Short biography (FR / EN)
Avery Zhao-Djokic s’exprime à travers la peinture, la sculpture et des actions/ interventions. Elle pratique aussi la peinture en direct en tandem avec des spectacles de musique et de danse. Elle est la directrice artistique de l’ensemble multidisciplinaire Art Crush | Ensembl’arts, et enseigne les arts visuels à CAMMAC. Bénéficiant d’une bourse, elle a effectué une résidence d’un mois au Centre Banff afin de mener des recherches sur la notation visuelle de performances multidisciplinaires. Ses projets collaboratifs ont été présentés à la Salle Bourgie (MBAM), à la Galerie d’art d’Ottawa et diffusés en direct par CBC Ici Musique.
Avery a été conférencier invité à plusieurs tables rondes et conférences d’artistes. Elle a été invitée en tant que conférencière à « Son histoire: Les femmes professionnelles de la scène artistique montréalaise », un débat organisé par CUJAH Concordia, et « Ensemble dans un projet multidisiciplinaire » diffusé en direct par l’Eté musical Barachois. L’activisme dans les arts a conduit Avery à la composition actuelle du conseil d’administration du RAAV (Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels) et du COVA-DAAV (Droits d’auteur d’arts visuels).
Avery Zhao-Djokic’s practice includes painting, sculpture and action research.
Her painting series are often documentary or commemorative, and her live painting is often in response to music and dance performances. Avery views her work in live painting as coming from a ‘painter-scribe’, creating immediate and archival documentation. Her work in live painting has been presented at the Salle Bourgie, Musée des beaux-arts de Montreal, and broadcast by CBC Ici Musique. Themes addressed in her sculpture and action research often include economic and work situations and land ownership.
Avery is the artistic director of Ensembl’arts and a visual arts instructor at CAMMAC. She recently co-curated an Art Matters exhibition ‘Art Crush in Time’ at the artist-run centre Articule. On scholarship she completed a month-long residency at the Banff Centre to research visual scribing of multidisciplinary performances. Avery has been invited as guest speaker for ‘Her Story: Professional Women in Montreal’s Art Scene’, a panel talk organized in 2018 by CUJAH, Yiara Magazine, and Her Campus Concordia. Activism in the arts has led Avery to a two-year appointment at FASA (2015 – 2017) and current board membership at RAAV (Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Québec) and CARCC (Copyright Visual Arts).
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Full biography
Avery was born in Beijing, China, and at the age of five her family moved to Ottawa, Ontario. She has studied Design at Ryerson University and from 2005 to 2008 she studied at the Grande Ecole ESMOD in Paris, France, where she graduated with honours in Fashion Design. For several years following she worked as a fashion designer in Paris and Montreal for major international brands, her work leading her to research trips around Europe, Asia and the USA.
After leaving the fashion industry to pursue a second degree in Fine Arts, she has been working part time at the Institute for Urban Futures, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University. Avery was a coordinator for FASA from 2015-2017 and is a board member for RAAV, the Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Québec. Since 2016 Avery has also been working on R & D within the Topological Media Lab for the Solar Decathlon Competition (project TEAM MTL), a joint collaboration between McGill University and Concordia University.
In 2013 Avery founded the on-going multidisciplinary project Art Crush with violinist Marc Djokic. Inspired by the patterns, constraints, notation and arrangement systems of the music and dance disciplines, she explores these in her own practice of live painting alongside music and dance performances. During these performances she views her role as ‘the painter as scribe’, engaged in reactionary painting. In 2016 she completed a two-week residency, ‘Tactile Museum’, at the Montreal artist centre Eastern Bloc in collaboration with a dance choreographer where movements affected a hanging network of lines in space. In 2017 Art Crush performed at the Salle Bourgie in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, in collaboration with innovative Baroque group Ensemble Caprice. The foundation Mécénat Musica noncerto has produced several videos for Art Crush, filmed in Montreal and Fredericton, NB. In early 2018 Avery co-curated an Art Matters exhibit at the Articule gallery around this theme of multidisciplinary performance, ‘Art Crush in Time’.
During a month-long residency at the Banff Centre Avery continued her research on the Art Crush project, creating dozens of live-painted artworks and a set of specialized painting tools. This work, entitled ‘The Painter as Scribe’, was exhibited at the VAV Gallery in Fall 2017.
Avery recently premiered a 25 minute live-painting video commission by pianist David Jalbert, to visualize his recording of Phrygian Gates by composer John Adams.
In April 2022 Avery will be presenting a live-painting performance in collaboration with a musician and a dancer, a multidisciplinary show presented by the Ottawa New Music Creators at the Ottawa Art Gallery.