Onsite Gallery, OCAD University

Francisco-Fernando Granados, stop pretending this is a child’s adventure (2025). Photo: James Knott.

Beyond the Line with Francisco-Fernando Granados & Vessna Perunovich

Saturday, May 17, 2025 | 1 – 4pm
Onsite Gallery, Toronto
Register here

Join us for a dual performative storytelling event featuring Fortitude/Fragile exhibiting artists Francisco-Fernando Granados and Vessna Perunovich! Their distinct yet harmonized performances evoke a rich and nuanced exploration of resilience and vulnerability—inviting audiences into an intimate engagement with themes of identity, displacement, and belonging.

stop pretending this is a child’s adventure is an interactive workshop and activation of Francisco-Fernando Granados’s installation studies in minor abstraction, currently on view in Fragile/Fortitude. This participatory action transforms a personal archive of abstract compositions into a tactile library of small books, linking non-figurative language with the artist’s memories of arriving in Canada as a teenager.

Vessna Perunovich, Fragments of a Whole. Image courtesy of artist.

Running concurrently, Vessna Perunovich presents Fragments of a Whole—an interactive performance that uses the metaphor of a broken plate to examine human relationships and societal constructs. The work meditates on fragility and endurance, exploring how individuals navigate crises within both personal and collective spheres. Centered on archetypes and the tension between fragmentation and unity, the performance addresses our current political climate by reflecting on the anxiety and unrest we collectively face. Through a synthesis of the personal and political, the artist explores strategies of mending, healing, and restoring what is fractured or dysfunctional.

Beyond the Line with Francisco-Fernando Granados & Vessna Perunovich coincides with Onsite Gallery’s current exhibition Fortitude/Fragile guest curated by Magda González-Mora.

Also on view at Onsite Gallery are The Delaney Family Emerging Curator’s Prize: Presence in a past or undetermined future. and Rosalie Favell: Facing the Camera: TSÍ TKARÒN:TO.

Images (left to right): Francisco-Fernando Granados and Vessna Perunovich

About the Artists

Francisco-Fernando Granados was born in Guatemala and lives in Toronto, Dish With One Spoon Territory. Since 2005, his practice has traced his movement from convention refugee to critical citizen, enacting abstraction site-specifically and relationally to create projects that challenge the stability of practices of recognition. His work has developed from the intersection of formal painterly training, working in performance through artist-run spaces, the study of queer and feminist theory, and early activism as a peer support worker with immigrant and refugee communities in Coast Salish Territories. This layering of experiences trained his intuitions to seek context-responsive approaches, alternative forms of distribution, and the weaving of lyrical and critical propositions.

Exhibition projects include who claims abstraction? (2023–24) a solo project with SFU Galleries; foreward (2021–23), a series of site-specific installations in dialogue with the permanent collection at the MacLaren Art Centre; and refugee reconnaissance (2021), a bilingual compilation of performance scores spanning 2005–2013 published by AXENÉO7; Other highlights include participation in international group shows on contemporary queer aesthetics at the Hessel Museum (2015) and Ramapo College (2016) in the United States and Malmö Konstmuseum (2022) in Sweden.

Vessna Perunovich is a Yugoslav-born, Canadian artist based in Toronto and Belgrade. In a career that spans more than 35 years she has presented over 250 solo and group projects worldwide. She took part in numerous international biennial exhibitions including Cuba, Albania, England, Portugal, Yugoslavia, and Greece, and attended the international residencies in Berlin, Banff, Istanbul, Malta, New York, Beijing, Bursa, and Quebec City. Since 2010, Perunovich toured her interdisciplinary survey exhibitions Borderless, Emblems of Enigma, and Home Paradigm to public galleries and museums across Canada and Eastern Europe. Her work is the subject of three comprehensive monographs, (W)hole, (2004), Emblems of the Enigma (2008), and Home Paradigm: A New Place of Belonging (2023). Perunovich’s work is part of many art collections in Canada and Europe including Art Gallery of Hamilton, Cambridge Art Galleries, Textile Museum in Canada, the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, US Embassy in Belgrade, Cultural Centre of Belgrade in Serbia, and many others. She is the recipient of numerous Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council grants, most notably Ontario Arts Council Chalmers Fellowship Grant in 2019. She received a prestigious TFVA Award in 2005 and was shortlisted for the best exhibition of the year by Politika in 2011 and 2023.

Onsite Gallery is generously supported by The Delaney Family

About Onsite Gallery
www.ocadu.ca/onsite
Onsite Gallery, OCAD University’s flagship professional gallery, presents contemporary, Indigenous, and public art and design to advance knowledge creation and stimulate local and international conversations on the urgent issues of our time.

Onsite Gallery
199 Richmond Street West
Toronto, ON M5V 0H4

Gallery Hours
Wednesday: 12 to 7pm
Thursday to Saturday: 12 to 5pm

Gallery admission and all events are free.

Onsite Gallery is an accessible venue with all-gender, single-user washrooms.
» Detailed accessibility information found here

About OCAD University (OCAD U)
OCAD University (www.ocadu.ca) is Canada’s university of the imagination. Founded in 1876, the university is dedicated to art, design and digital media education, practice and research and to knowledge and invention across a wide range of disciplines.

Contact Information:
Susan Jama
Programs & Community Coordinator, Onsite Gallery
susanjama@ocadu.ca

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