Brendan Fernandes: Inaction

An in-depth survey of the sculptural and performance-based installation by the internationally recognised artist

This publication is an intimate exploration of Brendan Fernandes's installation and performance Inaction and the film Free Fall for Camera, which were co-presented by the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, United States and the Richmond Art Gallery in British Columbia, Canada. It creates a richly illustrated archive of the project by bringing together photographic documentation, architectural drawings, an original dance score, essays, and a conversation between the artist, featured dancers, and the exhibition curators.

The choreographies in Inaction are based on children's games like hide-and-seek, follow-the-leader, and other forms of call-and-response. This publication will engage these concepts using the movement of the pages as an extension of its graphic design. More so, Inaction explores the political capacity of notions like movement and stillness, wherein dance is considered a tool for collective understanding.

Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979, Nairobi, Kenya) is an internationally recognised Canadian artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. His projects have shown at the 2019 Whitney Biennial (New York); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York); the Museum of Modern Art (New York); The Getty Museum (Los Angeles); the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); MAC (Montreal); among a great many others. He is currently Assistant Professor at Northwestern University and represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago.

Notable projects include performances and solo presentations at the Noguchi Museum, New York, NY; The Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond, BC; The National Gallery of Canada and recent commissions with The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; The DR Vocal Ensemble, Copenhagen, Denmark; and a new dance performance with the Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway.