Street Actions: Women Performing in Montreal and Toronto in the 1970s
A talk by Didier Morelli
April 2, 2-4 pm
McGill University
680 Sherbrooke W, Rm. 1041
Street Actions: Women Performing in Montreal and Toronto in the 1970s examines how women performance artists moved in the city, imagining alternate modes of embodiment in Montréal and Toronto between 1970 and 1980. The short, ten-year timeframe accounts for the flourishing of Canadian conceptual and performance art in the 1970s, a period marked by artists moving outside of the established boundaries of their studios and white-walled galleries to adopt the streets as a primary site of experimentation and public presentation. Artists in question include Françoise Sullivan, Rita Letendre, Vera Frenkel, Johanna Householder, Elizabeth Chitty, and Marshalore amongst others. How did this unique convergence between the moving bodies of women performance artists, civic building projects and urban transformations, and the politics of the Canadian and Québécois Women’s Movement (1960-1985) engender an era of change?
This lecture is based on three years of FRQSC Postdoctoral Research in the Department of Art History at Concordia University and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (2022-2025). It serves as the basis for an upcoming exhibition at the artist-run-centre Optica (winter 2026) and a forthcoming book project with Concordia University Press.
Didier Morelli is a curator, performance and art historian, cultural critic and visual artist. His Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture (FRQSC) Postdoctoral Fellowship, which he holds at Concordia University and the CCA examines how second-wave feminist performances subverted urban functionalism by imagining alternate modes of embodiment in Montreal and Toronto during the 1970s. Previously the associate editor at Espace art actuel, his writing has also been published in Art Journal, CTR: Canadian Theatre Review, C Magazine, CBC Arts, Esse Arts + Opinions, RACAR, Spirale, and TDR: The Drama Review. Morelli will be the curator of the 2026 MANIF, the Quebec City Biennial, which is titled “Briser la glace / Splitting Ice.”