OCAD U CAREER LAUNCHERS

Career Launcher: Artist Project

Description

OCAD University’s Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers is thrilled to partner with the Artist Project to present Kevin Holliday’s installation and performance piece, Rub, as part of the Career Launchers program. 

Kevin's project was one of the main attractions of the fair. The artist had chosen to transform himself into a living statue of the Laughing Buddha. Viewers were invited to interact with the statue in any way that they saw fit, thus forming a sort of echo chamber for their actions: by interacting with the statue, they were essentially performing two different acts at once, each with their own prescribed set of customs.

Kevin Holliday is a biracial Chinese Canadian artist based out of Toronto. Their work is an investigation of the confluence between identity and popular culture. Their work is attempting to explore, and explicate, the coerced performativity of modern life, and the impact this has on self-conception. Holliday works in multiple media, video, installation, collage, etc, but always with a leaning towards the performative. Kevin hopes that his work creates a discourse about the increasing commodification of the self in contemporary society.