2020 PERFORMANCE
As part of the 2020 Feminist Art Fest, NARRATIVE HEALING, FAC is pleased to present the following performance artists. A number of the performance artists at 2020’s festival developed their work during a residency with FAC, held in spring on Toronto Island, Artscape Gibraltar Point — read more about the residency here.
Jody Chan
ROOM 544
Jody will read from their long poem all the futures we deserve.
all the futures we deserve is a piece about climate change, children, and care: the choices we make that drive us towards different futures, and the ways in which choice itself is limited by how others read our bodies. how am I free that my ancestors were not? what futures will my descendants dream of? what does it mean to make a life in the face of immense and unknowable loss, while knowing you could spend every second fighting and not see a win for generations?
Jody Chan is a writer, drummer, and organizer based in Toronto. They are the poetry editor for Hematopoeisis and the author of haunt (Damaged Goods Press, 2018) and sick, winner of the 2018 St. Lawrence Book Award. Their work has been published in Third Coast, BOAAT, Yes Poetry, Nat. Brut, The Shade Journal, and elsewhere. They have received fellowships from VONA and Tin House, and they are an apprentice with Raging Asian Women Taiko Drummers.
Talkback moderated by Andrea Thompson
Vanessa Godden
ROOM 264
Vanessa will perform from her series Embodying Entanglement.
Embodying Entanglement is a selection of artworks from Godden’s practice-based research project investigating how material engagements with the body can examine personal histories of sexual assault and racism. This body of work reframes depictions of trauma in art from the re-performance of traumatic events to metaphorical evocations of its ongoing experiential impact.
My mouth masticates eggshells and pulverises pomegranates and my body drags itself through flour, curry, and chili powder. These cyclical and processual rituals piece together a narrative of her body being put back together after having been fragmented through racism and rape. In this selection of artworks from her PhD project, she finds agency in her body and her voice, inviting others to effectively engage with this agency.
Vanessa Godden is a PhD candidate at the Victorian College of the Arts and recipient of the Melbourne International Research Scholarship. She received her BFA from the University of Houston (2012) and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2014). Her artistic practice uses performative gestures to explore how personal histories of sexual assault, her cultural heritage, and the body in relation to geographic space can be conveyed through material engagements with the body.
Talkback moderated by Kate Welsh
Michaela Bridgemohan
ROOM 460
Michaela will perform from her piece Weeping Gideon Child.
Weeping Gideon Child plays as a second part to her previous performance piece Fresh and Clean (2018) that originated through the FAC Art Residency in 2018. Weeping Gideon Child will revisit themes such as self reclamation, spiritual transformations and abjection.
Michaela Bridgemohan is a Canadian visual artist of Australian and Jamaican descent. She is currently residing in Mohkinstsis, also known as Calgary Alberta and has received her Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction from the Alberta College of Art + Design 2017. Michaela is inspired by Caribbean folklore: Horror, Transatlantic slave trade, feminism, and personal narratives associated with the Albertan experience. Her artistic practice explores female biracial identity through a process of developing personal mythology depicted by feminine phantoms and ambiguous entities that focus on the intimate nature of agency and otherness. Through these themes she hopes to challenge hegemonic ideologies that are linked to preserving racial dichotomy and preventing cultural intersectionality.
Talkback moderated by Maria-Belen Ordonez
Anna Malla
ROOM 441
Drawing on images, sounds, and somatic experiences of that which feels most politically urgent in this moment in "Canada," Anna co-creates an atmosphere and an experience with textile, sound, objects, her body, and audience.
Annapurna Malla is a community organizer, educator, musician, dance-theatre artist and performer of mixed Kashmiri and English ancestry. She has performed during Pride Toronto, at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Artscape Gibraltar Point in Toronto, and internationally in Mexico, the USA, and Switzerland. Anna is a founding member of The Switch Project, a collective of interdisciplinary Queer, Trans & Two Spirit performers co-creating new methodologies and socially engaged performance materials for the public sphere.
Talkback moderated by Alla Myzelev
Jamilah Malika Abu-Bakare
ROOM 240
Dubois asked how does it feel to be a problem? black femmes face this conundrum plus the onus of mammy mule comfort sidekick solution. when a little black girl plays with dolls who resemble her, she learns to care for bodies like hers, she mirrors, mothers and therein self soothes. this performative reading of original texts by jamilah malika abu-bakare interpolates a topsy turvy doll the writer sew by hand during her FAC residency. both writer and artist, both black girl and grown, the intimate storytelling is more for her self and her doll than any audience.
Jamilah Malika works words (whether published, performed or projected, sometimes sound or still) into a balm — by us for us (black womxn) — and finds solace in many mediums. former lead vocalist of feminist, mixed media electro dub hop band (Toronto Independent Music Awards - Nominee ‘Best Electronic’ 2012.) Recently completed an MFA (2019) in Writing at SAIC (Chicago) exploring text off-page through objects, sound and digital video projection. her interactive sound installation 'listen to black womxn' was on view at the Art Gallery of Guelph until January 2019. she asks you to “pay” attention to the margins by reflecting race, gender and belonging back at you. I am a cis hetero able-bodied immigrant of mixed origins (nigerian and indo-trinidadian.) My name is Muslim but I was raised in a hindu temple. I speak french and spanish. Nobody sees me coming.
