About
(english)
Victoria Carrasco is a Chilean-Canadian curator of contemporary art and moving image, born in Montréal. From 2008 to 2025, she held curatorial, managerial, and leadership positions at PHI (formerly known as PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art), where she played a key role in shaping the institution’s visitor experience strategy, developing internal professional growth initiatives, curating exhibitions, and expanding audiences by creating new exhibition formats of time-based media and performances programs.
Her curatorial practice is grounded in research and centers on practices in contemporary art, developed through close collaboration with artists. Her institutional experience reinforces an expertise of exhibition-making and the dynamics between artwork, space, and audience—emphasizing accessibility, engagement, and critical reflection. She remains attuned to the social, cultural, and spatial contexts in which art is produced and experienced, and is committed to its critical and transformative potential that lives on after outside of the art gallery setting.
Carrasco curated REMEMBER, PERFORM, FORGET: Binding Space Through Utopia - with Kerstin Honeit, The Society of Affective Archives, and Rodolfo Andaur in 2023, co-curated with Cheryl Sim, the exhibition Larry Achiampong: Relic Traveller in 2022, the performance Dora García: Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years in 2021, and have worked with international, national and local artists in Montreal and organizations on the presentation of screenings and performances, moderated roundtables, and hosted artist talks and podcasts.
Carrasco holds an MA in Performance Curation from the Institute of Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University, a BA in Environmental Design from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), and a BFA with a Concentration in Photography from Concordia University. In 2019, she was awarded the Ford Foundation ICPP Leadership Fellowship by Wesleyan University. She is also co-editor of the bi-annual publication TURBA: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation and is on the Board of Directors of VIVA! Art Action and Centre des arts actuels SKOL.
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(french)
Née à Montréal, Victoria Carrasco est une commissaire canadienne d’origine chilienne. De 2008 à 2025, elle a occupé les postes de commissaire, de gestion et leadership à PHI (anciennement Fondation PHI pour l'art contemporain), où elle a joué un rôle clé dans l'élaboration de la stratégie d'expérience des visiteurs de l'institution, la création d'initiatives de développement professionnel interne, le commissariat d'expositions et l'élargissement des publics par le développement de nouveaux formats d'exposition de programmes de médias temporels et performances.
Sa pratique curatoriale est ancrée dans la recherche et se concentre sur les pratiques de l'art contemporain, développées en étroite collaboration avec des artistes. Son expérience institutionnelle renforce son expertise en réalisation d'expositions et la dynamique entre l'œuvre d'art, l'espace et le public, privilégiant l'accessibilité, l'engagement et la réflexion critique. Elle demeure à l'écoute des contextes sociaux, culturels et spatiaux dans lesquels l'art est produit et expérimenté, et s'attache à son potentiel critique et transformateur qui perdure au-delà du cadre des galeries d'art.
Carrasco a été commissaire de SE SOUVENIR, PERFORMER, OUBLIER: relier l’espace par l’utopie - avec Kerstin Honeit, La Société des archives affectives (Fiona Annis and Véronique La Perrière M) et Rodolfo Andaur en 2023, co-commissaire avec Cheryl Sim de l'exposition Larry Achiampong: L’explorateur de reliques en 2022 et de la performance Dora García: Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years en 2021. Elle a également collaboré avec des artistes et des organismes internationaux, nationaux et locaux à Montréal pour la présentation de projections et de performances, animé des tables rondes et animé des conférences et des balados.
Elle est titulaire d’une maîtrise en commissariat de la performance de l’Institute of Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) de l'Université Wesleyan, d’un baccalauréat en design de l’environnement de l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) et d’un baccalauréat en beaux-arts avec concentration en photographie de l’Université Concordia. En 2019, l’Université Wesleyan lui a décerné la bourse de Leadership ICPP de la Fondation Ford. Elle est également co-éditrice de la publication semestrielle TURBA: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation et siège au conseil d'administration de VIVA! Art Action et du Centre des arts actuels SKOL.
Dora García: Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years
Exhibition, July 7 to August 1, 2021, PHI Foundation.
Dora García, Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years, 2017. Durational performance. Courtesy of Kerenidis Pepe Collection, Paris. Photo: Isabelle Arthuis
In Dora García’s Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years, two performers face each other, their gazes interlocked. Each is positioned inside one of two non-concentric circles. As one performer moves, the other must alter their position to maintain a constant distance, which they agreed to keep between them at the beginning of the performance. All of this happens while the performers maintain eye contact. At some point, however, this becomes impossible as the circles are not concentric. When this happens, the performers must start over in an endless game of continual negotiation.
