day, the accumulated piles of gold confetti are thrown into the air and the piece ends. Night Shift evokes notions of labour and time within the context of night changing into day as the dancer’s body endures and asserts itself in the process of performing. Created and conceived by Brendan Fernandes. Created with Michael Trent in collaboration with Dancemakers and the performers. Photographer, Toni Hafkenscheid. Original costumes, Vanessa Fischer. Original score, Thomas Ian Campbell. http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/installation daily 0.75 2025-07-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1739737983927-CS60GJAJKVH996IQTLAD/BUILD-UP-THE-HOUSE-II_STILL-004.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1739737984018-FC8ET7705C5YRDCFOMK3/BUILD-UP-THE-HOUSE-II_STILL-002.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1739737984866-WFR038PHSPJY5XQDUUGS/BUILD-UP-THE-HOUSE-II_STILL-005.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1739737984901-81F0WJ3ZM9FXM4FR6EJJ/BUILD-UP-THE-HOUSE-II_STILL-009.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1739737985612-3E25RFYBMGIV746O9GU6/BUILD-UP-THE-HOUSE-II_STILL-007.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1751833275991-S9NYBD2PM41987WCTZ5W/MidnightMoment-March25-MichaelHullPhoto-174.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1751833296341-2772ECRPXBG1QYRMYMJN/MidnightMoment-March25-MichaelHullPhoto-238.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1751833301047-GI2XR06XAEYGUI2OO5MV/MidnightMoment-March25-MichaelHullPhoto-282.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1751833309035-O7RX8UHV8S3Z6OUGIJZT/MidnightMoment-March25-MichaelHullPhoto-342.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1753136106834-OSDLW8ZS35G9Q2Q6S5OW/MidnightMoment-March25-MichaelHullPhoto-102.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1753136106150-7KVBE10WB0M2DJEDDAC5/MidnightMoment-March25-MichaelHullPhoto-333.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1753136123229-J2FAF1AP31UZBLWJVH5S/MidnightMoment-March25-MichaelHullPhoto-352.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1753136152791-AZW17C9FR7NM543C3NTY/BFA_48947_6981675.jpg Installation https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441910954758-ZK6QB1COSCGLNFCTLEJG/From_Hiz_Hands1.jpg Installation - From Hiz Hands 2010 This work explores the dissemination of Western notions of an exotic Africa through the symbolic economy of "African" masks sold on Canal Street and on the streets outside museums in New York (the Whitney and Metropolitan, for example). The work plays on their contrasting relationship to the masks on display in the museums themselves. The exhibition examines the authenticity of these objects (the souvenirs on the street and the artefacts in museum collections) through pulsating neon masks. The pulsating neons seem to be trying to communicate with the outside world. Their pulses silently spell out morse coded demands about their own provenance. The installation also looks at the personal narratives of the mask sellers, drawing on the artist’s own migration from Kenya to Canada, in an audio piece which plays inside the space. Together, From Hiz Hands assembles a series of works that create a shared history of identity, origin and displacement. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441895326336-ZELW07ADCI1MGPF44IHV/8.jpg Installation - In Your Words 2011 In Your Words is a long-term collaboration between Nanna Debois Buhl and Brendan Fernandes. The project’s research began in the spring of 2010 in Denmark where the two spent time in Rungstedlund, the home of acclaimed Danish author Karen Blixen. Often writing under the pen name of Isak Dinesen she published many books, her most famous being Out of Africa. In Your Words consists of six collaborative videos and installations which take as their point of departure the writings of Karen Blixen / Isak Dinesen, initiating a dialogue with the author’s life and oeuvre. At the same time, this exploration into Blixen’s work becomes a reflection of the artist’s own experiences of traveling and living in different places. Ideas of identity, nationality, language, translation and exchange between the continents are interwoven with postcolonial discourse. Located in Blixen’s home, the Karen Blixen Museum hosted the exhibition In Your Words in 2011. The project poses complex questions about our globalized world, as seen through the trajectories of Blixen herself as well as the artists. Nanna Debois Buhl was born in Aarhus, Denmark, while Brendan Fernandes was born in Nairobi, Kenya near the Ngong Hills where Blixen lived. The artists first met in New York and began collaborating on this project thereafter. They have both traveled and lived in many different places and see the significance of adaptation through their journeys. The question of identity has become very important in the work of both artists – similar to the ways in which Blixen explores these themes through her writing. