Discipline: arts interdisciplinaires

Based in Tiohtià:ke | Montréal, Noelia is an interdisciplinary artist who draws on personal and collective narratives to question the world in which she lives in. Rooted in a decolonial perspective, her work takes the forms of public installations, video art and performances, where she approaches questions of identity while taking into account the political and social contexts that are intrinsically linked to it. The relationship with what one has with another is a central element in their research. Recently, she had an interest in a subject on the migratory experiences of  people that recently immigrated to Quebec (since the 1970s). She is particularly interested in learning about disregarded immigrant populations and their migrant stories of resilience across time. Her interest in these stories stems from a profound quest for learning about identity in which she retraces the migratory trajectories of her ancestors. Within the framework of the Alliance program, Noelia wishes to investigate the political, social and personal contexts that form the conditions of marginalization and intersectionality in these plural experiences. 

Saba Heravi is an Iranian-Canadian visual artist based in Tiohtiá:ke/ Montreal. Her art practice is concentrated on drawing, ceramics, and printmaking. She graduated with a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University in 2019. Her work explores the idea of home, memory, and identity and is ultimately an investigation of self. During the Alliance program, Heravi will investigate new techniques and approaches to help develop a project built around family archives.

Victoria May is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher with a career spanning nearly 30 years, and has danced for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Göteborg’s Danse Kompagni, Danish Dance Theatre, and, as an independent performer, for Danse-Cité, Louise Bédard, Dominique Porte, Barbara Diabo among other artists. She is a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation with family and community ties in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Her most recent choreographic work Kiwaapamitinaawaaw (2020) was presented at the Biennale d’Art Contemporain Autochtone (BACA) at Centre de Création O Vertigo (CCOV). Her project within Alliance focuses on holding and facilitating Métis kitchen table talks (an Indigenous research methodology) and other Indigenous centered gatherings. Victoria believes in the necessity of staying connected to the heartbeat of the collective community through conversation, art-making, circles and ceremony that is based on an exchange of knowledge and experiences through an artistic, embodied Indigenous centered lens.

What does it mean to collaborate with someone or something? Burcu Emeç’s project within Alliance We were awkward at first but then it was ok subverts the tensions inherent in collaboration, while reckoning with the function of objects in performance.

Burcu is practicing care, political action and rigorous curiosity. As an interdisciplinary performance maker she blends social commentary, active listening, improvisation and visual art. Her work lives in the shifts between the highly poetic and unbearably banal, subverting codes of live performance and creating tensions between language and image. 

Burcu’s collaborative and independent projects have been presented in a wide range of settings in Montreal, Toronto and Germany, including the festivals OFFTA, SummerWorks and ZH, and venues such as Eastern Bloc, Never Apart and Montréal arts interculturels (MAI). Her recent awards include the Mécènes investis pour les arts, OFFTA Coup de coeur, OFFTA Hybridity Award, and five Montreal English Theatre Awards. She is curator in residence with Christopher Willes at Studio 303 and artist in delegate production with LA SERRE-arts vivants. Burcu is also a cultural worker and a coordinator at the artist-run centre articule. She holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from Concordia University (2017).