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Xenia Benivolski

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Xenia Benivolski
Born1983
Moscow
NationalityCanadian
Alma materKU Leuven
Occupations
  • Art curator
  • writer
Years active2008-present

Xenia Benivolski is a curator of contemporary art, sound and music, an art critic and a writer. She founded several collectives and art galleries in Toronto, including The White House,[1] 8-11 gallery[2] The Feminist Art Museum,[3] and SUGAR. Benivolski often lectures about her work[4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]. She contributes to e-flux,[10] Artforum[11] Frieze, Texte Zur Kunst and the Wire[12]

Curatorial Projects

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Benivolski has curated art exhibitions and projects with a focus on sound art, music, instruments and composition, the politics of collectivity, and labour. In 2008, she co-founded The White House Studio Project. The White House was recognized as a valuable space for culture in Toronto by Making Space for Culture, a project led by the City of Toronto.[13] In 2014, Benivolski co-founded 8–11, an art collective and gallery in Toronto's Chinatown.[14] The gallery hosted some of the first exhibitions for artists Azza El Siddique, Tau Lewis, and Lotus L. Kang. In 2016, Benivolski co-founded The Feminist Art Museum with Su-Ying Lee.[15] The goal of the project was to bridge feminist art institutions in North America, and included exhibitions, talks, workshops, and performances.[3] In 2017, Benivolski was one of four international curators at the 7th Beijing International Art Biennale.[16][17]

Benivolski is the grandniece of Ukrainian revolutionary writer and journalist Mikhail Baitalsky[18]. Her work is informed by her upbringing in Soviet Russia, and her cultural heritage as a Tatar. Benivolski co-founded SUGAR Contemporary in 2019, a contemporary art gallery near Sugar Beach in Toronto. There she curated the inaugural exhibition Pickle Politics by Slavs and Tatars.[19]. In 2020, Benivolski curated the first solo exhibition in Canada of work by Latvian-born, Montreal-based artist Zanis Waldheims (1909–93).[20]. In 2022 she co-directed the visual art residency The Weapon of Theory as a Conference of Birds at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity with Ayesha Hameed, Jota Mombaça, and Suzanne Kite. In 2024 she received the War Art Fellowship from the National Gallery of Canada[21].

From 2021-2024 she collaborated with sociologist Max Haiven on Worker as Futurist, a speculative academic project that enlisted rank-and-file amazon workers to write science fiction, which was published in the volume The World After Amazon. The project was widely disseminated in articles in the Jacobin[22] and the Los Angeles Review of Books[23]. Benivolski gave a keynote presentation on the project at Georgia Tech's Space Research Initiative[24].

She is a curator and editor of the e-flux project You Can't Trust Music,[25], a web-based art and music project that connects artist and musicians through thematic programs featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto, Shiro Takatani, Julieta Aranda, Ayesha Hameed, Felicia Atkinson, Steve Reich, Elin Már Øyen Vister and others. She has been a lecturing professor in art theory at York University, the University of Toronto and OCAD University.

References

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  1. ^ Titanic, Sara (2010-01-01). "The White House". NOW Magazine. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  2. ^ https://8eleven.org/
  3. ^ a b "Feminist Art Museum". Temporary Art Review. 2017-11-22. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  4. ^ CCS Bard Lecture Series
  5. ^ https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/preemptive-listening-day-three
  6. ^ https://tiff.net/events/tokyo-melody-a-film-about-ryuichi-sakamoto-with-xenia-benivolski
  7. ^ "Do Rocks Listen". AGYU. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
  8. ^ https://oca.no/programme/public-talk-with-curator-xenia-benivolski
  9. ^ https://artisnaples.org/events/museum-lecture.2425.1207.2
  10. ^ https://www.e-flux.com/journal/115/374619/you-can-t-trust-music/
  11. ^ "Xenia Benivolski on Artforum". Artforum. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
  12. ^ "Xenia Benivolski on Raven Chacon". the Wire. Retrieved 2022-09-24.
  13. ^ City of Toronto. "Making Space for Culture" (PDF). toronto.ca. Retrieved March 17, 2021.
  14. ^ "6 New Toronto Art Spaces to Watch". canadianart.ca. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  15. ^ "Quick Fire: 5 Questions with Feminist Art Museum". Gardiner Museum. 2017-08-16. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  16. ^ The Organizing Committee of Beijing International Art Biennale (2016). "Regulations of the 7th Beijing International Art Biennale, China 2017". www.aiap-iaa.org.
  17. ^ "the 7th Beijing International Art Biennale：The Silk Road and World Civilizations". e.cflac.org.cn. Retrieved 2021-03-25.
  18. ^ https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/book-series/notebooks-for-the-grandchildren-recollections-of-a-supporter-of-the-marxist-opposition-to-stalin-who-survived-the-stalin-terror/
  19. ^ Polina, Lasenko (2019). "Pickle Politics: Review" (PDF). www.sfu.ca. Retrieved March 25, 2021.
  20. ^ "Zanis Waldheims – Canadian Art". canadianart.ca. Retrieved 2021-03-28.
  21. ^ https://www.beaux-arts.ca/node/322171
  22. ^ https://jacobin.com/2023/09/amazon-workers-sci-fi-writing-bezos-imagination-speculative-future/
  23. ^ ttps://lareviewofbooks.org/article/is-amazon-the-borg-we-asked-their-workers/
  24. ^ https://calendar.gatech.edu/event/2024/04/04/challenges-and-ethics-space-exploration-0
  25. ^ "yctm.e-flux.com".
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