La Centrale is proud to present performances by Ianna Book (October 5, 8pm) and Hélène Lefebvre (October 7, 8pm)!

Ianna book is a multidisciplinary trans artist living and working in Montréal, QC, Canada. She studied Fine Arts at Cegep du Vieux-Montréal (1997-2000) and Visual and Media Arts at Université du Quebec à Montréal (2001-2005), and has worked as a graphic designer and editorial illustrator. Her aesthetic research critiques the norms of the human landscape and the conservative status quo as a means of opening up space for new cultural elements. By rearranging our surroundings and various aspects of the spectacle, Book pushes spectators to question their own conditioning and to remember they are social actors capable of progress. Book is the curator of Trans Time, an international group exhibition of works by transgender artists presented in Montréal (2014) and Paris (2016). She also presented a solo exhibition at Leslie & Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York in the spring of 2016.

Based in Ottawa, Hélène Lefebvre’s practice is an inquiry into identity and alterity, all the while weaving links between art, culture, and society. The body in movement and sensorial active listening (epicentre of performance action) are a sustained interest since Les Moissons in 2009. Recently, her work has taken the form of performance, installation and video. Her practice in corporeality takes inspiration from studies in ballet, contemporary dance, and authentic movement, a form in which improvisation is central. Her research seeks to enrich and amplify the performative attitude, as well as to understand the nature of the bodily movements that make up her actions, which are often rooted in duration. In her artistic explorations, the body acts as a sensorial prism that allows it to be inhabited by its surroundings, and its movements in time and space follows “chiasmatique” functioning, which orders/governs the entire sensorial system.

In co-presentation with VIVA, La Centrale present VIVA Kitchen by Andreja Dugandžić and Sonja Zlatanova, every night starting at 18:30pm, at Ateliers Jean-Brillant!

Andreja Dugandžić (Bosnia and Herzegovina) lives in Sarajevo, where she works at the intersection of performance, poetry, sound, and community intervention. Exploring the mundane and daily domestic life, she is concerned with the wider socio–cultural and gendered dimensions of food, cooking, household labour and its economics. The domestic sphere, a microcosm of the greater female experience, is therefore both the location and the subject of her work. Andreja has performed and exhibited throughout the former Yugoslavia and Europe, and collaborated with many feminist artists and curators. From 2007 to 2009, she was a member of the legendary feminist band STARKE, and in 2013 became part of Black Water and Her Daughter. Her poetry is published in various literary magazines and online portals. Andreja works at the Association for Culture and Art CRVENA as a co-manager of the Online Archive of the antifascist struggle of women from Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Yugoslavia.

Born in Macedonia, ex-Yugoslavia, Sonja Zlatanova lived in Switzerland, France, and Germany before settling in Montréal in 2012. Following 15 years of self-taught practice in painting and sculpture, she obtained a master’s degree in visual arts and photography from the École nationale supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy. Zlatanova’s artistic practice explores the emotional states, the physical presence, and the rebellion and resilience expressed by individuals - particularly women - who are confronted with social dis-order. Within her formal and conceptual explorations, the body, flesh, sensuality, and distortion are central themes. For a number of years, Zlatanova has been creating performative culinary installations that question individuals’ interactions around food in society. In her performances, she explores gestures that address identity-alterity, as well as the notion of loss and territory as it relates to women’s bodies. Her work has been presented in solo and collective exhibitions in Europe, ex-Yugoslavia, and Istanbul.