An Anatomy of Apocalyptic Care; Finissage
February 17, 2023, 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Event Description
The FOFA Gallery is happy to invite you to the finissage of the annual Undergraduate Student Exhibition, An Anatomy of Apocalyptic Care! Join us for a series of contemporary dance performances and the catalogue launch. This event will be a fantastic opportunity to acquire a copy of the publication (for 10$ cash only) and to visit the exhibition one last time!
Live dance performances will start at 5:30 pm featuring works by Helen-Olivia (liv) Brake, Kaya Sinclair-Thomas, Rafaëla-Salomé (Rafa)Tremblay-van Zuiden, and Pamela Feghali and Irene Ruiz. The Gallery will host the finissage until 7:00 pm; snacks and refreshments will be available.
RSVP here:
https://my.weezevent.com/use-2023-finissage-catalogue...
Find more information about the exhibition HERE
Dance Performances
Title: them
Featuring: Helen-Olivia (liv) Brake, Kaya Sinclair-Thomas, Rafaëla-Salomé (Rafa)Tremblay-van Zuiden
How can the multiplicity of queer joy come together? them explores what we leave behind to arrive and focuses on the act of "getting ready" as a collective care practice. In this work, we perform getting ready by trying on each other’s ways of sensing while working with clothes as partners and frames. We center this practice in its queerness as an expression of joy, resistance, knowledge, and fantasy. Carving a pathway through the gallery we become a living sculpture, perpetually shedding and redressing in layers of vibrantly coloured clothes. We come into proximity with the artworks—- facilitating an encounter and exchange— that brings aliveness to the space. We stay in transition— unbuttoning, re-zipping, tying—and in doing so, help each other step into different genders and ways of being. We embrace the absurdity. We invite the audience into the performance by encouraging their interaction with the clothing pieces we leave behind to receive and share tactile information and histories. We hope to create space for them to explore tenderness and co-sensing with us as they share in the space’s care network. This work celebrates the multiplicity of queer joy and is a true love letter to the labour of queer community care.
__________ **___________
Title: Red Lips
Featuring: Pamela Feghali and Irene Ruiz
Red Lips is inspired by Belén Catalán’s photograph series Te Odiamos Patriarcado. Set in the Sainte-Catherine Vitrine and the York vitrines, this performance seeks to expose the conflict and duality that reside within our female bodies i.e tenderness versus violence, control versus vulnerability, private versus public appearances, etc. We understand that our bodies carry unique histories, yet we wish to find unity in our differences, a powerful thread recognized in Catalán’s work. For this reason, we mirror and contrast each other’s movements as well as cycle through various changes in body and emotional states. At any moment, we may reverse roles. The decisions made during this performance are live and in continuous relationship with the environment. This allows us to be present with our audience, as we want them to feel like their experience is affected by their level of engagement. The theme of duality is emphasized in the space since the vitrine acts as a glass barrier that separates the outside world from the inside one–yet, both peer into the other. We want audiences to stop and look inside the vitrine, to engage with us and the artwork, and to notice that their gaze, in part, shapes women and their bodies.
About the Dancers
Pamela Feghali is a choreographer, theatre director, and performer based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She began her training in theatre, where she completed an MFA in Directing from the University of Ottawa. In 2020, Feghali’s passion for movement and creation led her to join the Contemporary Dance program at Concordia University. Feghali is interested in delving into the pleasures and pains that we commonly share as humans. She is curious to explore idiosyncrasies shaping individual bodies and the intergenerational memories and traumas that are repressed or manifested, whether consciously or unconsciously. In the last ten years, Feghali has produced challenging interdisciplinary performances and worked alongside a wide-range of artists at companies such as the National Arts Centre, the Great Canadian Theatre Company, Soulpepper Theatre, etc.
Helen-Olivia (liv) is an interdisciplinary queer artist with a special love for movement. They are based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal), the unceded territory of the Kanien'kéha:ka Nation. Their movement practice is heavily influenced by drag and queer art-forms that emerge from community rituals. They trained in modern dance, composition, and improvisation at the Schoolof Toronto Dance Theatre and now study Contemporary Dance at Concordia University. liv is interested in forms of interdependent care and radical softness. Their practice opens up space for community to explore shifting and entangled relations, placing value on our individual and shared joys, stories, and collective embodiments. Thier practice foregrounds play and pleasure as a tool to imagine and create new futurities. Their inspirations include interdisciplinary artists Caro Novellaand Okwui Okpokwasili, whose works nurture collective healing, new bodily exchanges, and embodied stories as holders of history and future. liv believes art-making and sharing can generate empathy, where we collaborate to create futures we can step into together.
Based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Irene Ruiz Muniente is a Spanish dancer and choreographer who is trained in Contemporary dance, Spanish dance and Flamenco. After graduating from the Dance Conservatory A. Ruiz Soler of Seville, she joined the Contemporary Dance program at Concordia University. Anchored in exploration, her work aims to investigate interdisciplinary languages through the use of contemporary dance vocabularies. Reflecting on poetic, rhythmic, and aesthetic choreographic dimensions plays a very active role in her creative practice. Ruiz is currently immersed in the development of her choreographic language, submerging herself in various creative processes with numerous artists and collaborators. Most recently, she has performed at Mainline Theatre, Festival Quartiers Danses, and Festival l’Art en soi.
Rafa is a queer contemporary dance performer and choreographer from Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). Rafa studied at the Verdun Circus School where they specialized in juggling and aerial hoop. They studied biology at the University of Montréal/Cape Breton University, and finally at Concordia in the contemporary dance program. Rafa taught and performed circus extensively before diving head-first into dance. They often work with site-specific choreographies and use costume design as a starting point. They are part of the duo performance @g_lamour_magiqueas as a co-choreographer and costume designers.
Kaya Sinclair-Thomas, is a queer multidisciplinary artist curently based Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). Working as a choreographer and dancer, they have trained in a handful of dance styles including Graham, Ballet, Jazz, Tap and Improvisation. They also have a background in musical theater and singing. Kaya trained at the Randolph Centre for performing arts, and Rosedale Heights school of the arts with the school's dance company. Their most recent studies have been at Concordia University in the Contemporary Dance program. In their choreography practice they often work with theatrical expression and absurdity, with strong emotional motifs. As a dancer, they embody movement with a powerful physicality.
About the Exhibition Catalogue
This publication is a companion to the annual Undergraduate Student Exhibition (USE), and contains three essays that are in dialogues with a selection of artworks. These texts become pathways to broaden the conversation initiated by the curatorial premise and the artists' statements.
Essays were written by: Aaliyah Crawford,María Andreína Escalona De Abreu, BeNjamyn Upshaw-Ruffner.
Catalogue designers and visual branding by: Karima Afghoul, Ethan Irwin, Julia Roberts, Sasha Amelie Rouzier, Gabrielle Von
