Brendan Fernandes
(1979–)
Brendan Fernandes
1979–
Brendan Fernandes (1979– ) was born in Nairobi, Kenya to parents of Goan descent, moving to Newmarket, Ontario in 1988 where he attended elementary and high school. He attained a BFA from York University, Toronto, in 2002 before pursuing an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Western Ontario. In 2006 he completed the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Fernandes was a professionally trained ballet dancer pursuing a double major in dance and visual arts at York University, before a hamstring injury in his fourth year leading him to pursue a hybrid practice combining dance and visual art. The resulting oeuvre draws from diverse influences such as ballet, queer dancehall and political protests, exploring spaces of collective agency rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity. His most well-known recent work, The Master and Form (2018), explores the disciplined subjectivities and racial dynamics of ballet as dancers strive to perfect iconic poses with the aid of designed objects. These architectural devices were created in collaboration with the Norman Kelley collective. The work was later featured at the 2019 Whitney Biennial.
Fernandes has also exhibited at 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 others. He has also been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2010 and received the Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship in 2014. He is currently an artist-in-residence and faculty at Northwestern University and represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago.