Tanya Mars (Early Bird)

Ironic to Iconic: The performance works of Tanya Mars

+ book launch

Tanya Mars is a feminist performance and video artist who has been involved in the Canadian art scene since 1973. She was a founding member and director of Powerhouse Gallery (La Centrale) in Montréal (the first women’s art gallery in Canada), editor of Parallelogramme magazine for 13 years, and very active in ANNPAC (the Association of National Non-Profit Artist-run Centres) for 15 years. She has also been an active member of other arts organizations since the early 70s. Her work is often characterized as visually rich layers of spectacular, satirical feminist imagery. She has performed widely across Canada, in Valparaiso, Chile and Helsinki. Her most recent major work, a 7-hour durational performance entitled The Tyranny of Bliss involved over 30 performers who created 14 tableaux in and around Queen’s Park in Toronto. She is co-editor with Johanna Householder of OCAD of Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian women (2004), published by YYZ books. She is also a member of the 7a*11d Collective that produces a bi-annual International Festival of Performance Art in Toronto. She currently teaches performance art and video at the University of Toronto Scarborough and is part of the graduate faculty at the University of Toronto. In 2004 she was named artist of the year by the Untitled Arts Awards in Toronto. In 2008 she will be International Artist in Residence in Paris, artist-in-residence at Lilith Performance Theatre in Malmo, Sweden and is the recipient of a 2008 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. In addition, a book on her work, edited by Paul Couillard, Ironic to Iconic: The Performance Works of Tanya Mars, published by FADO, receives its UK launch post-discussion.