The presentation of this performance by Dora García offers the Montreal community an opportunity to reconnect during the pandemic and to experience ways of healing through movement. The coronavirus crisis has created a breach between the current practices of the performers and those of the past, even as negotiations with regard to space, meaning, and touch redefine the future of live artworks. Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years provides a space of mediation and collaboration for performers to react to one another and communicate body-to-body as instructed by the artist, and for the public to reflect on the length of time that we have passed in confinement in our city.
This program was conceived and presented by PHI (formerly known as PHI Foundation).
Podcast
https://soundcloud.com/phi_ca/two-planets-have-been-colliding-for-thousands-of-years-a-conversation-with-dora-garcia
Biographies
Dora García
Dora García studied fine art at the University of Salamanca, Spain, and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. She lives and works in Barcelona. García uses the exhibition space as a platform to investigate the relationship between visitor, artwork, and place. To this end, the artist often draws on interactivity and performance. With only minimal changes, a presentation space is converted into a sensory experience, each visitor departing with altered perceptions, or, at the very least, a degree of skepticism. García represented Spain at the 54th Venice Biennale, in 2011. Selected exhibitions include: Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, 2015; Punkt Ø, Moss, Norway, 2015; Fonderie Darling, Montreal, 2014; documenta (13), Kassel, Germany, 2012; Frac Île-de-France, Paris, 2011; Gwangju Biennial, Korea, 2010, 2016; Lyon Biennial, France, 2009; Tate Modern, London, 2008; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2008; Mudam, Luxembourg, 2008; SMAK, Ghent, Belgium, 2006; MUSAC, León, Spain, 2004; and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, 2002.
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Performers
Dena DavidaDena Davida is an elder dance curator, scholar, artivist, ethnographer, educator, performer, writer and editor. Co-founder and curator of the Tangente dance presenting space (1980), she also initiated the Festival international de la nouvelle danse and the Candance network. She earned an M.A. in Movement Studies from Wesleyan University (1995), and her PhD in Études et pratiques des arts from the University of Québec in Montréal (2006), where she taught for 26 years. She has published widely on dance and culture and is the founder and managing editor for Turba: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation. denadavida.ca
Vina GohVina is a queer Chinese born in Singapore and based in Montréal, working as an interaction designer and dancer. She is thankful to have found certain members of the ballroom community in Montreal where she has been able to express and discover her queer identity and expression. As a designer she has worked on editorial for print and designing multimedia digital experiences. She is studying the use of creative technologies using visual node-based programs to create multimedia content. Some themes and styles she is currently exploring are hyper-surrealism, somatic movement as healing, the duality of the real and rendered, and vulnerability as transformation.
Erin HillErin Hill is a choreographer, performer, and writer. Through durational practices, she works with her body and life as a site of experimentation, noticing habits of perception and critically questioning from where these habits arise, as well as where they lead to. Within dance, as a broad category, Erin seeks ways to practice a transfeminist phenomenological approach to identity; one enfolded in fluid, horizontal and somatic states. In 2018 she received a Masters from Das Theatre (formerly DasArts). Erin currently makes home as a settler in the traditional gathering place Tiohtiá:ke, the unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, also known as Mooniyang in Anishinaabemowi, and Montréal. Since 2016, Erin has lived and worked in Amsterdam, and continues to nurture her relations there as a part-time home.
KìzisKìzis is from fields of manomin; tended, harvested and unforgotten.
Chéline LacroixChéline Lacroix is Métis Canadian emerging artist in contemporary dance. She was born in the unceded Indigenous lands of Nłeʔkepmx Tmíxʷ and the Syilx tmixʷ (Penticton, British Columbia, Canada). In 2014, she followed her passion of dance and choreography to the unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien'kehá:ka in Tiohtià:ke. (Mohawk nation in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.) After completing two years at Concordia University in the contemporary dance program, and graduating at École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal in 2019, she has been involved in multiple projects and performances while also continuing to develop her own choreographic identity.
Priscilla Opazo CastilloPriscilla Opazo Castillo was born in Chile, and has recently moved to Montreal. She studied pedagogy in physical education with a specialty in infantile motor skills, and has been practicing sport and dance since her childhood. Castillo is interested in bodily expression and the research of the freedom of the movement of the body. In Chile, she participated in various street interventions, the diffusion and creation of spaces allocated to sports and artistic practices, through workshops and social projects linked to schools in situations of social vulnerability. Since arriving in Montreal, she has participated in Collectifs Artistique Nómade and is currently part of Colectiva Tribu, a self-directed and self-organized group of women, immigrants, friends and feminists, to share the social issues experienced as immigrant women.
