Cassils: Up To and Including Their Limits

Thursday February 20, 7 – 8:30 pm
General admission: $25 or $10 (students/artists/arts workers/unemployed/underemployed)
Tickets on sale January 30 at 10 am
Only 100 tickets available!

Cassils, Becoming An Image Performance Still (Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts), 2019⁠, Photo by Cassils and Manuel Vason

The Gardiner Museum presents the world premiere of a new performance work titled Up To and Including Their Limits by the internationally-acclaimed artist Cassils. Known for testing the limits of physical endurance, Cassils’ provocative and often startling work centres narratives of trans and non-binary visibility within a complex visual world.

Tickets go on sale January 30 at 10 am. Only 100 will be sold. For those unable to secure tickets in the original sale, the Gardiner will be giving away a limited number of free tickets through social media.

Up To and Including Their Limits

In this newly-commissioned work, Cassils pays homage to the late feminist icon Carolee Schneemann, using raw clay to reimagine her historic performance piece Up To and Including Her Limits (1971-76) from a trans non-binary perspective. Suspended from a harness in a plexiglass box with walls covered in thick raw clay, Cassils will launch themselves back and forth, clawing, swinging at the walls, and hurling chunks of clay to the floor. As they remove swaths of clay, Cassils will create “windows” through which the audience can see the performative action, problematizing and complicating the audience’s gaze by engineering voyeurism into the work itself.

The remnants of Cassils’ performance, including the plexiglass structure, harness, and clay, will remain on view alongside video documentation of the piece as part of the exhibition RAW, opening March 5.

About Cassils

Cassils is a visual artist working in performance, film, sound, sculpture, and photography. They have achieved international recognition for a rigorous engagement with the body as a form of social sculpture. It is with sweat, blood, and sinew that Cassils constructs visual critique around ideologies and histories. Cassils is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, Creative Capital Award, and numerous awards from the Canada Council for the Arts.

About the Gardiner Museum

The Gardiner Museum brings together people of all ages and backgrounds through the shared values of creativity, wonder, and community that clay and ceramic traditions inspire.

We engage audiences with exhibitions, programs, and hands-on classes, while stewarding a significant permanent collection. We interpret historical ceramics to emphasize their relevance today, and champion emerging and established Canadian artists and their role in the broader world. We innovate through clay education, as it brings together the experience of making with a deeper understanding of the art of ceramics.

We believe in making, looking, and thinking through clay.

Accessibility

The Gardiner Museum is an accessible venue with a ramp from the street leading up to the main lobby entrance. The entrance is accessible via two sets of double doors with an access button. Accessible restrooms are available on the second and third floors. Third floor washrooms are also gender neutral.

The Gardiner strives at all times to provide goods and services in a way that respects the dignity and independence of people with disabilities. We are committed to giving people with disabilities the same opportunity to access and benefit from our services in the same place and in a similar way as other customers whenever possible. We welcome your feedback.

If you have accessibility questions or requests related to the performance, please contact Nahed Mansour, Senior Manager, Programs at 416.408.5061 or nahedm@gardinermuseum.com.

Gardiner Museum
111 Queen’s Park, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2C7
416.586.8080
gardinermuseum.com
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