michelle peraza

Artist Statement
Rooted in autobiography and family stories, brown affect and performativity, agnotology (the study of cultural ignorance) and semiotics, Mesoamerican cosmovision and Graeco-Roman Antiquity, plant medicine and prayer, ancestral memory and dreamworlds, Empire and periphery zones, Michelle’s practice explores an ambiguous ontology; a way of being in an in-between state. Often working in doubling and diptychs in portraiture, flora, fauna, geologic and geometric forms, dualism is central to her practice as inamic and relational forms. Through research, process, ritual, dreams and trance meditation, she explores material practice grounded in Brujería (witchcraft) and devotional aesthetics, intending to use creativity as a method to (re)world-build and maintain personal wholeness despite huecos (holes), golpes (blows) and tristeza (sadness). Her practice is cross disciplinary, working across painting, drawing, textile, gilding, natural dyeing, pigment making, site-specific installation and self limpias (cleansings), taking inspiration from Mesoamerican metaphysics and her education in Classical Studies to create new mythos that invokes interconnectedness with the cosmos, devotion and reverence to existence, self-healing and transformation.

Biography 
Michelle Peraza (b. 1991, Windsor) is a cross disciplinary artist of Cuban and Costa Rican descent. She holds a BA from Western University, a BFA from OCAD University and an MFA from York University. She has completed residencies at Mauser EcoHouse (Puntarenas, Costa Rica), Vermont Studio Centre (Vermont, United States), Arquetopia (Puebla, Mexico), Art Gallery of Ontario (Ontario, Canada), Sustainable Colour Lab Summer Institute at OCAD University (Ontario, Canada), Gibraltor Point Centre for the Arts (Mnisiing/Toronto Islands Canada) and upcoming in the Faculty of Art's Summer Institute at OCAD University (Ontario, Canada). She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards including support from Craft Ontario, Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Arts Council, Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Joe Plaskett Foundation. She has exhibited in public and artist-run galleries including Maison de la Culture Claude-Léveillée, Niagara Artists Centre, Cambridge Art Galleries, Sur Gallery, TAP Centre for Creativity, Guelph Civic Museum and upcoming at Tom Thomson Gallery and Neutral Ground. She teaches in the Faculty of Art at OCAD University and works/lives in Toronto/Tkaronto.