October 22–December 12, 2015
Artist talk and opening: Wednesday, October 21, 7–10pm
SCA seminar: Friday & Saturdays, October 9–31, noon–5pm
Exhibition tour: Saturday, October 31, 1pm
with Amy Kazymerchyk, Lili Reynaud-Dewar and SCA students
School for the Contemporary Arts and Audain Gallery
Simon Fraser University
149 W. Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC Canada
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 12–5pm
www.sfu.ca/sca
www.sfugalleries.ca
Simon Fraser University’s School for Contemporary Arts and the Audain Gallery and are pleased to welcome Lili Reynaud-Dewar as the 2015 Audain Visual Artist-in-Residence. The residency coincides with an exhibition of Reynaud-Dewar’s work My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class) in the Audain Gallery.
It could be said that French artist Lili Reynaud-Dewar is, rather than produces, a body of work. She cultivates autobiography and authorship symbiotically, through translating and transforming visual and linguistic representations of personal and collective identity. In dancing, reading, writing, dressing up, staging, documenting and teaching her own and others’ symbols, she alternates between adapting and relinquishing self and form. Her body and work perform unsettlement as a strategy of criticism, resistance and emancipation.
My Epidemic is an iteration of artworks, texts, seminars and exhibitions in which she quotes and edits numerous authors and texts influenced by AIDS and its impact on bodies and culture. This body of work performs virality, circulating between epidemiology, collective action, artistic production and identity formation.
In both the exhibition and SCA seminar hosted in the gallery, Reynaud-Dewar will read the transmission of history between Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard’s seminar “Beyond Death: Viral Discontents and Contemporary Notions about AIDS,” held during the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, and her artwork My Epidemic (small modest bad blood opera), produced for “All the World’s Futures,” held during the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.
Lili Reynaud-Dewar (b. 1975) is a French artist who lives and works in Grenoble. She has recently presented solo exhibitions at the New Museum, New York; Index, Stockholm; Outpost, Norwich, England; and Kunsthalle Basel, and participated in the 12th Lyon Biennial, the 2012 La Triennale, and the 5th Berlin Biennial. Since 2010, she has held a professorship at Haute école d’art et design in Geneva.
Reynaud-Dewar’s residency and exhibition is additionally supported by the Institut français and the Consulat Général de France à Vancouver.
Audain Visual Artist-in-Residence
This program brings artists and practitioners to Vancouver who have contributed significantly to the field of contemporary art and whose work resonates with local and international visual art discourses. The visiting artists interact with the students and faculty of the School for the Contemporary Arts as well as the broader visual arts and cultural communities and the community at large. In keeping with the experimental nature of the School for the Contemporary Arts, the terms of engagement are open and change from artist to artist. The cornerstone of the residency is the sharing of artistic research. The program is generously funded by the Audain Foundation Endowment Fund. Previous Audain Visual Artists-in-Residence include Judith Barry, Andreas Bunte, Ricardo Basbaum, Claire Fontaine, Duane Linklater, Antoni Muntadas and Hito Steyerl.
About Audain Gallery
Audain Gallery, part of SFU Galleries, opened in 2010. The gallery is located in downtown Vancouver, along with SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts. The gallery advances the aesthetic and discursive production and presentation of contemporary art through a responsive program of exhibitions that support engaged pedagogy. Focusing on the ways in which contemporary art is socially formed and formative, the gallery initiates local, national and international projects.
* Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic, 2015. Performance with Naim Bityqy, Etienne Chosson, Maud Constantin, Diego de Atucha, Galaxia, Tayb Kendouci, Sarah Margnetti, Lea Meier, Coline Mir, Andrea Nucamendi, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Sarah Sandler. Texts by Gregg Bordowitz, Douglas Crimp, Tim Dean, Samuel R. Delany, Guillaume Dustan, Gran Fury, Didier Lestrade, Paul Morris, Scott O’ Hara at 56th Venice Biennial, Biblioteca dei Giardini. Banners, posters, bean bags.
