Brendan Fernandes: Lost Bodies

Opening reception: Friday November 11, 6:30 – 8pm
Artist and curator will be present

Lost Bodies brings a world-renowned Canadian artist’s work into dialogue with two of the country’s most distinctive collections of African art: The Justin and Elisabeth Lang Collection of African Art at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario and the collection of the Textile Museum of Canada. Brendan Fernandes offers multiple points of connection that draw upon traditional African textiles, costume and masks, gestures of Western ballet, and elegant, poetic dance choreographies within the museum vault, filmed in the archive of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre.

With this fresh approach to re-presenting African artifacts in formal museum displays, Fernandes reconsiders museum conventions in a set of new video, print and sculptural interventions. The artist’s montage of Western classical dance and the collected object is concentrated around precise body language that raises questions about visual and discursive practices that shape understandings of African art within public collections.

Brendan Fernandes: Lost Bodies is accompanied by a colour-illustrated book published by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre that will be available in the Museum Shop.

This project is made possible by The Justin and Elisabeth Lang Foundation Fund and George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University. The exhibition is curated by Sunny Kerr, and has been developed in partnership with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre.

Type: Exhibition

Date: Nov 9, 2016 - Mar 19, 2017

Curated by: Sunny Kerr, Curator of Contemporary Art and Agnes Etheringon Art Centre

About the Artist:

Brendan Fernandes is a Canadian artist of Kenyan and Indian descent, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. He has exhibited internationally and nationally including exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Art and Design New York, National Gallery of Canada, Art in General, MASS MoCA, Andy Warhol Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Sculpture Center, Deutsche Guggenheim and Stedelijk Museum. 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), Swing Space (2009) and Process Space (2014) programs. 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. He was a finalist for the Sobey Art Award (2010), and was on the longlist in 2013 and 2015. He was a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship in 2014. In 2016 he will be artist in residence at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL in the Department of dance Studies.

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