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441898407535-QLURGLZUYKFQINTRP4RE/Voo_Doo1.jpg Installation - Voo Doo You Doo Speak 2010 This work challenges its viewers to reconsider the perceptions and inhibitions that surround cultural identities associated with Africa and the African Diaspora. Voo Doo You Doo Speak is in part an architectural sculpture that viewers can enter and experience a highly charged technological environment. This includes a multi-channel video installation of animated African masks that seem to speak Dadaist sound poem soliloquies. The mask animations play with pulsations of light in rhythmic patterns that create a trance like space, one that evokes a sense of spiritual apparition and take over. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1463491796692-EBHLDT1ABXFCSQ4XS27O/Haraka.jpg Installation - Neva There 2008 The series "Neva There" takes inspiration from street posters from the Caribbean. These signs are used to advertise an event, most likely a party. Although graphic in nature, the handmade signs are somewhat nonsensical. They play on language where the vernacular used becomes code. The event is never defined, but to some the text reads perfectly and tells all. I am using this as a device in this work. At first glance the posters look as though they are adverts for a music event, perhaps a reggae concert. They bare the colours red, green and gold and use slang and wording that reference Rasta culture. Signs pointing to Rasta culture's philosophies on unity, emancipation and revolution. In the works broken English and Swahili further complicate the text and develop a political edge. One is left to interpret the language being used to avoid getting lost on their way to the "event". https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1478802346727-0BLXJZ9211E8J0OTG8LW/Brendan+Fernandes+by+Nate+Dorr+2016+1385.jpg Installation - Marked Space 2016 As part of LANDMARK, an exhibition at the Socrates Sculpture Park Brendan Fernandes contributed a subtle intervention that addressed the park’s social role within the community. Customized caution tape confounds an administrative mechanism, provoking questions about the language of authority and assumptions about borders and boundaries. Utilized throughout throughout the park, this customized caution tape, provoked questions about borders, migration, and movement in public space. “Until we fearless,” it reads, the syntax suggesting the voice of a non-native English speaker. The phrase alternates from plain english text, and a translation in a font designed for the artist by designer, Lauren Wickware based on Morse code. Images courtesy of Socrates Sculpture Park. Photographer, Nate Dorr.     https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494263402897-PLWT8QTJSDKAS2GY9T5L/BF17-BF00030_2.jpg Installation - Free Fall 2016 49 hand-pulled crystal coat hangers, 5 coat racks. Free Fall represents 49 hand-pulled crystal coat hangers in response to the 49 victims of the June 12, 2016 Orlando Shooting, at the Pulse Night Club in Orlando, FL. Subtly evoking the body, Fernandes' fragile crystal hangers memorialize the victims of the shooting. They suggest the ritual of taking off your coat to dance, and the possibility that these objects may themselves fall and be broken. In the media "free fall" following the shooting, creating a storm of uncertainty, accusation and headlines Fernandes' Free Fall, in response, creates a space for pause, commemoration and acknowledgement of our vulnerabilities. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1562104920321-NNZB6LBLX8UK3YOGUQ89/phaidon_018.jpg Installation - "In PreP We Trust?" 2016 "In PreP We Trust?" is a project by Brendan Fernandes for the 2016 PosterVirus Campaign. PosterVirus is a community-based activist, street and online art initiative developed and curated by Alexander McClellan and Jessica Whitbread, in association with AIDS ACTION NOW! to expand the limits on the ways we talk about HIV/AIDS. Fernandes' poster, "In PreP We Trust?" questions how PreP (pre-exposure prophylaxis, a new series of medications reducing the risk of HIV transmission) is changing the way HIV positivity is perceived and experienced in North America. Aligning the drug with the American monetary maxim, "In God We Trust" Fernandes questions both the raising faith in PreP as protection from HIV, and the raising financial costs associated with being on PreP. Fernandes' poster directly responds to the price increases for PreP issued by Gilead Sciences earlier in 2016, effectively profiting off and creating new class divisions within at risk communities. Design and concept in collaboration with Nontsikelelo Mutiti Originally commissioned by AIDS ACTION NOW! Shown here are images by Photographer, Kris Graves from “VISUAL IMPACT: On Art, AIDS, and Activism” a public installation including “In PreP We Trust?” organized by the New York AIDS Memorial. See: http://nycaidsmemorial.org/visualimpact2019/ for full details. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1589123276769-BC0XYLH4E3H54K5Z2K0T/009_MMG_Brendan-Fernandes.jpg Installation - Restrain 2019 Restrain Brendan Fernandes’ second solo exhibition with moniquemeloche, Chicago. Restrain features a new series of cast bronze sculptures. The sculptures were created by casting binding patterns from Shibari rope bondage. Fernandes worked with Shibari master, Master Ming and New York-based artist, Joseph Liatela to produce the original rope forms which were then cast through the Odette Sculpture Residency at York University, Toronto. Removing the body from the forms recalls Brendan’s earliest explorations of the absent bodies of African communities in the display of the African masks in western museum collections. Presented with custom built armatures to emphasize the position each bind would have had on a body, the work further references practices of museum display. Actively involved in staging live performances within museum spaces, Fernandes continues his exploration of the role and status of the body within the contemporary art apparatus through these sculptures by confronting viewers with a truly still evocation of the body’s removal. In this case, the ambiguous body of queer, BDSM and kink practitioners—bodies which have historically been censored from visual space, and bodies which continue to be censored from visual space through ongoing practices of “Community Guidelines” and removal from social media. Cast in bronze, the binds evoke monuments to these absences. More information: http://moniquemeloche.com/exhibitions/brendan-fernandes/ Images courtesy of Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago. Photo: RCH Photography https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1713728675945-X2YHKD717AI7AOQIL8IR/BlackCube-49-2.jpg Installation - New Monuments | Chicago 2024 New Monuments | Chicago marks Brendan Fernandes’ first public intervention, which is envisioned as the first in a series of interventions that engage monuments in and outside of the United States. Installed when Fernandes was a Black Cube Artist Fellow and in collaboration with AIM Architecture, the structure, constructed of scaffolding, surrounds Grant Park’s General John Alexander Logan Monument and includes an interactive community prompt. The structure symbolically marks the statue as "in transition," revisiting the complex history of its subject, General Logan—a nineteenth-century figure who initially worked to prohibit Black people from settling in Illinois but later advocated for the abolishment of slavery and supported African American rights. Fernandes activated this temporary installation with a choreographed, durational performance. Image credit: Brendan Fernandes, New Monuments | Chicago, 2024. General John Alexander Logan Monument, Grant Park, Chicago, IL. Presented by Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum in association with the Chicago Park District, as part of EXPO CHICAGO’s IN/SITU Outside program. Architectural Intervention by AIM Architecture. Dancers include Katlin Michael Bourgeois, Kara Hunsinger, Brian Martinez, Michelle Reid, Ashley Rivette, and Lieana Sherry. Lighting: Nix Campbell. Sound: Alex Inglizian. Costumes: Heather Lake. Courtesy the artist and Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum. Photo: Matthew Reeves Photography. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1729960624698-YP1IM40OXPNSKLCT8PXA/IMG_4468-overlay-1.jpg Installation - Build Up the House Brendan Fernandes turns the iconic Merchandise Mart and Riverwalk in downtown Chicago into a space to gather and dance to coincide with the 40th anniversary of house music. For his commission, the artist imagines 'new' windows and doorways onto THE MART, using the movements of animated human dancers to continuously 'reshape' the façade of the building. Colorful backdrops that reference foliage and African textiles honor the essential contributions of African diasporic peoples to American art forms, while emphasizing the natural elements of our man-made urban surroundings. In this newest work Fernandes exhibits his flair for subverting the conventions of dance performance, approaching the form with an architectural eye and an empathetic heart, imbuing all of his work with equal parts cultural responsiveness, critical theory, and aesthetic beauty. Accompanied by a house music soundscape made in collaboration with Chicago-based producer Sean J. Wright, Fernandes's Build Up the House highlights the power of THE MART as an accessible platform for expressions of solidarity, community-building, and celebration. Animation and Post-Production: Daily Planet Original Music in collaboration with Shaun J Wright Produced by Domenic Del Carmine Danced by Katlin Michael Bourgeois and Lieana Sherry Photography by Matt Bruinooge This new commission is made possible through the generous support of Cari and Michael Sacks, Anne Kaplan, and the Alumnae Board of Northwestern University. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442843683919-U9F4XOL2PERVN40CZ9CG/Natural_Refuge1.jpg Installation - Natural Refuge 2004 This installation explores landscape, using elements from interior and exterior environments. Organic materials are placed against ceramic deer in boxes, while fans blow soft breezes to activate an “atmosphere”. This contrived and fabricated landscape takes the backyard as inspiration. The backyard is a suburban creation that allows people to have a place where they can rest and relax. In recent years, North American gardens have used plants to signify the exotic. The combination of the false landscape with elements of nature creates an environment that, like the backyard, signifies the making of home and sanctuary. