Victoria Stanton

For my exhibition in conjunction with the Prix Powerhouse, an award celebrating women-identified, mid-career artists in Montréal, I initiated a series of collaborative performances honouring people who have been crucial in helping me to cultivate my creative path and devote my life’s work to my performance art/life practice. [Feature photo: VS]

Having a fraught relationship to food, I initiated a series that playfully confronted myself, and the viewer (-turned participant), in a ritual of vicarious eating – revolving around the feeding of cake. In this sticky negotiation, the mundane is foregrounded and transformed through an awkward, yet earnest, nurturing act. [Feature photo: Ellen Friis]

These participatory performances became inquiries into the question of negotiation and consent in relational works. Wanting to consider audience agency, situations were set up in which an audience member could accept (or not) the role of becoming participant. Further, if accepting to participate, deciding precisely how. [Feature photo: Jussi Virkkumaa]