Brendan Fernandes: Inaction

Performances: October 2, 5pm / October 15, 5pm / October 26, 10pm / October 28, 12:15pm / November 2, 2pm / November 8, 5pm / December 5, 5pm

Brendan Fernandes’ Inaction investigates the political and social implications of the queering of space. The installation, developed with architecture and design collaborative Norman Kelley, is a series of sculptures built to interact with dancers’ bodies. As the dancers respond to the installation with the agency to rearrange the sculptures and space, the work produces a practice, a rehearsal, for how queer and otherwise marginalized communities might take this agency of movement and construction back into the outside world.

Working with both professional dancers and dancers from Wesleyan’s student body, costumed by Rad Hourani, Fernandes has choreographed a vocabulary of movements unique to the exhibition space. The site will be activated in six performances throughout the run of the exhibition, and will also host a dance party and public talks. Inaction also marks the first United States presentation of Free Fall: For Camera, a single-channel video examining the choreography of falling, the accidental fall on stage, the fall that alters the body, or the last fall that a body takes. Engaging the body as a site of metaphor, the cohesive style and movement of falling and standing back up operates as an action of resistance and perseverance. Free Fall: For Camera developed from a project called Free Fall 49, which honours the 49 victims of the Orlando shooting. Dancing is a form of reclaiming the physical, ideological, and emotional space that was threatened in this violent attack.

The exhibition is co-curated by Benjamin Chaffee and Rosemary Lennox in collaboration with Brendan Fernandes. Inaction is co-produced with the Richmond Art Center, Richmond, British Columbia and the Tarble Arts Center at Eastern Illinois State University, with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Inaction will travel to the Tarble Arts Center in January 2020 and to the Richmond Art Gallery in January 2021.

Concurrent exhibitions at Wesleyan University:
Into the Image, curated by Miya Tokumitsu, Davison Art Center, October  10–November 24, 2019
The Imperial Ghost in the Neoliberal Machine (Figuring the CIA), curated by Asakusa, College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center, September 18–December 8, 2019

Upcoming exhibitions & events in the Center for the Arts:

Cameron Rowland, Artist talk, Ring Family Performing Arts Hall, Tuesday, October 15, 2019, 4:30pm

Lewis Hyde, Artist talk, Zilkha Gallery, Thursday, November 7, 2019, 4:30pm

Laurie Anderson, The Art of Falling, Crowell Concert Hall, Friday, November 8, 2019, 7:30pm

Thomas Kelley, Artist talk, Ring Family Performing Arts Hall, Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 4:30pm

Diane Simpson, Zilkha Gallery, January 29–March 1, 2020