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442843606753-C7XEN5BS7DUJZM5TDX9Q/Unsettled1.jpg Installation - Unsettled 2005 The Harris family’s travel expeditions to exotic locations are evident on the walls and throughout the rooms of Eldon House. The public living spaces of Eldon House — the living rooms, the dining room, the parlour, the office — functioned as the showcase for the Harris family’s privilege of travel. Today however, this living museum highlights the family’s colonial attitude toward the cultures they visited. Like most tourists, the Harris’s removed artefacts from their original cultural and religious contexts and displayed them back in Canada as the rightful spoils of Imperialism. In the same way, Jean Rhys tells the story from the “other’s” perspective in her novel, The Wide Sargasso Sea, recounting the tale of Bertha, the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I have sought to tell the other’s story as well, the one that lurks in Eldon House’s hidden spaces. In contrast to the rest of the house’s ornate décor, the Eldon House attic provides a rich hiding place for all the items deemed unfit for public viewing, such as the packing crates in which the Harris family shipped home artefacts from their voyages. I am interested in the crates themselves, vessels that suggest the potential for travel, and for the hiding place of “stolen” culture in the form of souvenirs. In my installation, I explore the potential of the boxes themselves to disrupt their usual relationship to the artefacts they store and protect. In physically activating the boxes with hidden motors, I hope to evoke a sense that the boxes themselves, like Bertha in Rhys’s attic, will do whatever it takes to get back home, including an old-fashioned haunting of the Eldon house. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442843263420-EDXCB2OHI6UIUD46Y1VE/Neo_P_1.jpg Installation - Neo Primitivism II 2007 20 Deer Decoys (44”L x 41”H x 21”W each), Fabricated Plastic African Masks, and Vinyl Spears on Painted Wall. Decoys are prefabricated “fake” objects used to entice and trick “real” deer into the trap of a hunter. In this installation I assemble a herd of these of false deer. They stand at attention, wearing plastic white masks over their faces. The masks are formed from "traditional" African masks taking on the look of children’s party masks or masks used in carnival celebrations. The deer look odd wearing their masks and become further recognized. Instead of hiding their appearance, the mask expose their guise, breaking the illusion that the decoy presents. The masks become a trope that appropriates stereotypical ideas of Africa: the primitive and the exotic. The deer wearing the masks create a symbolic version of these ideas. Does a deer become camouflaged by the mask or is it made to stand-in as an “African object” because it wears the mask? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442257057404-VO1IADUQ0VH0CLAS05D1/Authentic_POP_02.jpg Installation - Authentic POP! 2007 In this work I offer my audience a gift in the form of helium filled balloons. The balloons are printed with images of African masks. Once inflated the balloons will become distorted and manipulated, altering the original drawing of the masks. Gallery visitors enter in the space, like tourists in a market place, and leave with something, in this case the distorted balloons. The gesture of gift giving and the sale of cultural artifacts become exposed. The balloon acts as a gift and an artifact but also as a souvenir. The liminal space that these objects are caught between opens up a dialogue on ideas of cultural appropriation. Is this ephemeral object oppressive or productive in a culture’s well-being? Can it be representative of an “authentic” African object, before or after it is inflated? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441915125997-NOKPN1WR5QT1PJBOKL97/Future_Perfect_2.jpg Installation - Future (· · · - - - · · ·) Perfect 2008 Pulsing with dramatic lighting that signals S-O-S in morse code, this towering installation stands thirty-five feet high. Constructed out of shipping containers, it addresses the trauma of migration, displacement and change. The project is Influenced by Moshe Safdie's utopic Habitat housing scheme produced for the 1967 Montreal Exposition and designed with the dream of including all people regardless of class, race or gender. This monumental structure reflects on the failure of this Modernist ideology and the susceptibility of these social projects to capitalist forces. Future (· · · - - - · · ·) Perfect has a local relevance, reflecting on the politics of gentrification and the displacements inherent to the project of urban renewal. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441897069941-1SHF3JNHOV3WGG3917T3/Buli_1.jpg Installation - (buli) 2011 (buli) continues an exploration of the language-built barriers and codes surrounding ethnicity. The pieces employ Dadaist writing styles that play on repetition and nonsensicality, while referencing wall labels and provenance reports of African objects in museum collections. The installation features text animations that pulse in Morse code patterns; a text poem in vinyl on the gallery walls; and an audio work that mixes rants of gibberish with clips of a classical harpsichord. The assembled work creates an overall minimalist aesthetic with complex moments opening up questions about the colonial histories of the removal and displacement of cultural goods into museum collections. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442797567781-RBX19HYWL3SXBEGDBWMK/Du+Bois_29.jpg Installation - The End 2014 The life and legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois has long been a source of inspiration and influence for my artistic practice. As a Kenyan, Du Bois’ goal of seeking a place for Pan-Africanism in the world has a special resonance. This idea was one that he felt would bring solidarity among minorities around the globe, particularly Africans and Asians who sought to define their nations and selves in the wake of colonialism and imperialism. I am interested in Du Bois’ attempts to unify and emancipate African Americans and other minority groups through the social philosophies of Marx and Lenin. Particularly their critiques of capitalism. I am also interested in Du Bois' critique of the ways in which African-Americans were treated in the military during his lifetime and I want to personally explore this issue with regard to the position of queer people in the military systems of today. In The End I investigate his writing and his prose style, particularly the two voiced epigraph used in each chapter of “The Souls of Black Folk”. In “The Crisis” of October 1926 Du Bois stated in his essay “Criteria of Negro Art”, “I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.” In this light, I engage with Du Bois in creating an artwork following in this theoretical framework The poems on the banners were written by me, but are inspired by Du Bois' writing and thinking about social solidarity. They were most inspired by the story "The Comet", a story about the end of the world printed in "Darkwater". The End also included a performance. The book was marched from the Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and in a procession where I held the book in my hands followed by members of the university colour guard and drum squad. We walked and collected people who gathered in the march. The march ended with the book being placed in the exhibition at the University Museum of Contemporary Art. http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/prints-and-drawings daily 0.75 2023-05-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441894421448-24AWOCLY93Z91AL847DC/1.jpg Prints and Drawings - The Working Move 2012 | Live Performance and Photographs (34" X 48") The Working Move is a two-part project consisting of a live performance and photographic installation. The work is inspired by ballet movement vocabularies that relate to labor and endurance. The Working Move is informed by the histories of avant-garde dance and its relationship to visual art. In the work, movements are constructed to depict dancers interacting directly with a collection of plinths - these minimalist structures serving alternately as set, a supportive prop or an unwieldy burden. The live performance is set within the context of a rehearsal where dancers perform while taking instruction from a director regarding how to make the movements. The fourth wall is broken and the dance will stop and restart as the director leads and creates the dance. Through this project I am making further reference to my past research on museum display technique as it relates to "othered culture." The dancers dance and move with the apparatuses that display museum "artifacts" (plinths, hooks, stands). The body becomes a stand-in for the “artifact.” Through this project I explore the body's status as a commodity via the theory of value, specifically looking at the dancer's body as a place of creation that is also taxed when in the process of performing. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1462377779903-TWUYK47MVNPHZ1GUI28D/2016-01-18-AEACfernandezlost033.jpg Prints and Drawings - Move in Place 2015 Move in Place is a series of digital, photographic collages produced in collaboration with the Agnes Etherington Art Gallery, Queens University, Kingston, ON. Images and 3D scans of objects from the Seattle Art Museum African collection and The Justin and Elisabeth Lang Collection of African Art at the Agnes were unfolded, digitally cut, reassembled and juxtaposed with body parts of ballet dancers. The African art objects, which represent the accouterments of West African masquerade, form new hybrids with the gestures of Classical French ballet. Combining these two languages against the backdrop of an ambiguous and archival digital space, Move in Place raises questions about the visual and discursive habits that shape understandings of African art within Western museums. African art images from the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, The Justin and Elisabeth Lang Collection of African Art. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1462218240393-Z2NMI409XG0T8VAE2M3I/2016-01-18-AEACfernandezlost014.jpg Prints and Drawings - Seven Imitate 2016 Seven Imitate is a suite of seven unique siligraph prints produced in collaboration with Master Printer Otis Tamasauskas at Queens University. The series plays with the notions of the imitator in West African masquerade. The imitator serves as a trickster character. Often appearing as a hybrid of human and animal form, the imitator celebrates the notion of hybridity and explores the transitory and adaptable nature of identity. In these prints, Fernandes takes on the role of the imitator, playfully combining images of ballet body parts with images of artefacts from the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Collection of African Art. The recombinations explore the simultaneity of Fernandes' experiences as a classically trained ballet dancer, and as a Kenya immigrant. In this light, the masked figures of the Seven Imitate, become emblems for the queerness of identity as it dances through the complicated intersections of body, place, institution and colonial history. African art images from the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, The Justin and Elisabeth Lang Collection of African Art.   https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494253419703-Q59QE91OM36PIE366OKO/BF_AsOne_01.jpg Prints and Drawings - As One 2015 The Ballet and the Museum are pivots of Western culture that have greatly shaped our image of what counts as culture. When first placed in French museums, African culture was pictured as “other”- primitive, exotic, uncivilized, etc. For this commission, I picked masks from the museum’s collection and envisioned a different process of communication. Using gestures derived from classical French ballet, two dancers address the masks with the formality and etiquette that is not how they have ever been approached before. Movements and bows in the French court were loaded with hierarchical order. Here they are offered to masks that observe these ritualized actions, but cannot dance themselves. Just as European countries like France removed masks and emptied out their meaning, these dancers now dance in a way that is deemed the epitome of elegance, but is also a representation of a power struggle. Two of the masks chosen for this duet are known to have been danced in their own distinctive way. The female mask covered with geometric designs is from another court - that of the Kuba people - and was originally worn as a the face of a female court historian who danced very carefully. The mask with a crest is from the Bobo people, and was performed as a vigorous whirlwind to portray a nature spirit with explosive energy. Video performance by Ezra Thomson and Sarah Pasch of the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Videography by Aaron Bourget. Editing by Kevin Dejewski. Sound by John Luther. Commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum.     https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494267405437-H1FWWCSF1Q3X19WUFN51/Insides_Installed_web.jpg Prints and Drawings - Insiders 2017 Commissioned by the University of Buffalo Art Galleries and responding to African masks from the Cravens World Collection, Insiders positions viewers behind the mask. Reversing the expected direction of museological display, these images confront the viewer with the possibility and perspective of wearing, instead of viewing, the masks. In reversing this viewer-other dynamic, Fernandes also reveals unexpected aspects of the collection — accession numbers, archivist markings, and residues of the masks' various provenances all call into question the authenticity of the objects, exposing them as subjects of museological processes. In this way, by flipping over the objects and photographing them from behind, Fernandes conceals the masks' identities, putting the processes of the museum on display in their place, and inverting the systems of power so often unquestioned in western museums and galleries. Image courtesy of the University of Buffalo Art Galleries Photographer, Studio Avli https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1494260428995-XZPE9NDP2MV88IRY5OU4/Minor_Calls_Edited.jpg Prints and Drawings - Minor Calls 2017 Minor Calls addresses the politics of calls for participation in dance. In dance, and particularly in ballet, calls for dancers' bodies are often highly specific in outlining the desired shape, musculature, height, race and characteristics of dancers bodies. Drawing on calls from Fernandes' own past performance works, Minor Calls queers the language and specificity of the dance call, opening up new space for dancers to self-identify. Using language such as "strong, or otherwise authoritative" Fernandes' Minor Calls are interpretative rather than specific, soliciting participation from any body or identity who encounters them. This queering of language also leaves open the possibility that these calls may be for bodies for other, queerer purposes. Open to the possibility that these may be calls for encounters, or for sexual or romantic partners instead of performance participants, the calls also suggest a parallel between the ways calls in dance relate to the more publicly known calls we make each others bodies in personals or on dating and social media platforms. Asking each reader to "inquire within (themselves)" each poster reiterates the importance of the individual's internal deliberations of selfhood over the external ascription of identity based on characteristics. Design concept by Brendan Fernandes in collaboration with Joseph Cuillier.   