In Conversation: Brendan Fernandes and Sharon Hayes
March 13, 2025 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Brendan Fernandes, In Two, 2024. Live performance at Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Photo credit: Virginia Harold Photography. Courtesy of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.
Soft/Cover explores the inventive ways artists use fabric and screenprinting to create objects that engage with the body. Join us for a conversation between acclaimed performance artists Brendan Fernandes (Chicago) and Sharon Hayes (Philadelphia) as they discuss their practices in relation to the exhibition’s themes.
This talk takes place on the occasion of Fernandes’s residency at FWM and anticipates a public performance this summer, when he will debut new costumes made in collaboration with the FWM Studio and activate work from the collection.
Organized in conjunction with the exhibition, Soft/Cover.
Event Information
March 13, 2025 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
The Fabric Workshop and Museum
1214 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107
Photo credit: Brooke O’Harra. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton, Berlin.
Sharon Hayes is an artist working with video, performance, sound, and public sculpture to examine the intersections of history, politics, and speech. Her work challenges reductive historical narratives and explores the grammars—linguistic, affective, and sonic—through which political resistance emerges. From her early video installationSymbionese Liberation Army (SLA) Screeds #13, 16, 20 & 29(2003) toRicerche: two(2019), she interrogates gender, sexuality, and political discourse. She has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Venice Biennale, among others. Awards include a Pew Fellowship (2016), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2014), and the Alpert Award (2013). Hayes teaches at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Brendan Fernandes is a Chicago-based artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. His work explores race, queer culture, migration, and protest, creating hybrid forms that blend ballet, queer dance parties, and activism to foster collaboration and solidarity. A graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program, he has received numerous awards, including a Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship, an Artadia Award (2019), and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020). His work has been featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Getty, and the National Gallery of Canada. In Chicago, he has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Graham Foundation, and DePaul Art Museum. Recent projects include performances at the Munch Museum, The Barnes Foundation, and The Pulitzer Arts Foundation.
