Professional Development Workshop
How do you balance career management, well-being, and organization on a daily basis as an artist? A professional development workshop in the form of an open discussion, where three professionals/artists from the cultural sector will share their experiences and advice.
Description
This workshop will explore the speakers’ professional and artistic experiences, addressing the human side of being an artist, how to develop your artistic direction, how to integrate your personal life into your work when art is an integral part of life, and how to find a balance between these different aspects. The speakers, who come from diverse artistic backgrounds will offer their perspectives on these issues.
- Charo Foo Tai Wei – Choreographer and dancer, exploring classical Chinese dance and butô.
- Khosro Berahmandi – Visual artist and former artistic director of Festival Accès Asie.
- Sarah-Yang Baud – Cultural worker, involved in artist management and promotion.
A two-part discussion
- Part One: Exchange between the speakers on their professional and artistic experiences, the development of their artistic direction, and the integration of artistic practice into their personal lives.
- Second part: Exchange with the audience to respond to questions, share practical advice, and enrich the conversation.
Charo Foo Tai Wei
Trained in Chinese classical dance, Charo Foo Tai Wei attended L’École de danse de Québec for contemporary dance studies. From 2007 to 2013, she acted, danced and choreographed in Robert Lepage’s The Blue Dragon (Ex Machina). In 2015, she discovered butoh with Natsu Nakajima, Yukio Waguri, Atsushi Takenouchi, and Yumiko Yoshioka. Fascinated by the quest to explore one’s trauma with organic movements, she intertwines classical Chinese dance and butoh to develop her own choreographic language. Her work Jin Gu Bang (The Golden Stick Ritual) was selected for the CanAsian Dance Festival 2019, which was co-presented by Tangente and Festival Accès Asie. In recent years, she has collaborated with Jérôme Bel, Sarah Dell’Ava, Stephanie Fromentin, Brice Noeser, Amrita Choudhury, and Liliane St-Arnaud. Recently, she made her first Stratford Festival appearances as a dancer and actor in Salesman in China and Wendy and Peter Pan.
Khosro Berahmandi
This presentation of Khosro and his work is written by art critic Rajath Suri.
Multidisciplinary artist Khosro Berahmandi, of Iranian origin, arrived in Canada in 1983 at the age of 22. He currently lives and works in Tiohtiá:ke-Mooniyang-Montreal. Khosro first studied visual arts at Concordia University in Montreal and then at the University of Paris VIII. A prolific and renowned artist, he has produced over fifty group and solo exhibitions to date, as part of projects carried out in Canada, Europe and the United States.
Khosro is the recipient of the Charles Biddle Award in 2022 for his contribution to the cultural and artistic development of Quebec society. For the past 25 years, he has been actively involved in the life of Festival Accès Asie, a multidisciplinary arts festival based in Montreal that promotes Asian arts, cultures and stories. He has worked for the festival as curator, general director and artistic director since 1997. Khosro left his position in 2023 to focus on his artistic projects.
Khosro Berahmandi’s art embodies a microcosmic singularity, derived from a personal mythology echoing the pictorial approach of Iranian miniature painting iconography. His creative trajectory delineates an exquisite aesthetic embodied in the perpetual labyrinth of aggregated and enigmatic beings, a semi-figurative “bestiary” that challenges and fascinates the gaze of the spectators, as the predominant aesthetic aspects born of Eurocentrism pale in contrast to his signature innovations in leitmotif, poetic symbolism and robustness of individual composition. The successive series, whether on wood or paper, evoke the sublime quality of a personal mythology that exceeds conventional iconography. The works have a universal appeal in their ambiguity of immediate reference, as if echoing a lost text once spoken and now whispered.
In the renderings of his poetic imagination, the artist gravitates, physically and psychically, in the detail: the meticulousness of the line, the intensity of the composition and the proximity of the material. A detail that expresses a simultaneous spiritual ascension towards an intuitive augury of the sacred with the anonymity of a silent shaman. Once connected to Khosro’s images, we suddenly encounter a personal cosmology that turned out to be the visual itinerary of a self-possessed journey, a tributary that was deeply inspired by various convergences, intersections and sources.
The four-decade exile from his native Iran, where he has never returned since, may suggest the itinerancy of a sensitive and serene individual, dispossessed in some way. However, without diaspora or nostalgia, the artist has embarked on an individual path of wandering that leads him towards the image of what is becoming his own territory.
His creations silently testify to the singular and subjective reality taken in hand, timeless and resonant with visual components of universal themes. They suggest, through lucid speculations, that as iconography fails and the historicism of art collapses, we might come closer to a reality that reconciles the animal and the vegetable with the human.
The hidden cartography in Khosro Berahmandi’s dense but brilliant compositions echoes the eternal threads as the fabric of his singular sublime cosmos is woven where his brushes reign.
Sarah-Yang Baud
Fueled by an insatiable curiosity and a passion for art in all its forms, Sarah-Yang Baud, also known as Gotaname, is a multidisciplinary artist in constant exploration. Of Chinese descent and raised in France, she first discovered music through her piano studies at the conservatory.
Later, her love for aesthetics and creation led her to applied arts, which she studied for three years. But for her, art is not confined to a single medium—it is movement, sound, and image. Since arriving in Montreal in October 2023, she has been building bridges between disciplines, cultures, and communities. Her energy finds expression through waacking, a dance where elegance meets power.
Committed both on stage and behind the scenes, she plays a key role at the Festival Accès Asie, helping to showcase Asian artistic voices. Her involvement on the board of directors of MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) further reflects her dedication to supporting diversity and innovation in the arts.
Always in motion, Gotaname continues to carve her path, constantly seeking to make the space between image, sound, and the moving body vibrate.
With
Charo Foo Tai Wei
Khosro Berahmandi
Sarah-Yang Baud
