Still Move

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.

Featuring texts by Hendrik Folkerts, curator of documenta 14 and Jess Wilcox, Programs Coordinator of the Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and with contributions from curators Shaun Dacey, Anik Glaude, Robin Metcalfe, Crystal Mowry, and Stuart Reid, this monograph focuses on Fernandes' use of language and dance as a means to explore power, endurance and resistance.

Brendan Fernandes is a Canadian artist of Kenyan and Indian descent. He completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art (2007) and earned his MFA (2005) from The University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2002) from York University in Canada. He has exhibited internationally and nationally including exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Art and Design New York, Art in General, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, The National Gallery of Canada, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Mass MoCA, The Andy Warhol Museum, the Art Gallery of York University, Deutsche Guggenheim, The Bergen Kunsthall, Manif d’Art: The Quebec City Biennial, The Third Guangzhou Triennial and the Western New York Biennial through The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Fernandes has participated in numerous residency programs including The Canada Council for the Arts International Residency in Trinidad and Tobago (2006), The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Work Space (2008) and Swing Space (2009) programs, and invitations to the Gyeonggi Creation Center at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea (2009) and ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2011). He was a finalist for the Sobey Art Award Canada’s pre-eminent award for contemporary art. (2010), and was on the longlist for the 2013 prize. He recently debut a new performance at the Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY and participated in Stage It! (Part 3) - SCRIPTED at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Upcoming shows are scheduled for the Brooklyn Museum and Seattle Art Museum. He is a 2014 recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship.