These Seasons | Eve Tagny: ‘As Yet To Be Established

Please note the performance begins at 7PM.

For the eighth installment of These Seasons, Swiss Institute is pleased to present ‘As Yet To Be Established, a temporary sculptural installation and live performance by Montreal-based artist Eve Tagny. Incorporating rocks, straw, readings, sound, and corporeal gestures, Tagny’s roving performance engages the notion of private property and its historical entanglement with colonial logics of resource extraction, spatial enclosure, and environmental degradation.

In company with collaborators Kris Lee and Maxi Hawkeye, Tagny’s performance will forego explicit narration and linear storytelling, instead weaving together a constellation of movements and sounds to reflect on, as the artist states, “how borders, enclosures, demarcations, and delineations structure, control or even coerce our ability to navigate public and private spaces.” Foregrounding the mutually constituting relations of private property and racially gendered flesh, Tagny’s performance will move between SI’s second floor gallery and rooftop, playing on chance, intuition, and a loose score the artist uses as a point of departure.

These Seasons is an ongoing transdisciplinary public program that invites artists, scholars and writers to explore theories of nature, landscape, ecology, human and non-human life forms and climate action.

Eve Tagny is a Tiohtià:ke/Montreal-based artist. Her practice considers gardens and disrupted landscapes as mutable sites of personal and collective memory — inscribed in dynamics of power, colonial histories and their legacies. Weaving lens-based mediums, installation, text and performance, she explores spiritual and embodied expressions of grief and resiliency, in correlation with nature’s rhythms, cycles and materiality. Tagny has a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University and a Certificate in Journalism from University of Montreal. Recent exhibitions include Henry Art, Seattle; Musée d’art de Joliette, Momenta Biennale, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Centre Clark, Montreal; Nuit Blanche, VAC, Cooper Cole, Gallery 44, and Franz Kaka, Toronto. She is the recipient of the Mfon grant (2018), the Plein Sud Bursary (2020), has been shortlisted for the Prix en art actuels MNBAQ (2023), Gala Dynastie (2023), CAP Prize (2018), the Burtynsky Photobook Grant (2018), the OAAG Award (2020) and longlisted for the New Generation Photography Award (2022).

Kris Lee (she/they) is a New York based dancer, performer and DJ. She received her BFA in Dance from University of the Arts in 2019. Kris was a member of the Stephen Petronio Company (2021-22) and has toured with nora chipaumire (2019-20). She was one of the creators and performers for high noon (2022), the interdisciplinary performance work produced by Ninth Planet. Most recently they have performed in Remains Persist (2022) & Out of and Into: Plot (2023) By Moriah Evans; Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd (reprisal) by Ishmael Houston-Jones & Miguel Gutierrez (2023); duel c by Andros Zins-Browne (2023).

Maxi Hawkeye Canion (they/she), originally from El Paso, TX, is a versatile artist immersed in durational performance, movement, and improvisation. Collaboration is integral to their work as they manifest sensory experiences, guiding viewers to where hyper-surreal and ordinary converge. Their work investigates themes of identity, failure, and intimacy. They have had residencies at Art Omi, MOtiVE Brooklyn, Otion Front Studio, New Dance Alliance, Gibney, and GALLIM Moving Artist Residency where they nurtured their upcoming production, “willing to eat stars.” They have presented at Pageant, Triskelion Arts, Arts on Site, Judson Church, BAAD!, CPR, and Chelsea Factory. Their past collaborations include Alexandra Waierstall, Sigrid Lauren, Ryan Ponder McNamara, Miles Greenberg, Shikeith, Monica Mirabile, Richard Kennedy, Young Boy Dancing Group, and Sidra Bell.

Image: ‘As Yet To Be Established, Blinkers, Canada, June 2023. Courtesy of Eve Tagny and Cooper Cole. Photo credit: Daisy Wu.