Artist

Paul Couillard

Paul Couillard is a Canadian artist, curator and cultural theorist based in Toronto. Since 1985, his practice has focused on performance art with forays into installation and various media arts, including video. He has created more than 200 solo and collaborative performance works in 21 countries, often working with his partner Ed Johnson. His work seeks to explore the concept of community and to address trauma through explorations of our bodies as vessels of sensation, experience, knowledge and spirit. He has a particular interest in considering the shared borders of our separate existences, searching for a language that can convey complex layers of personal history and cultural specificity while questioning the notion of shared or universal experience. His solo practice is often focused on duration and the effects of time.

Couillard was the Performance Art Curator for Fado from its inception in 1993 until 2007, and is also a founding co-curator of the 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival. He is the editor of Fado’s Canadian Performance Art Legends, a series of books on senior Canadian performance artists, including La Dragu: the Living Art of Margaret Dragu (2002) and Ironic to Iconic: The Performance Works of Tanya Mars (2008). A third book, featuring the work of Alain-Martin Richard, is scheduled for publication in 2011. Couillard holds a MFA (Visual Arts) from York University and has been a lecturer at McMaster University and the University of Toronto Scarborough. He is currently a SSHRC-funded doctoral student in the York/Ryerson Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture. His research is focused on a theoretical examination of the differences between how we apprehend the world through our senses and the way we construct meaning through language and text.

short bio:
Paul Couillard has been working as an artist, curator, and cultural theorist since 1985, focusing on performance art with forays into video, installation, and holography. He has created well over 100 solo and collaborative performance works in 20 countries, often working with his partner Ed Johnson. His work seeks to build community and address trauma through explorations of our bodies as vessels of sensation, experience, knowledge and spirit.

Artist Code: 004

Videography

REST

2006, 04:20 minutes, colour, English

More Cleaning and Loving (It)

2001, 14:00 minutes, colour, English

Cleaning and Loving (It)

2000, 13:00 minutes, colour, English

Plato's Chair

1990, 07:00 minutes, colour, English

Three Wings On The Wind

1988, 24:00 minutes, colour, English

Critical Writing

Sense and sensibilities: Fado performance gives new meaning to the...
by Stephanie Rogerson. Now, July 20, 2006, v. 25, no. 47.
Feats, might
by Paul Couillard and Alissa Firth-Eagland. Feats, might, 2005.
multiple titles
by various. la Dragu, 2002. Toronto: Fado Performance Inc., 2002.
Performance art fights bad rap
by Glenn Sumi. Now, Aug. 20, 1998, v. 17, no. 51.
Illuminated Manuscripts: Discovering the myth of transformation
by James Macswain. Xtra!, Apr. 13, 1990, no. 146.
Art as a way of life in festival show; [Final Edition]
by Nancy Baele. Ottawa Citizen, Sept. 16, 1989.