Curatorial Conversation with Brendan Fernandes and Cynthia Noble

Join us for an exclusive, intimate conversation with ART on THE MART Executive Director Cynthia Noble and Brendan Fernandes. The two will discuss his immersive, site-specific installation, Build Up the House on view nightly at ART on THE MART, one of the world’s largest digital art platforms that transforms an architectural landmark into a permanent, larger-than-life canvas.

For his ART on THE MART commission, Fernandes imagines 'new' windows and doorways into THE MART, using the movements of animated human dancers to continuously 'reshape' the façade of the building. Colorful backdrops that reference foliage and African textiles honor the essential contributions of African diasporic peoples to American art forms, while emphasizing the natural elements of our man-made urban surroundings. Fernandes's newest work exhibits the artist's proven flair for subverting the conventions of dance performance, approaching the form with an architectural eye and an empathetic heart, imbuing his work with equal parts cultural responsiveness, critical theory, and aesthetic beauty.

Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979, Nairobi, Kenya) is an internationally recognized artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Based in Chicago, Brendan’s projects address issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest and other forms of collective movement. Committed to creating new spaces and new forms of agency, Brendan’s projects take on hybrid forms: part Ballet, part queer dance party, part protest, to foster collaboration and solidarity through actions of generosity and kindness.

Brendan is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program and a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship. In 2010, he was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award, and is the recipient of a prestigious Canada Council New Chapters grant (2017), the Artadia Award (2019), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant (2019), and aSmithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020). Brendan’s projects have shown at the 2019 Whitney Biennial; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York); Museum of Modern Art (New York); The Getty Museum (Los Angeles); National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa) among many others. In his home city of Chicago, he has exhibited solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Graham Foundation and DePaul Art Museum. He is Assistant Professor at Northwestern University in the Department of Art Theory and Practice and represented by Chicago’s Monique Meloche Gallery. Recent projects include performances and presentations at the Munch Museum, Oslo; The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; The Pulitzer Foundation, St Louis; The Phillip Johnson Glass House, New Cannan, and a commission by The DR Vocal Ensemble, Copenhagen.

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