September 26 – December 20
Brendan Fernandes investigates visibility, protest, colonial legacy, and embodied resistance through photography, performance, and textiles. In the photographic series Noise See, Brendan works with vibrant quilted tapestries created in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum and inspired by Maasai shuka; plaid textiles associated with contemporary Maasai culture in Kenya and Tanzania that also carry histories of British colonial influence. Within the photographs, these textiles become costumes, shields, and second skins, simultaneously concealing and revealing the bodies they envelop.
Noise See translates a choreographed duet into analog photography, transforming ephemeral movement into a lasting image. Rather than simply documenting a performance, Brendan uses photography to reconstruct it. Grain, overexposure, blur, and shifting depth of field resist the idea of the perfect image, allowing bodies, textiles, and gestures to move between clarity and obscurity. The photographs hold a tension between presence and disappearance: the performance has ended and the bodies are no longer there, yet traces of their movement remain. Through these images, Brendan transforms a textile marked by colonial histories into a space of protection, protest, and visibility, asking how photography can hold the residue of embodied resistance
Made possible with the generous support of Mariane Ibrahim Gallery.
Bio
Bio
Brendan Fernandes
Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979, Nairobi, Kenya) is an internationally recognized Canadian artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Currently based in Chicago, his practice addresses issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest, and other forms of collective movement. Constantly seeking to create new spaces and forms of agency, Fernandes’ work often takes on hybrid forms: part ballet, part queer dance party, part political protest always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity. Fernandes is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2007) and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship (2014), a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020), an Artadia Award (2019), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2019), and most recently, the Platform Award (2024). In 2024, he was also honored with the Creative Voice Award by Arts Alliance Illinois. His work has been presented at prestigious venues such as the 2019 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), among many others. Fernandes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University. He is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago and Susan Inglett Gallery in New York. Recent and upcoming projects include performances and solo presentations at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis, MO), the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (Denver, CO), the Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia, PA), and Prospect.6 (New Orleans, LA). In spring 2026, a major new commission and solo exhibition will debut at the Driehaus Museum in Chicago.
Photo by Michael Salisbury.
Location
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Gallery TPW
Accessibility: Accessible entrance, washrooms, AODA Compliant Building
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Getting There
Gallery TPW
Parking: Limited street
TTC: Near Lansdowne station; 505 Dundas streetcar; 506 Carlton streetcar; 47 Lansdowne bus.
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