March 31, 2021
Virtual talk: Michael Fernandes and Jason St-Laurent
April 14, 2021 at 5pm EST
Presentation in English, on Zoom
Free — RSVP required
From his home in East Dover near Halifax, artist Michael Fernandes shares his daily thoughts with us in the form of images and short texts in the context of an “at home” residency. Intrigued by the poetry of everyday life, by the art that emerges from the maritime environment where he has resided for more than three decades, and by the immediacy of improvised creation, Fernandes seeks to establish a diaristic dialogue with himself, as well as with a larger virtual audience.
Before and After the electric car (Avant et Après la voiture électrique) is a project in which Fernandes witnesses and highlights the subtle moments when art merges with everyday life, so as to broaden the parameters of art as a discipline. By his way of working—a methodology that rather resembles that of an archaeologist, a collector, a storyteller, or a philosopher—Fernandes highlights the fact that art is for him a way of life, a deep curiosity, a form of enchantment that permeates the ordinary.
Hope you are keeping well
Nice talking with you on the phone
You inspired my interest in garlic
I finished planting 350 hardneck cloves and covered them over with straw
I love garlic too
Hope someday to reach a thousand
Now the virtual residency
Title: Before and After the electric car
Daily postings of online images and texts
This work is intended to serve as a marker for what I consider to be relevant during the pandemic.
Perhaps this is only wishful thinking
A risk on my behalf
And like everything else, what I end up doing is always a talking
A thinking out loud with myself
Cheers,
Michael
October 2020
Accompanying text
Michael Fernandes
Michael Fernandes is a Trinidad-born artist who came to Canada in the 1960s to study at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. His works often rely on polemical constructs like “us and them” to provoke a self-recognition on the part of the viewer. His installations have a sense of improvisation and literalism, which results in an intimacy and directness and opposes the packaged, the streamlined and the simulated. One could say—at least metaphorically—that his work is in the first person, present tense, and that it stands against facade and spectacle in favour of activism. At NSCAD, where he has taught since 1973, Michael is known for the subtlety of his pedagogical methods. He has exhibited extensively across Canada and abroad. In 2020, Fernandes was the recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Artist Profile