Brendan Fernandes

For the last five years, New York and Toronto-based artist Brendan Fernandes has explored how stillness and static movement can be powerful tools of resistance. Informed by his training in ballet and modern dance, Fernandes’ practice routinely explores the role of the body within social and political spaces, questioning and breaking down the notion of hegemony. For Fernandes, choreography serves as a remarkable tool for decoding and unpacking this complex conversation. Inspired by ballet movement vocabularies relating to labour and endurance, the work demonstrates the artist’s keen interest in responding to histories of avant-garde dance and its relationship to visual art. His work takes on numerous forms, building on an effort to negotiate a complex sense of both individual and cultural identities within performative acts.

This is the first monograph focusing on Fernandes’ use of language and dance as a means to explore power, endurance and resistance. This book features texts by Hendrik Folkerts, curator of Documenta 14 and Dittmer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Institute of Chicago, and Jess Wilcox, director of exhibitions at the Socrates Sculpture Park, as well as contributions from curators Shaun Dacey, Anik Glaude, Robin Metcalfe, Crystal Mowry and Stuart Reid.