Brendan Fernandes - ART NOW! Lecture

Title: Within Reach 

Brendan Fernandes is an internationally recognized Canadian artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Currently based out of Chicago, Fernandes’s projects address issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest, and other forms of collective movement. Always looking to create new spaces and new forms of agency, Fernandes’s projects take on hybrid forms: part ballet, part queer dance party, and part political protest; they're always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity. 

Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979, Nairobi) is an internationally recognized Canadian artist exploring issues of race, queer culture, migration, and protest through a hybridity of dance and visual art. He received the Platform Award (2024), Artadia Award (2019), and Smithsonian Fellowship (2020) and is a Whitney Independent Study Program alum and Rauschenberg Fellow (2014). His work has shown at major venues like the Whitney Biennial, MoMA, and the National Gallery of Canada. Currently based in Chicago, Brendan is an Associate Professor at Northwestern University and is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery (Chicago) and Susan Inglett Gallery (New York). 

Headshot: Photograph by Kevin Penczak 

Brendan Fernandes: In Two, 2024 

Curtains co-designed by the artist and The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia 

Commissioned by Pulitzer Arts Foundation and The Fabric Workshop and Museum. Photograph by Virginia Harold 

Host or Publisher Art and Art History Department