https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442797363092-YOZBI8G4NLQB2QMIEHD2/elui_texture_scratchyink019.jpg Prints and Drawings - Seeing I 2014 Examining “love” through the “Mirror Stage” in Jacques Lancan's writings. Seeing I's dialogue looks at queering through androgyny and the physical similarities between pachyderms. The work features a two-channel video-projection, using 35mm film footage of the taxidermist specimens at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, as well as animations of male elephants battling each other. A complimentary project accompanies this work, including a series of woodcut prints and serigraphs that play with elephant-imagery blurred into Rorschach; as well as a neon and a mirror installation. http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/new-media daily 0.75 2023-05-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1446494492660-0LVNUJVDOZBG3234AKAC/Print_06.jpg New Media - Still Move 2014 | Performance Video Still Move showcases dancers working with a rubber ball against a wall, pushing in and against it to release muscles tension. The body and the space where the movement is being made are not fully understood, at times becoming an organic landscape. The nude rubber ball oscillates between revealing itself and becoming part of the body. At other times the orb appears to be a foreign object pushing against the body and creating a visual tension. The movement is playful and perverse; somewhere between a state of pain and pleasure. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1462559530484-MA0WWSDN1H6QDMJW4QWA/Authority_Inside_03.jpg New Media - Authority Inside 2016 The Authority Inside is a choreographed video-performance, performed by Brendan Fernandes and ballet dancer, Aria Lara Wilton for the archival vault of the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Collection of African Art at the Agnes Etherington Art Gallery, Queens University, ON. The choreography is recorded entirely through the movement of cameras held by the dancers (Fernandes and Wilton ) as they perform in the archival space. Although this removes the visible presence of the performers, their bodies and performance is implied through the staccato camera motion of the ballet dancer on point, and in the slow panning of the shelves as Fernandes moves the vault's doors. This ambiguous relationship between the body and the archive suggests the equally complex relationship between the African art objects stored in the vault and the African bodies which once danced with them. In this way, Fernandes' disembodied animation of the archive, stands in poignant contrast with the motionlessness of the objects which rest within it. Taking its camera close-up and handheld cues from horror films as much as from conceptual artists, Dan Graham and Yvonne Reiner, the Authority Inside interrogates the archive, searching for and questioning the colonial histories which brought these objects into its possession. Performers, Brendan Fernandes and Aria Lara Wilton. Director of Photography, Ryan Randall. Editor, Erin Martell. Sound Designer and Composition, Matthew Geldof.   https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1600799968291-YQWLY701IMBI5DDYF3JK/image-asset.jpeg New Media - Free Fall, for Camera 2019 Free Fall, for Camera is a large-scale, multimedia dance and video installation. Initiated by a Canada Council for the Arts, Special Projects, Canada 150 Grant, Free Fall, for Camera explores the falling body as a metaphor for queer politic. CREDITS A film by Brendan Fernandes. Producers — Sandy Pearl and Clyde Wagner. Choreography in collaboration with — Hit & Run Dance Productions Inc. Dancers: Alexandria Benjamin Landsberg Caryn Chappell Christopher Valentini Connor Mitton Elizabeth Gagnon Halley Brentt Kaitlin Torrance Logan Kinney Lonii Garnons-Williams Natayu Mildenberger Nicole Rose Bond Nyda Kwasowsky Roney Lewis Shawn Louis Sol Silvestri Editor — Michael Pierro Sound — Alex Inglizian Director Photography — Daniel Grant https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1540752574890-OMSQ1TWDEVA3RC39ARBL/LostInDisplay_01.jpg New Media - Lost in Display 2018 Lost in Display is a virtual reality experience in which a West African masquerader and a team of ballet dancers reanimate and return movement to African masks in the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. In this work, Fernandes uses the Museum’s collection as a starting point to reveal the colonial history of African masks and calls into question the notion of authenticity. Fernandes’ work articulates the absence of context in museum settings that obscures our understanding of the traditional use of masks. Taking inspiration from the original purpose of the masks, the artist’s installation gives them new life as they are worn and set in motion. Drawing on African and contemporary dance, as well as virtual reality, Lost in Display invites us to think about the impact of colonization. