Curatorial Statements Archives

A Celebration of Audacious Live Art

November 20, 2024

A man dressed for winter stares dead ahead with piercing eyes. He sits at a snow-white table scattered with miniature trees and a few tiny houses. His arm, which rests on the table, is an extension of the landscape, with little houses and trees sprouting from him as though he were a mountain.

By Gabrielle Martin The 20th anniversary PuSh Festival is a celebration of audacious live art. These are performances and immersive experiences that shift our paradigms for creative expression and how we relate to one another. […]

Invoking an Alchemy of Transformation —a curatorial statement from Gabrielle Martin

November 22, 2023

The curation of this program draws inspiration from the linguistic root of “care” in “curate”, with a definition that encompasses self-reflection, responsiveness, and social accountability. It is also informed by my own sense of urgency, […]

A Manifesto for the Necessity of Live Art — a curatorial statement by Gabrielle Martin

November 22, 2022

Is art essential? Over the course of recent crises, the necessity of art has been questioned. The 2023 PuSh Festival has been programmed with necessity in mind. These are works we need in order to […]

2022 PuSh Festival Curatorial Statement

November 24, 2021

PuSh has always been an accelerator, animating our imaginations and transforming our perspectives. The 2022 PuSh program is a timely catalyst, facilitating an emergence from our social hibernation with works that incept, evoke, activate, and […]

PuSh Rally Curatorial Statement

January 01, 2021

Hey. It’s hard to know where to start. We agreed to join the PuSh team as Rally curators after the organizational changes that happened internally in the spring and early summer of last year. Those […]

Connecting to the Ecstatic Power of Dance and Music in Attractor – A curatorial statement by Joyce Rosario

January 08, 2019

Framed as a “powerful, secular, present-day ritual,” Attractor is inspired by the Javanese tradition of entering trance through dance and music. Works that ignite meaningful experiences and important discussions about the world around us is what inspires […]

Giving Voice to History, Culture and Climate in Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools – A curatorial statement by Roy Surette

January 07, 2019

In the Inuktitut language, when a knife is dull, it is said to “have no face”. The word “Kiinalik” translates to mean the knife is sharp – or, “it has a face”.

Encountering the Uncanny in Heart of the Scarecrow: A curatorial statement by Amy Kazymerchyk

December 07, 2018

People often describe an encounter as uncanny when it feels familiar yet is unrecognizable. The term for this phenomenon is a rough translation of the German words for homely and unhomely. Uncanny poignantly describes Guatemalan-Canadian […]

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