2019
Restrain Brendan Fernandes’ second solo exhibition with moniquemeloche, Chicago.
Restrain features a new series of cast bronze sculptures. The sculptures were created by casting binding patterns from Shibari rope bondage. Fernandes worked with Shibari master, Master Ming and New York-based artist, Joseph Liatela to produce the original rope forms which were then cast through the Odette Sculpture Residency at York University, Toronto. Removing the body from the forms recalls Brendan’s earliest explorations of the absent bodies of African communities in the display of the African masks in western museum collections. Presented with custom built armatures to emphasize the position each bind would have had on a body, the work further references practices of museum display. Actively involved in staging live performances within museum spaces, Fernandes continues his exploration of the role and status of the body within the contemporary art apparatus through these sculptures by confronting viewers with a truly still evocation of the body’s removal. In this case, the ambiguous body of queer, BDSM and kink practitioners—bodies which have historically been censored from visual space, and bodies which continue to be censored from visual space through ongoing practices of “Community Guidelines” and removal from social media. Cast in bronze, the binds evoke monuments to these absences.
More information: http://moniquemeloche.com/exhibitions/brendan-fernandes/
Images courtesy of Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
Photo: RCH Photography