Simon PortigalTrained at L’EDCMTL and at P.A.R.T.S, Simon Portigal has been based in Montreal since 2011. He has worked with Public Recordings/Ame Henderson, Brendan Fernandes, Chris Curreri, Eroca Nicols, Amelia Ehrhardt, Andrew Tay, Sasha Kleinplatz, Heidi Strauss, Adam Kinner, Ellen Furey, Dancemakers/Michael Trent, Stephen Thompson, Dana Michel, Dana Gingras, Annie MacDonell, and Isabel Lewis. After his most recent iterative solo work, lcr.i/2069/2015-2019, Simon will show a new group work, lcr.i/group/2019-2022, in May 2022 in Montreal. In collaboration with five Montreal-based performers, lcr.i/group/2019-2022 will experiment with choreography as a vulgarized social algorithm. He has shown his work in Toronto, Montreal, New York, Berlin, and Reykjavik.
Kim L. RouchdyKim L. Rouchdy is a multidisciplinary artist from Montreal working in the dance world. She is alternately, a performer, choreographer and designer. She completed a BAC in contemporary dance at Concordia University in 2015. Her work as a choreographer is greatly influenced by her studies in scenography at Cégep de St-Hyacinthe and at the National Theater School of Canada. In 2015, she presented her first show Lumen Extra Terram during the Phenomena Festival. Since then, she has participated in several residencies as a choreographer (Top Chrono, La Mi-Lune by Fleur d´Asphalte, Nous sommes ici de La Serre les arts vivants). In parallel, she is also making her way as a performer working with various emerging choreographers such as Teoma Naccarato (III), Hélène Rémoué (It Will Take Women), Ariane Dessaulles (TOPO), Chloé Bourdages-Roy (Je fuis, j’oublie, je reste and Décalage vers le rouge) and Catherine Laframboise Desjardins (Violences ordinaires, Tacit Space).
Maxine SegalowitzMaxine Segalowitz is a queer, Jewish dance artist currently living in Tiotià:ke (Montréal), where she has immersed herself in creative communities as a dancer, choreographer, clown, drag+cabaret performer, and stand-up sleeper. As a dancer, she’s notably worked with Helen Simard, Yannick Desranleau+Chloë Lum and Ingrid Bachmann, performing locally and internationally. Maxine continues developing her solo-show Sexpectations, a reimagining of her experiences working as a stripper, focusing on navigating agency with coercion and blurring lines between fantasy and reality. She has presented versions of Sexpectations around Montreal at Studio 303, Festival Bouge d’ici, and in FRINGE festivals across Canada, receiving multiple nominations for Outstanding Choreography. Maxine’s somatics teaching/facilitating experience has recently bloomed with co-conspirator Aurora Prelević, with events at the Fonderie Darling, and their regular weekly outdoor teaching practice, Somatic Saturdays | Lez samedis somatique.
Florencia Sosa ReyFlorencia Sosa Rey is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Moonyiang/Montreal. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Concordia University (2015). Questioning herself about the socio-cultural history that her body objects that surround her holds, she explores the notion of trace to communicate a relationship with oneself and with the world in constant transformation. Her projects are articulated through performance art, drawing, textile, the use of raw materials, drawing, video and collaboration. Her work has been presented at Concordia University’s Webster Library (MTL, 2013), at the artist-run centre Skol (MTL, 2015/2019), Galerie Les Territoires (MTL, 2015), artist run center Articule (MTL, 2015-2016), at Taleamor Park Residency, (Indiana, 2016), at Livart, (MTL- 2017), at Saga Residency, (Iceland, 2018), Casa del Popolo (MTL, 2019), Gallery 44 (performance with Ève Tagny, TO, 2019). Her collaborative work with the Auto-workshops project has been presented at the Darling Foundry (MTL, 2019), at FIFA (MTL, 2019), at VIVA! Art action (MTL, 2018) and Art Nomade (Chicoutimi, 2019). Her work with the collective Womxn Walk the Walk has been presented at Concordia University (2019), SBC Gallery (2021) and Place des Festivals, Montreal (2021). As an interpreter and performer, she has worked for Ève Tagny (Summer [Gestures to Reignites Fossilized Landscapes] (video), MACM, 2020), and English Roses (to come - MOMENTA, 2021) and for Olivia Boudreau (Lying Bodies, Standing Bodies, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, 2014). florenciasosarey.com