Beyond The Line with Francisco-Fernando Granados & Vessna Perunovich

Saturday, May 17, 1 to 4 p.m., Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West

Through the art of performative storytelling, Fortitude/Fragile exhibiting artists Francisco-Fernando Granados and Vessna Perunovich delve into the complexities of lived and diasporic experiences. Granados and Perunovich use their artistic practices to shed light on narratives often marginalized or constrained by dominant systems of power, creating space for critical reflection and dialogue. By intertwining personal and collective histories, they evoke a nuanced understanding of resilience and vulnerability, offering audiences an intimate exploration of identity, displacement, and belonging.

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Beyond The Line with Francisco-Fernando Granados & Vessna Perunovich coincides with the current exhibitions Fortitude/Fragile, The Delaney Family Emerging Curator's Prize:Presence in a past or an undetermined future. and Coco A. Lynge| Up Front: Inuit Public Art @ Onsite Gallery on view until May 17, 2025.

Onsite Gallery is generously supported by The Delaney Family.

About the Artists

Francisco-Fernando Granados was born in Guatemala and lives in Toronto, Dish With One Spoon Territory. Since 2005, his practice has traced his movement from convention refugee to critical citizen, enacting abstraction site-specifically and relationally to create projects that challenge the stability of practices of recognition. His work has developed from the intersection of formal painterly training, working in performance through artist-run spaces, the study of queer and feminist theory, and early activism as a peer support worker with immigrant and refugee communities in Coast Salish Territories. This layering of experiences trained his intuitions to seek context-responsive approaches, alternative forms of distribution, and the weaving of lyrical and critical propositions.

Exhibition projects include who claims abstraction? (2023–24) a solo project with SFU Galleries; foreward(2021–23), a series of site-specific installations in dialogue with the permanent collection at the MacLaren Art Centre; and refugee reconnaissance (2021), a bilingual compilation of performance scores spanning 2005–2013 published by AXENÉO7; Other highlights include participation in international group shows on contemporary queer aesthetics at the Hessel Museum (2015) and Ramapo College (2016) in the United States and Malmö Konstmuseum (2022) in Sweden.

Francisco-Fernando Granados | Visit Artist Website

Vessna Perunovich is a Yugoslav-born, Canadian artist based in Toronto and Belgrade. In a career that spans more than 35 years she has presented over 250 solo and group projects worldwide. She took part in numerous international biennial exhibitions including Cuba, Albania, England, Portugal, Yugoslavia, and Greece, and attended the international residencies in Berlin, Banff, Istanbul, Malta, New York, Beijing, Bursa, and Quebec City. Since 2010, Perunovich toured her interdisciplinary survey exhibitions Borderless, Emblems of Enigma, andHome Paradigm to public galleries and museums across Canada and Eastern Europe. 

Her work is the subject of three comprehensive monographs, (W)hole, (2004), Emblems of the Enigma (2008), and Home Paradigm: A New Place of Belonging (2023). Perunovich’s work is part of many art collections in Canada and Europe including Art Gallery of Hamilton, Cambridge Art Galleries, Textile Museum in Canada, the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, US Embassy in Belgrade, Cultural Centre of Belgrade in Serbia, and many others. She is the recipient of numerous Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council grants, most notably Ontario Arts Council Chalmers Fellowship Grant in 2019. She received a prestigious TFVA Award in 2005 and was shortlisted for the best exhibition of the year byPolitika in 2011 and 2023.

Vessna Perunovich | Visit Artist Website