Photo by Kelly McCray
Tobaron Waxman is a visual artist who sings. Tobaron composes performances for photograph, video and site specific installation, and is also a trained vocalist in Jewish liturgical music. Tobaron has been exhibited at such venues as Palais de Tokio, Videotage Hong Kong, Kunsthalle Vienna, CEPA Buffalo, New Museum NYC, Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New Museum NYC and Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music. Tobaron has taught live art, collaboration and vocal techniques at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, School of the Art Institute Chicago and at the Hollins MFA Dance Program, and has lectured at Parsons, SOAS University of London, Concordia University, OCADU, SMFA Boston, UC Irvine, Goldsmiths and others. In 2010 Tobaron was honoured with the first ever Audience Award of the Jewish Museum of New York for the 8-hour endurance performance <I>Opshernish</I>.
Tobaron is a grateful recipient of residencies and fellowships from Atlantic Centre for the Arts, Smack Mellon, Van Leir, Kulturlabor ICI Berlin, and grants from Ministry of Education and Training, Ontario, Canada, Technology Grant for Students with Disabilities, Franklin Furnace for Performance Art, Canada Council, Ontario and Toronto Arts Councils. Tobaron was Fellow at the Akademie der Künst der Welt/Köln for 2014 - 15, and Resident at La Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, Spring 2015. Tobaron is currently developing a volume of artist interviews with international trans women artists, and more site-specific endurance performances for a cappella transsexual voice. In addition, Tobaron is a Research Collaborator of the Canadian Consortium for Performance and Politics in the Americas.
Tobaron’s writing and photography have been published internationally, including in Carte Blanche (Magenta, 2006), Post Porn Politics (bbooks, 2010), Trans Bodies Trans Selves (Oxford University Press, 2014) and featured in such publications as Missy, C Magazine, Fuse, Canadian Dimension, Canadian Theatre Review, Lillith, Women & Performance, GLQ, TSQ, and LTTR.
As a curator, Tobaron’s curatorial projects have included 'Watch me Work:Women, Labour and Queer Economies" at BBK Köln, Germany; 'Object Body: Unexpectedly Ecstatic' at Studio Maya, Brooklyn: 'Radical Drag/Transformative Performance' in collaboration with Stefan St-Laurent at GalerieSAWGallery, Ottawa; and the internationally touring video program 'Topographixx: Trans in the Landscape'. In 2013, Tobaron founded The Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency, as a combined curatorial, relational/live art, and sociopolitical praxis.