Join us on Saturday, September 21st, at 7 PM for the opening of 'The Minimum' by Toronto-based performer, choreographer, and poet Aisha Sasha John. There will be a second opportunity to see this performance the following day, Sunday matinee, on the 22nd at 3PM. John will be adapting for the gallery space/gallery goers, an ongoing and work-in-progress solo piece typically performed for a theatre stage. With precedents to Tracey Emin's installation, 'My Bed', John's experimental performance installation here investigates from a gendered position, the possibility of rest, non-work, effortlessness in the context of interminable expected labour, be it labour of legibility, translation, or social agreeability. 

 

Aisha Sasha John is interested in performance as a site of rehearsing being and in the power of reception as creative methodology. She’s the 2023-2035 Toronto Dance Theatre Affiliate Artist and will be creating a new work in 2025, The Pool, with the TDT ensemble. John’s duet with Devon Snell, DIANA ROSS DREAM (Danse-cité), premiered in fall 2022 and was developed during a 2019-2022 Dancemakers choreographic residency. Her first full-length solo work debuted as the aisha of oz at the Whitney Museum in 2017, and in 2018, iterations of the aisha of is were presented at MAI and Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival. From 2015-2017, John choreographed, performed and curated as a member of the collective WIVES, presenting ACTION MOVIE at La Chapelle (2017). John’s video work and text art have been exhibited in galleries (Doris McCarthy, Oakville Galleries). A celebrated poet, John is the author of the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize nominated collection, I have to live. (McClelland & Stewart 2017) and THOU (Book*hug 2014). Her fourth collection total will be published in spring 2025.

 

Performance Duration: 45 mins, no intermission

 

Following the performance, Aisha will be presenting an artist lecture on

Monday, September, 23, 2024 | 11:30AM | School of Art, University of Manitoba, ArtLab 136