Biography
They/Them, 1996, Wellington, NZ.
Bel Andrade is an interdisciplinary
artist living between Toronto and New York City.
Bel is a sculptor, metalworker, and performance artist, regularly working in multiplicity through the editioning of their works and through the performance of repetitive obsessive actions and stims. Bel is transmasc, neurodivergent, and lives with a post-viral nervous system disorder, integrating elements of their queer-crip identity into their work through the visual analysis of systemic collapse, rhizomatic intersections, and intentional failures. Their public art practice invites viewers to appreciate the complex and interconnected nature of the human experience, seeking to dismantle and disrupt systemic barriers in the building of a crip-Utopian future.
Bel obtained their Masters in Fine Art in Studio Arts from Parsons School of Design at the New School (New York, USA) in 2023, and completed their Bachelor in Fine Arts in Sculpture and Installation at OCAD University with a Minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies (Toronto, CA) in 2020. They have previously worked as a student monitor in foundry, mouldmaking, and metal studios, and served as a Teaching Assistant in the Parsons School of Design Bachelors of Fine Arts department (2021-2023). Bel was awarded an ArtScape Launchpad Residency in November 2020. In January 2024, they will begin a five month residency with Uncool Artists (UA) International in Brooklyn, New York. Upcoming, Bel is participating in an ongoing disability-art activation project The Art of Disruption, which invites disabled artists to engage with and disrupt multiple major cultural sites and galleries across New York City beginning in late-2024.
They’ve received a Parsons School of Design Graduate Research Award (New York, 2023), the ArtScape Foundation Launchpad Bursary (Toronto, 2020), the Bluma Appel Thesis Award (Toronto, 2020), and the Toronto International Film Festival Battle of the Scores Best Score award as member of Porcelain Citizen (Toronto, 2015).