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441914907544-Y25402JISIYMD0XC9D5K/Foe_6.JPG New Media - Foe 2008 Foe represents video footage of me receiving lessons from an acting coach hired to teach me the "accents" of my cultural backgrounds. I am not interested in the authenticity of these accents but in the idea of being taught to speak in these voices. The text that I have learned is taken from a book with the same titled as my piece. This book, a sequel to "Robinson Crusoe" was written by J. M. Coetzee. In this book, Friday (the savage) has been mutilated; his tongue has been removed and he cannot speak. For this work I have memorized the specific passage where Crusoe explains this to another. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441913520836-KSSZMPUC5QUEHX36PIZT/Love_Kill_4.jpg New Media - Love Kill 2009 This series of short animations depicts scenes of “the kill”, the act of one animal killing another for the purpose of survival. The dynamics of struggle and vulnerability become relevant in this power relationship. The works use subtle animated gestures juxtaposed with stillness to create a subtle and evocative picture. The soundtrack of each work features a love song, sung in a pathetic and emotional voice, that seemingly complicates this already bizarre love triangle. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1441893704672-HG82HL9ARRQ1AG6JHT3A/2.jpg New Media - They 2013 They is a three-channel video installation produced in response to a Fire Island Artist Residency attended in 2012. With its three inward facing video-projects and accompanying audio of three disembodied voices, They produces an atmospheric space which references and contemplates the queer practice of “cruising”: to look and to be looked at in search of sex. Or, as voices of They suggest: to hunt and to be hunted. Making a complicated equation between sex, death, and endangerment They offers an immersive reflection on the dynamics and navigation of contemporary queer relationality. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1442842871687-35P4M8XR7SOVSCY2TWWZ/Anomalia_07.jpg New Media - Anomalia 2007 Anomalia is a series of digital drawings rendered through Adobe illustrator that depict creatures that are half animal and half African artefact. The bizarre beasts create hybrid creatures that take on the appearance of being from an unknown place because we do not know them. They give of the sense of having survived from a long time ago or that they have come from a futuristic planet. They live in an oscillating space, being one thing and then another. They become representative of the mythical, the exotic and primitive. They ask the questions, what are these animals and where have they come from? http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/new-page daily 0.75 2025-10-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1505668114480-0RUUJPEYBG51MYOB5YZS/mmg_Logo_black%2Bwhite.jpg Artist Statement Brendan is currently represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago. http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/new-page-1 daily 0.75 2025-10-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221509115-WINPO1PR2NWLF0TTOOPI/WEB_Collage_4.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221489252-N098YWEOEJZ525B9ROV8/WEB_Art_In_General.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221506958-LYKD025JV9PSNBIY50O1/WEB_Lost_Bodies.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221524013-IYC1KB9WYP9HHXYJ8WFX/WEB_Still_Move.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221555880-31P6JS405XHQ510H4NEO/WEB_Until_We_Fearless.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221551332-TG6D89MTEJY6ZZF86FMV/WEB_Until_We_Fearless_02.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493221533448-FJC7DOR4BN41S8FW92HW/WEB_Two_New.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1493219600249-9O9F9U76CRFA3XUY1A9T/Web_Collage.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1505668871156-GA5XTHVU0FPFE84FSKM5/mmg_Logo_black%2Bwhite.jpg Publications http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/bio daily 0.75 2025-11-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1588686693725-ZLVIBSH11J8N79AGV8TY/BrendanFernandes_321.jpg Bio Photographer, Kevin Penczak. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1505668353214-66PYOL5O92EFM9RS4KUD/mmg_Logo_black%2Bwhite.jpg Bio http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/pagecv-1 daily 0.75 2025-10-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1505668545594-YG1WDLUVDK89MNATA9EM/mmg_Logo_black%2Bwhite.jpg CV http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/news daily 0.75 2019-04-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55b8f3a9e4b04b1644c24d9e/1551202848514-R2GQGRFMICJPCSNSVGLG/WhitneyPromo2_Brendan.jpg NEWS http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/within-reach-susan-inglett daily 0.75 2023-11-21