Type de fiche: Artist

kama la mackerel

Kama La Mackerel is a performance poet, storyteller and multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores performative and poetic practices as resilience, resistance and healing for marginalized communities. Her artistic practice spans across textile, visual, digital, poetic and performative work; at once narratological and theoretical, at once personal and political, her work articulates an anti-colonial praxis through cultural production.

Her projects are community-informed and community-driven: she is an artist mentor with the Artists Mentoring Youth (AMY) Project, as well as the Artistic Director of AMY’s Performance Poetry Program for Trans Women and Femmes. She is the creator and Artistic Director of GENDER B(L)ENDER, The Self-Love Cabaret, Contemporary Poetics of Trans Women of Colour Artists, and Our Bodies, Our Stories: a creation & performance mentorship program for QTBIPOC youth. Kama has performed locally and internationally at venues in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, Vancouver, Burlington, New York City, London, Amsterdam, Paris and beyond. Kama was born and raised in Mauritius, immigrated to India as a young adult, and then immigrated to Canada in 2008. She she has been living in tio’tia:ke (Montreal) since 2011.

 

Image: Pascha Marrow

hanako hoshimi-caines

Hanako Hoshimi-Caines is a choreographer and dancer based in Montréal. She is committed to an emo-critical engagement to dance, choreography and philosophy as a way to see, feel and love better. And what she means by love is an ambiguous kind of knowledge that is necessarily embodied, transformative and involves time and intimacy with things.

Her solo and collaborative works have been shown in performance and music festivals as well as theaters in Canada, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria. She has performed extensively with a number of artists such as Stephen Thompson and Andrew Tay, Maria Kefirova, Katie Ward, La 2eme Porte à gauche, Jacob Wren, Adam Kinner, Frédérick Gravel, Tanya Lukin-Linklater, José Navas, Louise-Michel Jackson and with the Cullberg Ballet (Stockholm) with Benoît Lachambre, Deborah Hay, William Forsythe (Human Writes), Tilman O’Donnell, Alexander Ekman and Jefta Van Dinther. She is currently finishing up a philosophy degree at Concordia University with a penchant for feminist ethics and performativity.

azalia kaviani

Azalia Kaviani is a multidisciplinary artist working mainly in painting and dance. As a child she contracted a disease that damaged her brain cells which resulted in physical and speech impairment. However she did not let this stop her and managed to pursue regular schooling even though it took her a year to be able to hold a pencil in her hand. With her mother’s support she struggled to be as independent as possible and decided not to let her limitation curb her ambitions. She started to take yoga and painting classes and discovered how art helped her to open up and to discover other parts of herself. She graduated from Concordia University and started dancing. She hopes, though her art and presence, to assist people with disabilities. Her first exhibition was held in 2018 at Mekic gallery in Montréal.

mireya bayancela ordonez

A graduate of Malayerba theatre school, Mireya Bayancela’s work is focused on the stories of her country of origin, Ecuador. After arriving in Montréal in 2004, she met the stage directors Lillian Rivera and Oscar Aguirre who became her partners in the drama group CREARTE. In Montreal Mireya has also participated in several shows created by Ondinnok Theatre, including Rabinal Achi. Her work questions the notion of identity, exile and migration. She discovered storytelling working with La Source theatre, and uses oral traditions, dance and music from Ecuador. In her project Le vol des oiseaux she tells the story of the indigenous people of Ecuador, discovering in the process her need to tell those stories and to maintain oral traditions.

Mireya is a member of the Ballet de danses traditionnelles de l’Équateur, which allows her to stay close to her roots and to continue sharing her culture with future generations. In 2013 she gathered with a group of artists at the Immigrant Workers Centre in order to talk about conditions of displacement and to raise awareness. She is currently exploring and documenting her new project on forced teenage pregnancy in Ecuador.

corinne beaumier

Corinne Beaumier lives and works in Montréal and is a graduate of Concordia University’s Photography program. She has been involved in numerous individual and collective projects. Her first solo exhibition was held in 2014 at the Z Art Space in Montréal, and her work has been included in multiple collective exhibitions across in Quebec, most recently at Studio XX in Montréal in 2018. She has also worked on special projects including murals (Gatineau, 2010) and developed a curatorial practice parallel to her artistic work.

Corinne was selected for an Atlantic Center for the Arts residency in 2015 She was also a finalist for the Aimia AGO Photography Prize Scholarship Program and a nominee for the Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award.

karen tam

Karen Tam lives and works in Montréal. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths (University of London). Her research focuses on the various ways in which cultures and communities are constructed and imagined, using installations that recreate the spaces of Chinese restaurants, karaoke lounges, opium dens, curio shops and other sites of cultural encounters. She questions how the corporeal experience of space allows one to understand its history and community. Using a cultural studies framework, she invites a critical view of contemporary chinoiserie, the impact of the Chinese export trade, and goods produced for ‘Western’ tastes.

