Tedi Tafel
Biography
Tedi Tafel lives in Montreal and has been creating, performing and teaching for over 20 years. Her work is primarily site-specific and is researched and presented in urban, rural and wilderness settings. Her desire is to take the body out of traditional performance arenas and place it in direct contact with different environments. The results are explorations and expressions of the reciprocal dialogue that exists between the inner world of the human psyche and the outside world of our immediate surroundings. Tedi has shown her work in such diverse locations as an urban rooftop, an ancient forest clearing and a winter cabin and has also been presented in festivals across Canada and in Europe.
More recently, she has been juxtaposing video projections of nature with performance as a way of exposing the intimacy of the human/nature relationship. Her current series emphasizes the audience's encounter by animating urban spaces with installations that are accessible to the general public and integrated into the cityscape. These are intended both as a catalyst for new experiences of the familiar and as reminders of our lost connection with the natural world in our routine ways of functioning in a man-made environment. As a member of Boréal Art/Nature she has developed, organized and participated in wilderness residencies in Canada and abroad since 1996.