Sep 19, 2015 to Jan 10, 2016
Brendan Fernandes: In Position
About the Exhibition
A ballet dancer steps onto an empty stage and performs an arabesque. With one leg firmly on the ground, she lifts the other behind her straight into the air; with arms extended, she arches her torso into a back bend. She takes two steps forward and repeats this series of movements as another dancer arrives behind her. They continue advancing until thirty-two of them come together in a single file, winding gracefully back and forth across the stage. The performers are precise and synchronized, their elegance amplified through the repetition of their movements. This group of dancers, or corps de ballet, is working as one to perform “The Kingdom of the Shades,” a famous scene from La Bayadère, choreographed by Marius Petipa in 1877. The ballet is set in India and relates the tragic story of Nikiya, a temple dancer, and her lover, the warrior Solor.
This scene is the impetus for Brendan Fernandes’ exploration of the arabesque, as both a dance step and as an element of Islamic design. This central motif is articulated in various ways throughout the exhibition space and brings forth issues of power, balance, labour and translation. Stylized cutouts of dancers performing the arabesque anchor the installation and speak of the strength and endurance needed to make this position look effortless. In other works, the notations used by choreographers to convey movement and body placement are transformed into individual configurations and larger decorative patterns that play on their Islamic origins. These works unite the artist’s research into classical dance with questions of ethnicity and migration within the charged framework of an Orientalist ballet.
Having studied ballet and modern dance techniques, but forced to quit the discipline due to injury, Brendan Fernandes seeks to explore the ways in which dance has affected and shaped his sense of self. Fernandes sees the body as a kind of object, endowed with cultural meaning, viewed by others and laboured on by ourselves. Through movement, he aims to recover the language of dance embodied within his own identity. His exploration of physicality, stillness and gendered stereotypes in dance allows him the opportunity to challenge tradition through the lens of contemporary artistic expression. Over the past few years, this exploration has resulted in a multi-disciplinary group of works that span performance, sculpture, photography and dance.
About the Artist
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, The National Gallery of Canada and Mass MoCA. Fernandes has been awarded many highly regarded residencies around the world, including Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship in 2014. He was a finalist for the Sobey Art Award Canada’s pre-eminent award for contemporary art in 2010, and was on the longlist for the 2013 and 2015 prize. In 2016, he will be artist in residence at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL in the Department of Dance Studies.
