Alexandra Gelis
.image gallery
Pronouns
she/her
Location
Toronto,
ON -
Canada
Links
Status
Active
Alexandra Gelis is a Colombian-Venezuelan artist living between Canada, Panama, and Colombia. Her practice is research-based, process-oriented, and multi-disciplinary, including film, photography, drawing, and media installation with custom-built interactive electronics and sound. Her projects incorporate personal field research as a tool to investigate the ecologies of various landscapes by examining the traces left by various socio-political interventions. From her plant-based research-creation: she explores, documents and re-creates ecologies that take shape between plants and people, and between plants and their multi-species interrelationships. The idea of plants as political allies and as actors is central to the concept of “Migrated Plants.”
Gelis has exhibited in film festivals and exhibitions internationally in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Presenters include The Walker Art Center; Oberhausen Short Film Festival; Bienal del Sur; Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur; Images Festival Toronto; ArtworxTO. Toronto; Oboro, Montreal; Museum of London (CA); YYZ Gallery; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Montevideo; Recoleta Cultural Center, Buenos Aires; LABOCINE; Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film; Alucine latin media festival; Vancouver Latin Film Festival; Dresdner schmalfilmtage; Pleasure Dome; Museo la Tertulia; Espacios Revelados / Changing Places; The Paseo Project New Mexico; and others.
Her innovative installations exhibited widely are featured in a recent book, Alexandra Gelis: Seed edited by Mike Hoolboom and Clint Enns. She has given talks at Kassel and Documenta Institute, Germany; Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City; University of Zurich; and many arts and food sovereignty conferences. Alexandra has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, The Paavo & Aino Lukkari Award, Musagetes Arts Foundation and rare Charitable Research Reserve, She holds the Colciencias Doctoral Fellowship Program for her Ph.D. research Migrant Plants: Arts-Based Inquiry into Plant/human Relations Her research focused on the Caribbean has been supported by The Grace and David Taylor Graduate Scholarship in Caribbean Studies and The Paavo & Aino Lukkari Award: for research focused on human rights and social justice issues related to the situation of indigenous peoples or Afro-descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Alexandra Gelis is a Colombian-Venezuelan artist living between Canada, Panama, and Colombia. Her practice is research-based, process-oriented, and multi-disciplinary, including film, photography, drawing, and media installation with custom-built interactive electronics and sound. Her projects incorporate personal field research as a tool to investigate the ecologies of various landscapes by examining the traces left by various socio-political interventions. From her plant-based research-creation: she explores, documents and re-creates ecologies that take shape between plants and people, and between plants and their multi-species interrelationships. The idea of plants as political allies and as actors is central to the concept of “Migrated Plants.”
Gelis has exhibited in film festivals and exhibitions internationally in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Presenters include The Walker Art Center; Oberhausen Short Film Festival; Bienal del Sur; Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur; Images Festival Toronto; ArtworxTO. Toronto; Oboro, Montreal; Museum of London (CA); YYZ Gallery; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Montevideo; Recoleta Cultural Center, Buenos Aires; LABOCINE; Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film; Alucine latin media festival; Vancouver Latin Film Festival; Dresdner schmalfilmtage; Pleasure Dome; Museo la Tertulia; Espacios Revelados / Changing Places; The Paseo Project New Mexico; and others.
Her innovative installations exhibited widely are featured in a recent book, Alexandra Gelis: Seed edited by Mike Hoolboom and Clint Enns. She has given talks at Kassel and Documenta Institute, Germany; Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City; University of Zurich; and many arts and food sovereignty conferences. Alexandra has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, The Paavo & Aino Lukkari Award, Musagetes Arts Foundation and rare Charitable Research Reserve, She holds the Colciencias Doctoral Fellowship Program for her Ph.D. research Migrant Plants: Arts-Based Inquiry into Plant/human Relations Her research focused on the Caribbean has been supported by The Grace and David Taylor Graduate Scholarship in Caribbean Studies and The Paavo & Aino Lukkari Award: for research focused on human rights and social justice issues related to the situation of indigenous peoples or Afro-descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean.
