Nava Waxman is an Israeli born, Canadian multi-disciplinary artist whose works traverse performance, painting, choreography, moving-image, video and installation. Her practice-based research addresses the transitory nature of gestures within the complex artistic, cultural, philosophical, and personal registers. Nava received her MFA in Visual Arts from York University, Toronto, and her BA in Social Science & communication from OPEN University in Tel-Aviv. In 2019, she received the Joseph Armand Bombardier Scholarship Award from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for her graduate research at York University. In 2018, she was awarded the Ontario Art Council Exhibition Assistance Grant for her project Choreographed Marks. In 2016, Nava was awarded the Canada Art Council Travel Grant for her collaborative project Elements Of Chance.
Nava is currently a creative research fellow resident at the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence in Toronto.
In my research and creative work, I explore the transitory nature of gestures and their manifolded implications. My approach aims to expand awareness of gestures within the complex of artistic, cultural, philosophical and personal registers. Gesture denotes a kind of inscription, a tracing or marking in space and time. My practice based research considers the body both as a creative agent and an archival site. By that, I seek to acknowledge the body with the role of a carrier, one that is inscribed with unique, complicated histories that can be creatively elucidated through non-verbal performative means. My methods emphasize process, performative gesture and documentation. I use various conceptual, choreographic and performance recording techniques that combine dance, objects, painting, and space that are mediated through various digital apparatuses. Through these materialities and performative strategies, I explore themes of movement, temporalities and embodied experiences. With an attention to the articulation of gestures, I investigate how gestural inscriptions migrate and transition while seeking to study and explore their marginality, (im)materiality and (in)visibility as they cross boundaries of media, bodies, time and space. Poetically and critically, I consider the interrelations between performative action and inscription, while addressing the emergence of the body as an archival site through which the very essence of gesture passes.
Contact:
Education
2020 - MFA in Visual Arts, York University, Toronto, Canada
2007 - BA in Social Sciences & Communication, OPEN University, Tel-Aviv, Israel
Awards\Grants\Fellowship
2020 - Master Thesis Nomination, Graduate program, York University Visual Arts & Art History
2019 The Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship-Master's SSHRC
2019 - CIBC Graduate Research Grant - nomination
2018 Ontario Art Council - Exhibition Assistance Grant
2017 Ontario Art Council - Exhibition Assistance Grant
2016 Canada Council for the Arts - Travel Grant Recipient
Selected Solo exhibition
2020 Nava Waxman: Variations on Broken Lines, Gales Gallery, York University
2019 Nava Waxman: Choreographed Marks, The Varley Art Gallery of Markham
2018 Nava Waxman: Polyphonies, Sheldon Rose Gallery, Toronto
2016 Nava Waxman: Untitled wall, WallSpace Gallery, Ottawa
2015 Nava Waxman: Traces - JulieM Gallery, Toronto
2014 Nava Waxman: In between Rituals - WallSpace Gallery, Ottawa Canada
2013 Nava Waxman: Personifications - JulieM Gallery, Toronto, Canada Catalogue
Selected Group
2018 Knowing River - Body Notes: Ronley Teper, Lo Bil, Nava Waxman, Sheldon Rose Gallery, Toronto
2019 - Open Work, Nava Waxman, Cinzia Cavalieri, Mahsa Alikhani, Sebastian
Oreamuno & Lo Bil
2017 Strings - Interventions, Alfred Institute, Tel-Aviv Uri Levinson, Adaya Godlevesky and Shlomit
Carmeli
2016 Transitions, Nava Waxman & Adaya Godlevsky, Petach-Tikva Museum of art, Israel
2016 Elements Of Chance - Interventions, Draw To Perform Symposium, CrowsNest Gallery 2016,
London, curated by Ram Samocha
2017 Space Within, CONTACT Photography Festival, Walnut Contemporary, Toronto
2012 Contemporary Women Artists XVI – Women’s Caucus for Art, St. Louis, USA
2011 Anong Beam & Nava Waxman: Connections Within Context, Earl Court Gallery, Hamilton.
2011 Consequential Fusion: Message In Wax - Art Centre Morro Bay, CA
2011 Diary Pieces,The Art House, Wakefield, England
2010 Light On - Hovinkartano Art Centre for the Arts, Hauho, Finland
2009 Insomnia, Red Head Gallery
2007 The Legacy of the Circle -McKay Art Centre, Markham Canada
Teaching experience
2020 Artist facilitator, Saagajiwe - The centre for Indigenous Research Creation, in the
Faculty of Communication and Design, Ryerson University
2019 Teaching Assistant, York University, Toronto (Photography)
2019 Teaching Assistant, York University, Toronto (History Of Design)
Artistic Residency
2020 - The laboratory for artistic intelligence, Toronto
Research Presentation
2020 PRACTICE / PRATIQUE The 14th Annual Concordia University Art History Graduate Student's
Association (AHGSA) Graduate Symposium, Montreal. AHGSA Concordia University
2020 Hindsight 20/20: Context & Meaning XIX , The Graduate Visual Culture Association 19th
annual graduate conference, Queen’s University
Publication
Waymark: MFA Visual Art Digital Publication, York University, 2020
Gateways to Drawing by Stephen Gardner. Nava Waxman:Elements Of Chance, Thames &
Hudson, 2018
Untitled Wall, Nava Waxman & Nikos Kunt, , 2016
Traces: Poems to Paintings By James Wagner & Nava Waxman, Ceratonia Siliqua Press, 2015