The Faculty of Art of the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) is pleased to welcome performance artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle for a free public lecture.
L’Hirondelle’s lecture is presented in conjunction with her visit to Toronto to perform her latest work, ękâya-pâhkaci (“don’t freeze up”; see description below), at the Toronto Free Gallery on October 16 at 8 p.m. L’Hirondelle is presented by the Fado Performance Art Centre during the 2008 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival.
Cheryl L’Hirondelle (a.k.a. Waynohtęw, Cheryl Koprek) is an Alberta-born artist and musician of Metis/Cree non-status/treaty, French, German, and Polish descent. Her creative practice is an investigation of the junction of a Cree worldview (nęhiyawin) in contemporary time and space. Since the early 1980s, L’Hirondelle has created, performed and presented work in a variety of artistic disciplines, including music, performance art, theatre, performance poetry, storytelling, installation and new media. In the early 1990s, she began a parallel career as an arts consultant and programmer, cultural strategist/activist, and director/producer of both independent works and projects within national artist-run networks.
L’Hirondelle’s performance work has been featured in various texts including Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women, edited by Tanya Mars and OCAD Professor Johanna Householder, and Candice Hopkin’s Making a Noise: Aboriginal Perspectives on Art, Art History, Critical Writing and Community. In 2004, L’Hirondelle and Hopkins were the first Aboriginal artists from Canada to be invited to present work at Dak’Art Lab as part of the sixth biennale of contemporary African art in Dakar, Senegal. In both 2005 and 2006, L’Hirondelle was the recipient of imagineNATIVE’s Best New Media award for her online net.art projects: treatycard, 17:TELL and wępinâsowina.
L’Hirondelle’s music has also garnered several nominations and awards, including Best Female Traditional Cultural Roots Album (2006) and Best Group (2007) from the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards for Fusion of Two Worlds, the first CD from her Aboriginal women’s ensemble, M’Girl.
ękâya-pâhkaci, a performance by Cheryl L’Hirondelle
Thursday, October 16 at 8 p.m.
Toronto Free Gallery
1277 Bloor Street West, Toronto
www.torontofreegallery.org | 416-913-0461
About ękâya-pâhkaci
ękâya-pâhkaci [ee-guy-uh-puck-a-chee] (don’t freeze up) by Cheryl L’Hirondelle operates through an intersection of nomadic site-specificity, visual patterning, language, narrative, movement and rhythm. In this work, Cheryl stages a performance presented under an adaptable traveling tent from where she relates and offers information to the audience using her body, voice and graffiti/tagging. The audience, by proximity and in accepting her invitation to witness her activities ‘comes in from the cold’ and becomes part of her ‘camp’.
About Fado Performance Art Centre
Founded in 1993, Fado was established to provide a stable, knowledgeable and supportive forum for creating and presenting performance art works created by Canadian and international performance artists. Fado is the only artist-run centre in English Canada devoted specifically to this form. Fado’s activities include presenting performances, artist talks, festivals, residencies, exchanges and workshops, as well as publishing in a variety of formats, including video and for the web. For more information please visit www.performanceart.ca.
D
Runs: Oct
15, 2008 At: Ontario College of Art and Design, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto Playing: Wednesday
Times: 6:30 pm Cost: Free
Getting there:
For more information contact:
Sarah Mulholland Phone:
416-977-6000 x327 Email:
smulholland@ocad.ca
