Christopher Willes is a Canadian artist based in Toronto. He makes performances, music, exhibitions, and writes about contemporary art. His recent projects have been presented at The Art Gallery of Ontario, 8-11 Gallery (Toronto), Intersite Visual Arts Festival (Calgary), Cluster Festival (Winnipeg), and the Music Gallery (Toronto). Recent collaborations include Listening Choir with Adam Kinner, Antigone Dead People with Small Wooden Shoe presented at Sound Live Tokyo (Japan), and Rehearsal/Performance with choreographer Ame Henderson at The Art Gallery of Ontario.
For the past decade he has been continually active working in choreography and experimental theatre as a sound-maker, performer, and dramaturge. From 2011-2015 he maintained an ongoing collaboration with Dancemakers in Toronto. Other notable collaborations include projects with Public Recordings, Small Wooden Shoe, Dancemakers, Meryem Alaoui, Evan Webber, Jordan Tannahill, Julia Male, Ellen Furey, Adam Kinner, and Noémie Solomon.
Willes studied music at the University of Toronto, and received an M.F.A. from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. In 2016 he received a Chalmers Arts Award, and was a MacDowell Fellow. In 2017 he will be in residence at the Toronto Public Library, as well as winter artist-in-residence at Gibraltar Point, Toronto.
