Janice Kerbel

Janice Kerbel (born in 1969 in Toronto) is a Canadian artist living in London UK. She works with print and performance, exploring subjects ranging from plant life to violence to synchronized swimming. While her work takes multiple forms, a recurring interest in performative language underpins her practice. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Sink’, The Common Guild Glasgow; ‘Beautiful World, Where are you?’, Liverpool Biennial; ‘Alphabet’, Hamburger Kunsthalle; ‘Space Force Construction’, V-A-C Foundation, Venice; Arts Club of Chicago; and Chisenhale, London, amongst others. Kerbel was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2015 for the performance work, ‘Doug’.

During her residency, Janice will develop a new performance-based work that will explore languages of power expressed through physical gesture and spoken word. Interested in the practice of commedia dell’arte, renowned for performances that fuse scripted and improvised forms, she hopes to experiment with techniques of unarmed combat and symbolic oratory to examine how meaning can be at once created and withheld.