Brendan Fernandes

Brendan Fernandes (born 1979) is a Canadian contemporary artist who examines issues of cultural displacement, migration, labor, queer subjectivity, and collective agency through interdisciplinary performance that uses installation, video, sculpture, and dance. He currently serves as a faculty member at Northwestern University teaching art theory and practice.

Operating at the intersection of dance and visual art, his projects raise questions about the blending of different media and aim to challenge the concept of a fixed, essential, or authentic identity. His multimedia projects engage with postcolonial and critical theory discourse. Over the course of the past two decades, Fernandes has conducted extensive research and presented performance interventions in both national and international museums, galleries, and cultural institutions. He has also showcased his work in prominent museums in his home city of Chicago.

In his current work, Fernandes focuses on the diverse meanings of the body, seeing it as both a culturally significant object and an expressive tool for individuality and identity. He uses choreography to explore movement, particularly in queer and laboring bodies, examining their impact on gender roles and physicality. Additionally, Fernandes' art questions social and political issues, reflecting on life during and after the pandemic and events like Black Lives Matter. He draws upon incidents like the Pulse Orlando massacre and ongoing violence in queer spaces, aiming to challenge power structures and promote inclusivity and equity. He went on to train as a visual artist and completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at York University in Toronto, and then pursued a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario. In 2007, he graduated from the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan, New York.

Awards and recognition Fernandes was a 2010 Sobey Art Award nominee and awarded the Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship (2014).

His projects have been presented at venues, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Getty Museum (Los Angeles), and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa). The series explored mastery and discipline within the culture of ballet through the use of designed objects that enable dancers to perfect and extend iconic positions. This work was featured in the 2019 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. This performance art piece was later presented in the Kogod Courtyward of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in June 2019.

In 2011, Fernandes was included in Found in Translation, exhibition at The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York.

On the occasion of Fernandes' Noguchi Museum project he has published a book titled Re/Form in 2022.