Our Story

Elsy Zavarce and Denise A. Olivares, both artist-researchers, curators, and educators, bring a sensitive and passionate gaze to the complexities of urban identities and lived experiences. Both artists have collaborated on multiple projects, supporting each other’s distinct research-creation methodologies while fostering community engagement. As immigrants from Venezuela and Chile, they have worked with deep roots in solidarity, co-creation, agency, and care, emphasizing the importance of inclusive artistic processes. Their work explores themes of memory, materiality, and spatial appropriation, offering nuanced perspectives on how communities shape and transform their environments. Their interdisciplinary approaches—blending photography, video, installation, socially engaged art, and archival research—illuminate the intersections of migration, identity, and urban resilience, fostering dialogue and critical reflection on evolving cityscapes.

O&Z

Elsy Zavarce

is a visual artist-researcher working at the intersection of material exploration, socially engaged art, pedagogies, and design. Her work explores place-making, migration, and community through participatory and multidisciplinary practices. She holds a Ph.D. from Concordia University and is Professor Emerita at the University of Zulia. Based between Montréal and Maracaibo, she collaborates with artists and communities on research-creation, curatorial and pedagogical projects such as CARE and Escolarte, alongside an ongoing experimental visual art practice.

Denise A. Olivares

is a Chilean-born interdisciplinary artist and community-centred educator based in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal. She holds an MA in Art Education from Concordia University. Working across textiles and installation, she uses photography as a mnemonic device to trace memory and experience. Her performative photography, an evolving, functions as poiesis, generating a vocabulary of gestures through which she explores identity and hybrid cultural knowledge, reflecting her engagement with Latin American and Latinx cultural histories.

Our Approach

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Us in Numbers

$100M+

Clients’ Income during the Last Quarter

Industry Awards

355

Business Partners in over 30 Countries

Years of Experience

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Our reflective writing and creative response are grounded in a research-creation methodology based on deep mapping (Janssen, McLucas), the performative archive (Taylor), and situated observation (Haraway). Through deep mapping, our practice approached the urban landscape as a layered field of lived experience, memory, and movement.

We approached the artists’ works as processual dispositifs (Deleuze; Holmes), dynamic, process-based artistic devices that articulate relationships between body, space, memory, and affect, activating modes of perception and engagement with territory (Deleuze, Foucault, Massumi).

Through walks, sensory recordings, conversations, material collection, photography, drawing, and writing, we developed an embodied, situated, and relational reading of DARE DARE critical-thinking art-residence process.

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Notre écriture réflexive et notre réponse créative s’inscrivent dans une méthodologie de recherche-création fondée sur la cartographie en profondeur (Janssen, McLucas), les archives performatives (Taylor) et l’observation située (Haraway). Grâce à la cartographie en profondeur, notre pratique a abordé le paysage urbain comme un champ stratifié d’expériences vécues, de mémoire et de mouvement.

Nous avons abordé les œuvres des artistes comme des dispositifs processuels (Deleuze ; Holmes), des outils artistiques dynamiques et axés sur le processus qui articulent les relations entre le corps, l’espace, la mémoire et l’affect, activant des modes de perception et d’engagement avec le territoire (Deleuze, Foucault, Massumi).

À travers des randonnées, des registres sensoriels, des conversations, la collecte de matériaux, la photographie, le dessin et l’écriture, nous avons développé une lecture incarnée, située et relationnelle du processus de résidence artistique de réflexion critique DARE DARE.

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Nuestra escritura reflexiva y respuesta creativa se fundamentan en una metodología de investigación-creación basada en el deep mapping (Janssen, McLucas), el archivo performativo (Taylor) y la observación situada (Haraway). A través del deep mapping, nuestra práctica abordó el paisaje urbano como un campo estratificado de experiencias vividas, memoria y movimiento.

Nos aproximamos a las obras de los artistas como dispositifs procesuales (Deleuze; Holmes): dispositivos artísticos dinámicos y basados en procesos que articulan relaciones entre cuerpo, espacio, memoria y afecto, activando modos de percepción y de vinculación con el territorio (Deleuze, Foucault, Massumi).

Mediante caminatas, registros sensoriales, conversaciones, recolección de materiales, fotografía, dibujo y escritura, desarrollamos una lectura encarnada, situada y relacional del proceso de residencia artística y pensamiento crítico de DARE-DARE.