The Visiting Artists Program resource guides contain upcoming speakers' biographies, articles, video and audio content, related publications in the Flaxman Library, and additional online resources. These guides may be used in the classroom in preparation for the event, research, or post-lecture discussion.
Brendan Fernandes: Tuesday, February 28, 6:00–7:30 p.m.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation services.
Join us in person for a lecture by artist Brendan Fernandes followed by an audience Q&A.
Brendan Fernandes is an internationally recognized Canadian artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Currently based out of Chicago, Fernandes’s projects address issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest, and other forms of collective movement. Always looking to create new spaces and new forms of agency, Fernandes’s projects take on hybrid forms: part ballet, part queer dance party, and part political protest, they’re always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity.
Fernandes is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2007) and a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship (2014). In 2010, he was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award and is the recipient of a prestigious 2017 Canada Council for the Arts New Chapters grant. Fernandes is also the recipient of the Artadia Award (2019), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant (2019), and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020). His projects have been shown at the 2019 Whitney Biennial, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, among many others. Recent and upcoming projects include performances and solo presentations at the Munch museum, Oslo, Norway; a collaboration with Danish National Radio, Copenhagen, Denmark; a group show at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and a two-person show at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Massachusetts.
Portrait credit: Brendan Fernandes. Courtesy of the artist. Photography: Michael Salisbury
Artist Website
Gallery Representation
Redefining Ballet, Redefining Form, Challenging Control: The Art of Brendan Fernandes
John Bateman | NewCity Magazine | October 12, 2022
Score for 72 Seasons by Brendan Fernandes
BOMB Magazine | March 23, 2022
The Many Identities of Brendan Fernandes
Ayesha Habib | Nuvo Magazine | August 26, 2021
A Letter to Noguchi
Anna Carnick and Brendan Fernandes | The Forum, Design Miami/ | May 14, 2021
This urgent new show from choreographer Brendan Fernandes asks us to find 'the power to stand up'
Peter Knegt | CBC Arts | February 17, 2021
Staging the Work of Ballet Amid Noguchi’s Expressive Sculptures
Helen Georgas | Hyperallergic | January 22, 2020
Brendan Fernandes: Re/Form by 
African Artists: From 1882 to Now by 
Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the Arts by 
Black Futures by 
Willi Smith: Street Couture by 
Brendan Fernandes: Lost Bodies by 
Disguise: Masks and Global African Art by 
Four Generations: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art by 
Oh, Canada: Contemporary Art from North North America by Choreopolitics: Brendan Fernandes and nibia pastrana santiago at MASS MoCA
Choreopolitics (April 9, 2022 – March 13, 2023) juxtaposes the work of multidisciplinary artists Brendan Fernandes and nibia pastrana santiago, who use dance to resist, heal, and connect.
Brendan Fernandes: Inaction at Richmond Art Gallery
Inaction (February 12 – April 3, 2021) addresses the potential for change through collective action with a newly commissioned series of nine sculptural works and the two channel video projection Free Fall: for Camera.
Brendan Fernandes: Contract and Release at the Noguchi Museum
Contract and Release (September 11, 2019 – March 8, 2020) undermines the traditional dichotomy in which ballet embodies the adherence to rigorous technique while modern dance is viewed as free-form.
Free Fall
Published on the occasion of Brendan Fernandes' first solo exhibition at moniquemeloche, in Winter 2017.
Visiting Artists Program Lecture Recordings from the Archive
SAIC Visiting Artists Program video and audio lecture recordings (1977–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.
SAIC Digital Collections: Visiting Artists Program
SAIC Visiting Artists Program publicity archive and audio recordings (1977–98).