Francisco-Fernando Granados

Born in Guatemala and based in Toronto, Francisco-Fernando Granados holds a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto (2012) and is currently pursuing a PhD in Media & Design Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University.  He has taught art and theory at OCAD University and University of Toronto Scarborough. Granados’ practice has traced his movement from convention refugee to critical citizen, using abstraction performatively, site-specifically, and relationally, to create projects that challenge the stability of practices of recognition. His work has developed from the intersection of formal painterly training at Langara College, working in performance through artist-run spaces, studies in queer and feminist theory at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and early activism as a peer support worker with immigrant and refugee communities. This layering of experiences has trained his intuitions to seek site-responsive approaches, alternative forms of distribution, and the weaving of lyrical and critical propositions.

Granados’ writing appears in various publications, including Other Places: Reflections on Media Arts in Canada, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, and FUSE. Awards include grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Toronto and Ontario Art Councils, and the Governor’s General’s Silver Medal. Recent exhibition projects include who claims abstraction? (2023-2024) at SFU Galleries’ Teck Gallery, who claims abstraction?: Selections from the SFU Art Collection (2023) at SFU Gallery Burnaby and SFU Belzberg Library; foreward (2021-23), at The MacLaren Art Centre, refugee reconnaissance (2021) at AXENE07 in Gatineau, andduet (2019-20) a traveling two-person exhibition alongside Canadian modernist painter Jack Bush. Notable exhibitions involve collaboration with galleries in Peterborough, Montreal, St. John, Toronto and participation in international group shows on contemporary queer aesthetics.

Granados currently lives and works in Toronto.