Olivia Shortt

Artist in Residence | June 2nd – July 2nd, 2024

Olivia Shortt is a weirdo, noisemaker, video artist, wannabe fashion icon, curator, and troublemaker. Shortt’s work is inspired by their love of camp, drag, and gender expression and its relation to Indigeneity.

Highlights include Shortt’s world premiere performance (Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC) of  ‘For Olivia Shortt’ by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon (as part of Chacon’s series ‘For Zitkala-Ša’ as featured at The 2022 Whitney Biennial); their Lincoln Center (NYC) debut playing percussion in 2018 with the International Contemporary Ensemble (Shortt is NOT a percussionist FYI); their film debut in Atom Egoyan’s 2019 film ‘Guest of Honour’; and recording an album of Robert Lemay’s music two kilometers underground in the SnoLAB, a Neutrino laboratory in Sudbury, Canada.

Shortt is working on a new site-specific opera about museum repatriation/rematriation, ‘The Museum of the Lost and Found: gaakaazootaadiwag.’

Photo credit: Robert Szkolnicki

Residency Project

As part of an exhibition planned for September 6th – October 28th, 2024 at Hamilton Arts Inc., Olivia Shortt is presenting an exhibit on themes of death, mourning, and grieving.

Post-life administration is discussed using crow funerals and how they mourn their dead as a bridge to discuss how humans deal with end-of-life ceremonies, protocols for entering the spirit world, and the administration of death (digital footprint, banking, death certificates, etc.). Shortt is working on several pieces that use humour to discuss a darker topic including a video art piece, a redecorated dollhouse and other repurposed pieces that will interact with each other in this exhibit.

They will be working on this project throughout their Residency at the Centre de production DAÏMÔN between June 2nd and July 2nd, 2024.