Avery Zhao-Djokic is an artist currently working and living in Montreal, QC. Avery has studied Design at Ryerson University and from 2005 to 2008 she studied at the Grande Ecole ESMOD in Paris, France, where she graduated with honours in Fashion Design. For several years following she worked as a fashion designer in Paris and Montreal for international brands, her work leading her to research trips around Europe, Asia and the USA.
She is currently working at the Faculty of Fine Arts and the Institute of Urban Futures in Montreal while completing a BFA at Concordia University in Studio Arts. Avery was recently accepted into the Banff Centre’s month-long Artist Residency, the BAiR Spring Intensive in Visual + Digital Arts for 2017.
In 2016 Avery completed a two-week residency entitled ‘Tactile Museum’ at the Montreal art centre Eastern Bloc, in collaboration with a dance choreographer. From 2016-2018 she is part of the international Solar Decathlon 2016 Competition as an artist member of the Canadian entry, Team Mtl – a joint collaboration between the McGill Architecture department and Concordia Fine Arts, JMSB and Engineering faculties. The final construction will be exhibited in China in summer 2018.
Avery has been invited as a guest artist to art festivals and concerts where she performs time-based painting with choreographical elements. In 2017 her interdisciplinary performance project, Art Crush, gave a show at the Bourgie Hall in the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal in collaboration with renowned Baroque group Ensemble Caprice.
Avery is inspired through working across disciplines in design and the fine and performing arts. She directs and collaborates on interdisciplinary projects with visual artists, musicians and dancers. She is drawn to the fields of music and dance, referencing their patterns, arrangement and notation systems and layering to create a harmonious whole.
In painting, she is often inspired by documentary or historical painting and futurist subjects. In sculpture, Avery explores human-machine relationships and urban societies and often communicates these ideas using smart or technical materials, repetition, gradation, and rhythm.
Design rules and properties often influence her work. Her sculptures are usually comprised of carefully designed parts, puzzle pieces or repetitive forms which join together into a single form. The epic, the nostalgic, the futuristic and the fantastical are also explored in her works.