Francisco-Fernando Granados
Francisco-Fernando Granados was born in Guatemala and lives in Toronto, the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Through a range of media that extends from performance and installation to publishing and public art, he works with abstraction as a conceptual strategy to create projects that queer perceptions of identity. His work has developed from the intersection of formal painterly training, working in performance through artist-run spaces, studies in queer and feminist theory, and early activism as a peer support worker with newcomer communities in Vancouver, the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. This layering of experiences has trained his intuitions to seek site-responsive approaches, alternative forms of distribution, and the weaving of lyrical and critical propositions.
Recent projects include 'duet,' a travelling two-person exhibition alongside Canadian modernist painter Jack Bush in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Peterborough and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and 'co-respond-dance Version II,' an artist book published in collaboration with Centre des arts actuels Skol in Montreal. Other exhibition highlights include a performance installation in partnership with Third Space Gallery and the YMCA Newcomer Connections Centre in St. John New Brunswick, public art installations for Mercer Union and Nuit Blanche in Toronto, and participation in international group shows on contemporary queer aesthetics at Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden, the Hessel Museum and Ramapo College in the United States.
Awards and honours include grants from the Toronto and Ontario Arts Councils, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Governor General’s Silver Medal for academic achievement upon graduating from Emily Carr University in 2010. He completed a Masters of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto in 2012 and has since taught art and theory in various capacities at OCAD University and University of Toronto Scarborough.
Recent projects include 'duet,' a travelling two-person exhibition alongside Canadian modernist painter Jack Bush in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Peterborough and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and 'co-respond-dance Version II,' an artist book published in collaboration with Centre des arts actuels Skol in Montreal. Other exhibition highlights include a performance installation in partnership with Third Space Gallery and the YMCA Newcomer Connections Centre in St. John New Brunswick, public art installations for Mercer Union and Nuit Blanche in Toronto, and participation in international group shows on contemporary queer aesthetics at Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden, the Hessel Museum and Ramapo College in the United States.
Awards and honours include grants from the Toronto and Ontario Arts Councils, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Governor General’s Silver Medal for academic achievement upon graduating from Emily Carr University in 2010. He completed a Masters of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto in 2012 and has since taught art and theory in various capacities at OCAD University and University of Toronto Scarborough.
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Papers by Francisco-Fernando Granados
Conceptually, this second version of the project responds to the state of emergency created by the pandemic by taking clues from two aesthetic methodologies. The first is the use of mail art for political work by artists resisting dictatorships in Latin America during the 20th century. The second is a French feminine literary practice, in which known aristocratic women (Margot de Valois, La Grande Mademoiselle, Madame de Pompadour, etc.) would have their personal correspondences published. Fascinated by these writings and by their intimate nature made public, Granados inhabits this form critically, posing the question of what it would mean to turn abstraction into an everyday language.
The title of this exhibit is lifted from an English language learning textbook published in the 1980’s. 1. Make a line. references the dialogue between a student and teacher, echoing Granados’ work concerning the civic and aesthetic education of immigrant and refugee populations in the Canadian context, and speaks to the artist’s conscientious wielding of appropriation and the readymade within his art practice. Embracing an opportunity for exchange and renewal offered by the non-traditional art space, Granados has responded to the educational context of the Newcomer Connections Centre. In every physical form and performative action, the works in this exhibition can be recognized as provisional methods and resources to train the imagination. 1. Make a line. mirrors the spaces of learning and writing within the process of integration.
This exhibition of Granados’ work in partnership with the Saint John YMCA Newcomer Connection Centre is the third and final installment of the three-part interdisciplinary project series, Conflicted State. In its entirety, encompassing new, site-specific interpretations of work by Michael D. McCormack, Roberto Santaguida and Francisco-Fernando Granados, Conflicted State examines the documentation of political, generational, and local histories through the lens of the individual. The series explores isolation and the artist’s role in creating correspondence between themselves and their subject. Ultimately, by balancing between the factual and the imagined, this series intends to expose the vulnerabilities of community and human connection.
Talks by Francisco-Fernando Granados
Conceptually, this second version of the project responds to the state of emergency created by the pandemic by taking clues from two aesthetic methodologies. The first is the use of mail art for political work by artists resisting dictatorships in Latin America during the 20th century. The second is a French feminine literary practice, in which known aristocratic women (Margot de Valois, La Grande Mademoiselle, Madame de Pompadour, etc.) would have their personal correspondences published. Fascinated by these writings and by their intimate nature made public, Granados inhabits this form critically, posing the question of what it would mean to turn abstraction into an everyday language.
The title of this exhibit is lifted from an English language learning textbook published in the 1980’s. 1. Make a line. references the dialogue between a student and teacher, echoing Granados’ work concerning the civic and aesthetic education of immigrant and refugee populations in the Canadian context, and speaks to the artist’s conscientious wielding of appropriation and the readymade within his art practice. Embracing an opportunity for exchange and renewal offered by the non-traditional art space, Granados has responded to the educational context of the Newcomer Connections Centre. In every physical form and performative action, the works in this exhibition can be recognized as provisional methods and resources to train the imagination. 1. Make a line. mirrors the spaces of learning and writing within the process of integration.
This exhibition of Granados’ work in partnership with the Saint John YMCA Newcomer Connection Centre is the third and final installment of the three-part interdisciplinary project series, Conflicted State. In its entirety, encompassing new, site-specific interpretations of work by Michael D. McCormack, Roberto Santaguida and Francisco-Fernando Granados, Conflicted State examines the documentation of political, generational, and local histories through the lens of the individual. The series explores isolation and the artist’s role in creating correspondence between themselves and their subject. Ultimately, by balancing between the factual and the imagined, this series intends to expose the vulnerabilities of community and human connection.