ABOUT
The work of Alexis O’Hara embodies the transcendent potential of the accidental, the universal magic of humour and the opportunity trapped in the stuff that people throw away. She has co-created (with 2boys.tv) large-scale performance works with artists from marginalized communities (in Cuba, Mexico, Brazil and Nicaragua), traveled internationally with her spoken-noise performances and toured a very popular sound installation that offered a stage for spontaneous musical collaboration between strangers. She has released four albums, a book of poetry and enough helium-filled balloons to get her dress caught in a chandelier. Her work has been presented in diverse contexts in Slovenia, Serbia, Germany, Spain, The UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, and across Canada. In 2016, she was awarded the Powerhouse Prize by Canada’s longest-running feminist art gallery, La Centrale. Alexis and her drag king alter ego, Guizo La Nuit are mainstays of the Montreal cabaret scene. In collaboration with her partner Atom Cianfarani, Alexis is one half of Et tu, Machine, a collective dedicated to queer imagineering via interdisciplinary installations and actions.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Unruly and impertinent, my work leans heavily on improvisation, availabism and the poetics of awkward disruption. Queer, feminist and self-taught, I am motivated by the transformative potential of failure and recovery, analogous as they are to the human condition. Full of questions and forever a clown, I am attracted to distortions, larsens, feedback and artifice. I spend a lot of time thinking about the utility of art.
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