Talkback moderated by Zviko Mhakayakora
Shohana Sharmin
ROOM 230
Shohana will perform from her first solo show Come Here Often? This show was developed and presented as part of the 2019 Buddies in Bad Times Emerging Creators Unit program at Toronto Queer Pride. It’s her most vulnerable work to date – exploring the intersections of being bicultural and queer and closeted and Muslim and a survivor of sexual abuse, all while looking for love at a speed-dating night. In this piece, Shohana plays with the nuances of using humor as a tool to draw an audience in and to underline the dramatic impact of very difficult topics.
Shohana Sharmin is a Bangladeshi-Canadian emerging writer and performer. Born and raised in Bangladesh, Shohana is a proud Muslim queer woman of colour who is fluent in three languages: Bengali, Hindi, and English. Shohana is a member of the 2019 Emerging Creators Unit in Buddies in Bad Times theatre under the mentorship of Catherine Hernandez (b current theatre). In June 2019, Shohana presented her first solo show "Come Here Often?" (directed by Akosua Amo-Adem) as part of Queer Pride at Buddies in Bad Times theatre. In March 2019, she was selected for the Solo Character Sketch Showcase for Just for Laughs as part of the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival. Shohana's short stories have been selected for publication with The Vault. She is a current Featured Player at the Bad Dog Comedy Theatre, and an alumna of the Second City’s Improv and Longform Conservatories.
Talkback moderated by Jennifer McKinley.
James Knott
ROOM 490
James will perform their piece Plenty of Fish.
Plenty of Fish explores the socio-sexual displacement of the queer femme body through allegorical retellings of their own experience. In traversing these fantasies and experiences they hope to dissect the dichotomous relationship between the allure of desire, and paranoia of shame, that is projected onto the queer femme body by admirers, detractors, and internally by ourselves. Finding the intersections between identifying as “The Girl From Ipanema” and Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman”.
James Knott is an emerging, Toronto-based artist, having received a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Integrated Media from OCAD University. Their performance based practice combines theatre, video, and audio art to create immersive experiences for the viewer. Explored themes include paradoxical and queer identity, collectivism, inner dialogue, anxiety and mental illness, and camp theatrics. A recent alumni of The Roundtable Residency, they’ve exhibited/performed at Xpace Cultural Centre, OCAD’s Festival of the Body, Feminist Art Conference, The Artist Project Contemporary Art Fair, the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, and the AGO’s First Thursdays.
Talkback moderated by Shalon W-H.
Annina Ruest
ROOM 556
Annina will perform her piece Bad Mother / Good Mother – an audiovisual performance involving a projection, a modified electronic breast pump as a sound generator, and a sound-reactive LED pumping costume. The project has four songs that critically explore technologies directed specifically at women like breast pumps and fertility extending treatments such as egg-freezing (social freezing). Depending on the song, the breast pump is either a solo instrument or part of an arrangement. The idea is to use workplace lactation as a departure point to uncover a web of societal politics and preconceived perceptions (pun intended) of ideal and non-ideal motherhood.
Annina Rüst produces electronic objects and software art. She creates technologies that are artistically and socially motivated. Her projects happen at the intersection of activism, algorithm, data, electricity, humor, politics, and pop culture. Her work has been reviewed in such publications as Wired and the New York Times Magazine. The Huffington Post called her recent robotics work a "Badass Feminist Robot".
Talkback moderated by BH Yael.
Mahlikah Awe:ri
ROOM 668
In the future our strength, our solace, our survival, and sustenance will femifest as memory~magic~medicine imbued with the stories of tobacco~cedar~sage & sweetgrass as it always was & as it will always be.
Mahlikah will perform a 40 min solo performance titled Tionnhéhkwen Tionnká:non Our Sustenance Our Medicine, that utilizes live and recorded music, spoken word, song, movement and theatre to centre the rematriation of the matriarch through our medicine carrying gifts in a time of land based colonial violence which is impacting the lives and well being of Indigenous womxn and 2spirit-trans folx at rates higher than what was experienced when the Indian Act was first introduced in 1876. The link between environmental sustainability and healing intergenerational trauma in Indigenous communities is undeniable.
Mahlikah Awe:ri, The Woman Who Stands and Walks In The Light is Wolf Clan, Haudenosaunee Kanien'kehà:ka & Mi’kmaw First Nations with Black and Irish Ancestral Roots. Awe:ri is a TAF Community Arts and KM Hunter Award Finalist, and the current Director of Programming for Neighbourhood Impact at the Centre Of Learning & Development in Regent Park, Founding Member of Red Slam an Indigenous Art 4 Social Change Movement and a Prologue to the Performing Arts Touring Artist. Published in 11 literary publications, Awe:ri was named the 2019-2020 Canadian Poet Of Honour. A Nationally recognized Cultural Arts Leader, Eco-Influencer, Arts Educator, Poet, Speaker, and Performance Artist; Mahlikah shifts paradigms through Indigenized ways of knowing and being. Awe:ri’s truth, co-creates resilience; while reimagining what it means to be “In-Relation”, to the Land and to each other.
Talkback moderated by Julius Manapul.