The artists in Re/search Re/surgence work with knowledge and knowing as embedded in body, memory and land. The image and evocation of water illustrates the way place-based and embodied knowledge can re-emerge into a vital and generative flow following long periods of obscurity, erasure and cover.

Guadalupe Martinez’s installations, projections, printed matter and interventions will reference water as a public fountain and a structural leak to activate her relationship with Or Gallery its past and present environs as sites of research, experimentation, gathering and performance.

Martinez will also work with her ongoing collective project, CUERPO who practice engaging radical presence through research, movement and the activation of the body as the centre of knowing and learning. CUERPO will present a series of gallery interventions as well as participatory workshops that will explore notions of somatic and spiritual activism during sessions that combine performance art theory, spiritual traditions of meditation and body awareness with principles from therapeutic practices such as person centered expressive arts, authentic movement, Alexander technique and eutony.

Olivia Whetung’s work tibewh, is an Anishinaabeemowin term for a ‘shoreline that one is in or on,’ and features a series of beadworks illustrating birds’ eye perspectives of the lift locks comprising the 386 kilometre-long Trent Severn Waterway. These locks facilitate boat transport from one body of water to another, but their construction flooded parts of Whetung’s home territory, dislocating the Anishinaabe place-names based on the original waterways and irreparably altering the Curve Lake First Nation’s relationship to its land and waterscapes. Whetung’s beadwork practice is both a rooting in Anishinaabe ancestral practices and a revitalization of decolonized knowledge systems.

CUERPO Workshops

Guadalupe Martinez is offering two movement workshops that are free and open to the public. The workshops will explore notions of somatic and spiritual activism during sessions that combine performance art, spiritual traditions of meditation and body awareness with principles from therapeutic practices such as person cantered expressive arts, authentic movement, Alexander technique and eutony.

The process does not propose a unique objective or result, other than learning ways to explore forms of radical presence, a form of sensorial awareness and embodied research that may transform individual and collective experiences of everyday life.

Thursday, February 13, 3-5pm
Friday, February 14, 3-5pm

All bodies and levels of experience are welcome.
Bring warm comfortable clothes, water and snacks.
The groups will be small: 4 – 8 participants.

Sign up and confirm your registration by emailing your name, contact phone and email to or@orgallery.org with the subject line: CUERPO

CUERPO Performances

Following scores, writing, movement sequences, somatic techniques and embodied inquiry developed during the workshops, CUERPO will present a series of performances to take place in the gallery on the following dates. All performances are at 2pm.

Saturday, February 15
Thursday, February 20
Friday, February 21
Thursday, February 27 – CANCELLED
Friday, February 28

Thursday, March 5
Friday, March 6
Thursday, March 12
Friday, March 13

Performers: Guadalupe Martinez, Stephanie Bueno, Chipo Chipaziwa, Sai Di, Jelena Markovic, Angelica Poversky, Dalia Shalabi, David Ezra Wang, and Yasmine Whaley-Kalaroa.