She has exhibited her work since 2000 and participated in residencies in North America, Europe, and China, including the Deutsche Börse Residency at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (Germany), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Canada), and CUE Art Foundation (USA). She was a finalist for the Prix Louis-Comtois in 2017 from the Contemporary Art Galleries Association and the Ville de Montréal, a finalist for the Prix en art actuel from the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec in 2016, and long-listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2016 and 2010. Her works are in museum, corporate, and private collections in Canada, United States, and United Kingdom.

claudia chan tak

Claudia Chan Tak is a multidisciplinary artist with a background in visual arts and contemporary dance. She graduated with distinction from Concordia University’s Intermedia/CyberArts Department in 2009, and three years later was awarded the William Douglas prize of excellence in the context of a bachelors in contemporary dance at Université du Québec à Montréal. In 2017 she completed a research-creation project exploring the links between documentary film and contemporary dance. The outcome, an autobiographical solo piece titled Moi, petite Malgache-Chinoise, was presented at MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) in December 2016. Her first choreographic installation stemmed from this same solo and was presented at Tangente in January 2018, weaving together visual art, dance, and on-site video mapping. Thanks to this project she was awarded the prestigious Prix Mécènes investis pour les arts, underlining the quality and inventiveness of her artistic practice. Many of her choreographic projects have appeared on stage, among others at Tangente, OFFTA, Festival ZH, Phénomena, Short&Sweet, La Petite scène, Edgy Women, Art Matters, and Toxique Trottoir. In cinema, her first short film, La Buvette des carnivores, was awarded the Cinemateque québécoise’s prize for best directing at the Festival Quartiers Danses in 2015, while Norma, created in 2016, became part of the official program at the Festival International de Films sur l’Art. Enthralled by the archival documentation of contemporary dance, her first exhibition, Hydra, was presented at Place des Arts as part of the Festival TransAmérique’s official 2016 program, offering a poetic and original take on choreographic and intergenerational modes of creation.

meryem saci

Meryem Saci is a singer, songwriter, emcee and performer. Lead singer in the group Nomadic Massive since 2005, Meryem is currently focusing on her solo career after releasing her first solo project,  “On my way”, in summer 2017. Upbeat, fun, and moving, this mixtape bridges influences from both sides of the Atlantic. Over the years Meryem has collaborated with many international artists such as IAM, and been featured on movies and TV series such as Omerta, Derapage, Lance et Compte, and Art of More. In addition to performing over 40 shows a year, as well appearing at conferences,workshops, and voiceovers, she juggles her time between her solo project and Nomadic Massive with the aim of creating her own unique image and sound. In 2018 and 2019 Meryem will be following the rhythms of her upcoming European and Latin American tours and dedicating time to her upcoming singles and solo EP.

sarah elola

Recipient of a CALQ Vivacité grant and a CAM-MAI joint mentorship for emerging choreographers to create her second solo, La Pileuse, Sarah Elola was born of blended contrasts. Her story abounds with multiple realities. She cast her first 15 years in kaleidoscopic African tones, rural and urban, traditional and modern, grounded in innumerable customs and cultures. It was in the savannah of the Land of Honest Men, in her native Burkina Faso – where, when one can walk, one can also dance – and in the Ivory Coast that she took her first steps, and grew up with this organic integration of rhythm, dance, song and music in daily life.

Accepted in July 2014 to the PEFAPDA (Artistic and Professional Training Program in African Dance) stream at Nyata Nyata (awarded the Prix de la Diversité 2015 du Conseil des Arts de Montréal) she strengthened her practice and choreographic reflection. She also joined the troupe as a dancer in Mozongi, Nyata Nyata’s flagship work (winner of the 30e Grand Prix du Conseil des Arts de Montréal), touring the Congo with the show in October 2015.

For Eclectik 2016 at the MAI, she created her first solo piece, Dans le ventre de l’éléphant marron [In the belly of the brown elephant] which she would also perform at the World Social Forum in August 2016, and at FIDO (Festival de danse international de Ouagadougou) in February 2017. In the summer of 2017 she was selected to participate in an intensive dance internship at the famous École des Sables in Senegal: Stage International Danses Noires.2 – Mémoire et Évolution. In November 2017 she returned to the MAI with La Pileuse, a creation acclaimed by the general public and dance critics alike.

 

kimura byol-nathalie lemoine

nathalie lemoine (né.e kimura byol) is a multimedia artist and curator, born in korea (south), educated in belgium, and established to canada. kimura-lemoine’s visual work, poems/writing and short films were presented internationally solo and in group. as a curator, kimura-lemoine has developed projects that give voice and visibility to minorities and as an activist archivist, ze is working on ACA (adoptees cultural archives) to document the history of adoptee’s culture through media and arts. kimura byol-nathalie lemoine works on issues surrounding identities: diaspora, ethnicity, colorism, gender, and play with words. kimura-lemoine doesn’t like to use capital letters.