Call for Applications: Visual Arts Residency – Embodied Making: Performance Art, Images & Objects

Brendan Fernandes, Contract and Release, 2019. © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum / ARS

Call for Applications

Explore and create new relationships between bodies, objects, and spaces through individual studio-based experimentation and collective inquiry.

Embodied Making: Performance Art, Images and Objects
Application Deadline: February 17, 2027
Program Dates: July 5 – August 6, 2027

This program invites visual artists to think expansively about performance, and how performance emerges through movement, stillness, reading, listening, endurance, care, and collective action. Further, it invites artists to investigate the ways that performance and materiality intersect, considering how images and forms are activated, transformed, and given meaning through embodied interaction.

Through individual studio-based experimentation and collective inquiry, artists will explore and create new relationships between bodies, objects, and spaces. Banff’s extraordinary landscape and natural surroundings inevitably become collaborators in the creative process, offering opportunities for site-responsive and place-based investigations.

Joining as faculty for this program are Brendan Fernandes (artist and Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University), Claire Fleming Staples (artist and Lecturer, School of the Art Institute of Chicago), and Abril Zales (Chief Curator at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City).

Visual Arts residencies at Banff Centre are structured programs of faculty-led activity and mentorship, supporting project-based studio practice.

This program supports:

• the development of theoretical concepts and artistic ideas through independent research alongside a structured program of faculty-led activities and workshops
• one-to-one faculty mentorship through studio visits and faculty meetings
• the development of technical skills through experimentation and skill-based learning assisted by staff technicians
• peer-to-peer informal learning related to studio and professional practice
• the development of a professional community towards developing and sustaining an artistic career

Artists are assigned individual studios with access to shared production facilities. Knowledgeable staff are available to provide technical assistance.

Please take note of the program itinerary when planning your project proposal.

Facility access is based on availability of facilitators and priority goes to those requesting access in their initial applications.

Who Should Apply

This residency is for individual artists or duos (no more than two collaborators) at any stage of their career. Applicants should be available to participate over the entire five-week period of the program; have completed formal training in visual arts at the post-secondary level or have equivalent experience and recognition from their peers acquired through traditional knowledge and practices.

This program is designed to cater to visual artists working in, but not limited to, practices in ceramics, digital media, painting, drawing, printmaking, papermaking, performance art, photography, or sculpture and installation.

Banff Centre welcomes applicants of all ages (18+), backgrounds, gender identities and expressions to apply. Artists from historically underrepresented and equity deserving groups are especially welcome.

We are pleased to offer a range of scholarships to support participants in our programs. Program participants receive a Banff Centre Arts Scholarship that covers the cost of tuition, plus a contribution towards accommodation and meals.

Please visit the program page for more information and to apply.

About Visual Arts Programs at Banff Centre

Visual Arts at Banff Centre offers exceptional programs for contemporary artists at all stages of professional practice, led by diverse faculty at the forefront of contemporary art. Participants gain generous studio space, access to exceptional technical facilities, and a supportive community to develop and sustain their practice. Participants are provided with generous studio spaces, access to exceptional technical facilities, and connections to a supportive visual arts community. Participants will gain insights and support towards developing and sustaining their practices.

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For more information, contact:
Admissions
Admissions@banffcentre.ca
403.762.6100
banffcentre.ca/visual-arts