2017 A 6-hour performance at The Theatre Centre, Toronto Part of the FADO MONOMYTHS series curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was...
A performance in Svalbard Part of the Arctic Action series curated by Stien Henningsen This performance took place in July, 2015 in Longyearbyen, Svalbard as part of Arctic Action, a series of performance residencies curated by Stein Henningsen. The performance...
2013 Guangzhou Live Festival of Performance Art Guangzhou, China Rare Parity is a durational, task-oriented performance that uses foreign currency as its primary material. The work invites viewers to reflect on our (willing/unwilling) complicity in the economic fabric...
Danceworks opened last night at Harbourfront with its 30th edition, presenting four women choreographers and performance artists as part of its collaboration with the Women’s Cultural Building festival. That the evening was dominated by women makes it no...
Despite numerous possible modes of choreography, all the visual artists invited for the series Chorégraphies d’artistes (at Tangente in Montreal, November 12 to 27, 1982) presented works for solo or duo dancers, or more justly, solo or duo performers. Few of the...
This performance took place at the University of Toronto Scarborough in the Meeting Place on November 12, 2010. Performed with Annie Cheung. Slideshow [slideshow id=14]
It was de riguer for Italian gentlement of the 16th century. It assumed various forms throughout the courts of Europe and King Henry the English was said to have sported an especially magnificent example. Today codpieces have long since gone the way of male pumps and...
Pure Hell battles male-based society with a revisionist view of history and fantasy – and wins. The performance art piece by Tanya Mars focuses on three icons and archetypes of female power. Elizabeth I, Mae West and Alice in Wonderland represent power in the...
High production values and a welcome injection of wry humor helped make Dancework’s 30th presentation of performance art and new dance one of the organization’s most watchable to date. The four-part program, which closed last night at Harbourfront’s...
Six Images in Search of an Artist: Remix 2010 The Theatre Centre Toronto, in partnership with Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage This work explores and exploits the senses, as influenced by the images in the French medieval tapestry Tenture de la...
Tanya Mars is a feminist performance and video artist who has been involved in the Canadian art scene since 1973. She was a founding member and director of Powerhouse Gallery (La Centrale) in Montreal (the first women’s art gallery in Canada), editor of...
“Very humbling,” was Tanya Mars's reaction yesterday to being named one of eight winners of the 9th annual Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. “I never thought in a million years the award would go to a performance...
Lilith Performance Studio Malmo, Sweden May 2 & 3, 2008 Duration: 3 hours In Dulci Jubilo (O Sweet Joy) refers to a Macaronic Christmas carol from the 14th Century. The old chime of bells in Lund’s Cathedral – In Dulci Jubilo – inspired Tanya Mars to compose a...
at the LIVE Performance Art Biennale Vancouver Art Gallery, FUSE event October 26, noon to midnight performed with Alissa Firth-Eagland With signature delightful theatricality, one of Canada’s most renowned performance artists, Tanya Mars is joined by Alissa...
Hot offered a sensitive look at middle age and the persistent desire for intimacy. In an elegant, slowly evolving tableau, Mars considered the search for unconditional love. Forsaking the “hot” sexuality of youth for the “hot” flashes of menopause, Mars presented the...
This video adaptation of Mars’ Mz Frankenstein performance takes the form of an imagistic narrative presented in the classic “infomercial” style. Mars as Dr. Frances Stein demonstrates the hook-up of a revolutionary reducing machine called the “Relax-a-ciser,” while...
In this video adaptation of the Pure Sin performance, Mars embellished on the original script, adding a few more male roles and taking advantage of postproduction trickery. The script is true to Mars’ original investigation into women’s relationship to power:...
Conflating the historical image of Queen Elizabeth I with those of popular culture, Mars as an aging Queen Elizabeth I talked about such things as virginity, love and deception, in the process illustrating how the relationship of women to power has not significantly...
In this first of the “Women and Power” trilogy of performances, Tanya Mars used Queen Elizabeth I as an historic icon and archetype. Rather than presenting Queen Elizabeth accurately, Mars appropriated her image to explore the paradoxical conflict between the Queen’s...
This multi-disciplinary performance/installation focused on the influence of the nuclear industry upon the history and future of our lives. A hybrid explosion of opera, dance, music, video, architecture and collaborative theatre, Picnic in the Drift evolved as a...
A 13 Jackies production Written and performed in collaboration wtih Bob White and Odette Oliver Fat took a weight-watcher’s look at North America’s obsession with food and beauty, and the inherent contradiction between advertising beautiful, caloric food...
Codpieces consisted of a series of body sculptures for men. Each piece was made from found objects, such as an oilcan, plastic packaging materials, a pair of stuffed leather gloves, or even a small chessboard with magnetic chess pieces. At the openiorder viagra...
