Brendan Fernandes

 Hit Back, 2017, Live performance and installation: series of open dance rehearsals.

Born: Nairobi, Kenya, 1979

Resides: Chicago, Illinois

Education: Whitney Independent Study Program (2008); University of Western Ontario (M.F.A., 2005); York University (B.F.A., 2002)

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2020 “Art by Snapchat,” Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, Rome.
  “We Want a We,” Pearlstein Gallery, Drexel University, Philadelphia.
  “Brendan Fernandes: Bodily Forms,” Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia.

2019 “Restrain,” Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.

“Contract and Release,” Noguchi Museum, New York.

“Call and Response,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

  “Free Fall,” Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.

  “Ballet Kink,” Guggenheim Museum, New York.

2018 “The Living Mask,” DePaul Art Museum, Chicago.

“On Flashing Lights,” Nuit Blanche, Toronto.

“Open Encounter,” Highline Park, New York.

“Master and Form,” Graham Foundation, Chicago. 

2017 “Steady Pulse,” Recess, New York.

“Free Fall 49,” Getty Center, Los Angeles.

  “Clean Labour,” Armory Fair, New York.

  “I’m Down,” 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 

2020 “Historias da Danca,” Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil. 

2019 “Whitney Biennial,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

2018 “Connexions / Connections,” Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada.
“In This Place Where the Guest Rests,” Franklin Street Works, Stamford, Connecticut.

2017 “Sanctuary,” For-Site Foundation, San Francisco.
“Marching to the Beat,” Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco.
“That I Am Reading Backwards and Into for a Purpose, to Go On,” Kitchen, New York.

2016 “Africans in America,” Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.
“Bucharest Biennial 7,” Romania.

2015 “Disguise: Masks and Global African Art,” Seattle Art Museum, Washington.

2014 “Stage It! (Part 3),” Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
“In Practice: Chance Motives,” SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York.

2011 “Found in Translation,” Guggenheim Museum, New York.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 

2019 Howe, David Everitt. “Brendan Fernandes’s New Performance Brings Isamu Noguchi Sculptures to Life,” Art in America (November 26).

Slivers, Erin. “Racism and Social Space in Canadian Dance...” Performance Matters (July).

Loos, Ted. “The Impresario of Ballet Kink,” New York Times (June 28).

Voon, Claire. “There’s Pain and Pleasure...,” Artnews (May 28).

2018 Alturi, Tara. Uncommitted Crimes: The Defiance of the Artistic Imagi/nation. Toronto: Inanna Publications. 

  Hawbaker, KT. “Artist and Choreographer Brendan Fernandes Nails All the Right Moves,” Chicago Tribune (August 28).

  Kennedy, Jen. “Surface Tensions,” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory (May).

2017 Bourland, Ian. “Dancing to the Pulse,” Frieze (July 13).

2016 Brendan Fernandes: Still Move, London: Black Dog. 

Lost Bodies, Kingston, Ontario: Kingston University Press.