Alexis O'Hara

Alexis O'Hara is a Canadian transdisciplinary performer,[1] born in Ottawa, Ontario, and currently living and working in Montreal, Quebec.

Since 1997, she has been active in the Montreal cabaret and experimental music scenes. O'Hara ran the Montreal poetry slam for several years before switching her focus to vocal and electronic music and interactive performance projects. Subject to Change and The Sorrow Sponge, two projects in which audience participation and electronic clothing are elements,[2] have toured Canada, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. Her live and recorded work concerns itself with language, anthropomorphism, the human brain and heart, and social order.[citation needed]

In 2009, she began working on immersive, interactive sound installations. SQUEEEEQUE - SPEAKERDOME,[3] a dome built entirely from recycled speaker boxes, was presented at numerous media art festivals in Europe and Canada. The work was the first acquisition to Basel's Haus der Elektronische Kunst's media art collection.[4][5]

She has been described as a "a mainstay of the cabaret scene in Montreal for years", performing in her drag king persona, Guizo LaNuit.[6] She began performing as Guizo in 2003.[7]

O'Hara is a frequent collaborator of Montreal based haute-drag / video installation artist duo 2boys.tv (Stephen Lawson and Aaron Pollard) having played a key role in Tightrope (2011 - 2016).[8]

  1. ^ "Edgy Women has reached the brink | Montreal Gazette". February 25, 2016.
  2. ^ "nomorepotlucks » Collaborating with the Accidental: Alexis O'Hara and the Art of Improvisation – Stephen Lawson". nomorepotlucks.org.
  3. ^ "Blackwood & AGW Snag Exhibitions of the Year at OAAG Awards". Canadian Art.
  4. ^ "Resonance and Rebellion: Alexis O'Hara | Herizons Magazine". www.herizons.ca. 19 October 2017.
  5. ^ "HeK - Collection_single". www.hek.ch. Archived from the original on 2019-12-31. Retrieved 2019-12-31.
  6. ^ Knegt, Peter (17 July 2020). "Meet the 'toxically defensive uber-Karen' embodied by artist Alexis O'Hara in this wild performance". CBC. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  7. ^ Knegt, Peter (13 April 2020). "Guizo of Montreal: This k.d. lang-impersonating drag king has definitely seen it all". CBC. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  8. ^ Dickinson, Peter (2018). "'Still (Mighty) Real': HIV and AIDS, Queer Public Memories, and the Intergenerational Drag Hail". Viral Dramaturgies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. ISBN 978-3-319-70316-9.