EROS - performance

Artists: Aram Atamian, Stephanie Creaghan, Catie Rutledge, Marie Segolene, Santiago Tamayo Soler and Vicente Ugartechea
Performance: Saturday, December 16, 2017, 4h to 6h pm

EROS is a 2 hour performance event exploring the theme of desire and showcasing artists from Montreal, Toronto, Texas and Chicago.

Inspired by the history of the Cabaret Voltaire, and contemporary performance evenings such as NYC’s Incarnata Social Club, this simple informal event aims to provide accessibility to a variety of performance aesthetics while bringing together international and local artists in an environment of open exploration. Through a combination of visual projections, drag, spoken word, ritualistic gestures and song, EROS investigates various manifestations of desire and how they relate to identity and personal politics. EROS seeks to examine how desire can alternately be used as a weapon, a life preserver, and as fuel for resistance in times of political threat.

EROS is a touring event that will take place in Toronto, Montreal and Chicago. It combines works by international and local artists such as Aram Atamian (Yerevan), Stephanie Creagan (Montreal), Catie Rutledge (Chicago), Marie Ségolène (Montreal), Santiago Tamayo Soler (Montreal) and Vicente Ugartechea (Texas).

Biographies
Aram Atamian is a diasporan Armenian artist born in the USA and based in Yerevan. His recent work examines queer desire, spiritual longing, and diasporan lacunae within the context of contemporary digital communication platforms. His work has been presented in Armenia at the Institute of Contemporary Art, HAYP Pop Up Gallery, and NPAK/ACCEA; in the USA at Dorchester Art Project (Boston), the Maysles Film Institute (NYC), Chashama (NYC), and the PIMA Institute (NYC); in Italy at Tethys Gallery (Florence) and the 57th Venice Biennale (Arts and Globalization Pavilion). Aram has also performed extensively as an actor and contemporary dancer in New York, Philadelphia, Turkey, and Armenia. He recently relocated to Chicago to pursue his MFA in Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Stephanie E. Creaghan is a Montreal-based writer and video artist who makes work about how violence inserts itself into different forms of communication, combining different pathways (such as video, audio, writing and sculpture) of language to reveal latent forms of manipulation and the pain they generate, in order to bring to light the undiscussed/repressed. She is the co-founder/director of CK2 Gallery, and was co-founder/ director of Gallery LOCK (2013-2014). She has exhibited her work in Montreal, London (ON), Chicago, and Prague, and has curated exhibitions in Montreal, Toronto, New York, and Austin, TX. She has been commissioned by Le festival de la poésie de Montréal (in partnership with Vidéographe) to create work in collaboration with Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine, and has performed at the Darling Foundry, and within the programming for Montréal en lumières. She has completed two international residencies (betOnest, Stolpe/ Oder, Germany, 2017, and Cow House Studios, Wexford, Ireland, 2013), and has been the recipient of grants from the Canada Art Council and from Concordia University. Her work has been published in LESTE Magazine, PANK Magazine, Permanent Sleep Press, and the Hypocrite Reader. She holds a BFA in Intermedia/Cyberarts (conferred with distinction) from Concordia University.

Catie Rutledge (b. 1992, Alexandria, VA) makes work that exists as writing, as painting, as video, and as performance. She received a BFA with honours from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a second-year MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Marie Ségolène C. Brault (b. 1988 Montreal, Qc) holds a BA in Creative Writing and a BFA in Intermedia Cyber Arts from Concordia University (Canada). She is currently completing her MFA in Performance at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. Through drawing, sculpture, performance and video installations, her practice investigates ideas of personal mythology, rituals and archival. Marie’s work has been featured in Poetry is Dead Magazine and DRY MAGAZINE, and her books Proprioception (2015), Libation (2016), Aphrodite (2016) and Requiem (2016) have recently been published by Anteism. She has participated in several group exhibits, in spaces such as the Knockdown Center, Pioneers Works, City Bird Gallery (NYC), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Projet Pangée and Never Apart (Montreal). Marie was appointed the Guido Molinari prize from Concordia University in Spring 2016.

Santiago Tamayo Soler (b. 1990 Bogotá, Colombia) is a Montreal-based interdisciplinary artist working mostly in video, performance and painting. Following a degree in Film Studies at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he is currently completing a BFA in Studio Arts at Concordia University. Interested in the intersection of fictional narratives, cinema and live action, Santiago’s work tries to translate and integrate various elements from cinematographic language to the live action.

Vicente Ugartechea (b. 1989 Laredo, TX) is a transgender, first-generation American. Born on the border of the United States and Mexico to an immigrant mother, he occupies a divergent space in culture. Drawing from personal narrative, Vicente explores landscapes of constructed normativities, ethnocentrism, and privilege through various mediums such as performance, video, and installation. In dissecting these topics, he is able to question essentialist notions of gender, sexuality, race and the socio-political structures that inhabit them. Vicente received a BFA from the University of North Texas with a minor in LGBT Studies and is currently earning an MFA as second-year graduate candidate in Performance Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Press (exhibition)
IX Daily: http://ixdaily.com/grind/vicente-ugartechea-eros-0
Canadian Art – Must-Sees: https://canadianart.ca/must-sees/must-sees-this-week-december-14-to-20-2017/
Godberd: https://godberd.com/portal/m/articles/view/Performing-Eros