Bio

Theo Pelmus is a performance artist who has received several awards, including an emerging artist grant and integrated arts grant from the Ontario Arts Council (2006; 2009), Canada Council for the Arts Travel Grant (2012, 2014, 2015), the Dennis Tourbin Fund for emerging artist in performance art (2007) and an emerging artist grant from the City of Ottawa (2009, 2012). He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including shows in Bogota, New York, Copenhagen and the Bucharest Biennial. Theo has a BFA and MFA from the University of Fine Arts in Bucharest and a second MFA at the University of Ottawa. He is an active participant in the Winnipeg, Ottawa and Toronto arts community.

Works

Pieta

  • 2020
  • Theo Pelmus

This video work is conceptualized as a discussion on religion and the deconstruction of a representation of belief such as Pieta.

Pieta

Magnificat Alleluia

  • 2016
  • Theo Pelmus

This work is created under the aesthetic of a baroque video-mural, dealing with the idea of martyrdom. In the work there are two melting ice-cream self-portraits that are framing two girl twins dressed in satin dresses moving in a prayer-like manner. Glamour and decadence are intertwined. The sound is of sacred operatic music.

Magnificat Alleluia

BGCP I cleaning (Baroque Grass Cleaning Pinocchio I)

  • 2016
  • Theo Pelmus

BGCP I and BGCP II works, are created as a video diptych. Each is a performance for the camera where the grotesque character that is a double of a Pinocchio doll. The Pinocchio doll is assembled and disassembled in a futile and absurd labor.

BGCP I cleaning (Baroque Grass Cleaning Pinocchio I)

Adam and Eve Saulteaux

  • 2015
  • Theo Pelmus, Kristin Snowbird

A collaboration between partners Theo Pelmus and Kris Snowbird, who is Ojibwa and Cree, put themselves in a gesture conversation about their link as a couple coming from different cultural backgrounds.

Adam and Eve Saulteaux

Immaculata Conception

  • 2014
  • Theo Pelmus

This work deals with the idea of sacred and profane and the Catholicism as an instrument of colonization.

Immaculata Conception

The Kingdom with Waterfalls

  • 2012
  • Theo Pelmus

The image of Pieta is multiplied several times until it becomes an excess of iconography. In the background spinning waterfalls create a sensation of vertigo.

The Kingdom with Waterfalls

Pearl Face Second Vision

  • 2011
  • Theo Pelmus

This work is a variation of Pearls Face work, in which two slightly different performances for the camera are edited as a diptych. The spotlights in which the artist is performing and the action of altering his face become two moons framed together by four Pietas.

Pearl Face Second Vision