Xenia Benivolski is a curator, writer and educator living and working primarily in Toronto, Canada. Her work is largely concerned with the politics and implications of acoustic spaces, and the way in which sound and music reveal the underlying structures of social, political and historical spheres.
In 2013 she co-founded the collective 8eleven project gallery (2013-2018) where she worked on a program that included over 50 exhibitions by artists like Laurie Kang, Azza El-Siddique, Rosa Aiello, Walter Scott, Tau Lewis and many others. She works with the archive of outsider artist Zanis Waldheims, producing the artist’s first posthumous solo exhibition “The Exhaustive Thought” at the Art Museum of the University of Toronto (2020).
Since 2022 Xenia has been organizing the discursive program You Can’t Trust Music at e-flux.com where she commissioned texts and works by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sung Tieu, Felicia Atkinson, Nicolas Jaar, Steve Reich among others, and a performance by Raven Chacon (2023). That year she also co-directed the residency “The Weapon of Theory as a Conference of the Birds” with Ayesha Hameed, Suzanne Kite and Jota Mombaça at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Xenia published essays and book chapters about visual art, theory and music, and she contributes regularly at Artforum, the Wire UK, and at e- flux. In Toronto, she teaches at OCAD University and York University. Along with Max Haiven, Sarah Olotula and Graeme Webb, she is a research affiliate with the “Worker as Futurist” an academic project inspired by the Workers Inquiry at Lakehead University, in Thunder Bay.
Introduced by Josefina Barcia, CCS Bard Graduate Student.
CCS Bard Speaker Series
Each semester CCS Bard hosts a program of lectures by leading artists, curators, art historians, and critics, situating the school and museum’s concerns within the larger context of contemporary art production and discourse. Speakers are selected primarily by second-year graduate students and also by faculty and staff. All lectures are free and open, and are documented through audio recordings that reside in the CCS Bard Library & Archives and online here.
Accessibility for Public Programs
Recordings
All our programs are recorded through audio recordings that reside in the CCS Bard Library & Archives and online here. To inquire about a recording, please contact CCSVisits@bard.edu.
American Sign Language Interpretation
ASL-English interpretation is available for public programs upon request with two weeks advance notice. To place a request, please contact CCSVisits@bard.edu. Relay and voice calls welcome.
Verbal Description
Verbal description is available for public programs upon request with two weeks advance notice. To place a request, please contact CCSVisits@bard.edu. Relay and voice calls welcome.
Captioning
When public programs are held over Zoom, live transcription is available.