Dayna McLeod is a middle-ageing queer performance and video artist. She is a Settler Canadian who has lived and worked in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal/Montreal for the past 20+ years. She approaches pop culture, queerness, age, and feminism with humour using performance-based practices. Restless is a video installation that examines queer sleep and sleep disturbances and is currently on exhibition at PHI Centre until June 2021 []. Intimate Karaoke, Live at Uterine Concert Hall is an interactive performance that invites audiences to sing their favourite karaoke song into Dayna’s uterus (via microphone connected to a vaginal speaker) while other audience members listen through her body using a stethoscope. Cougar For a Year was a one-year durational performance that investigated and lived the stereotype of a ‘cougar,’ a woman over-40 who aggressively demonstrates her sexuality, by wearing nothing but animal print clothing, 24/7 [].

Dayna’s work has been presented at Impakt Festival in Utrecht Netherlands, the Mardi Gras Festival in Darlinghurst Australia, MIX Brasil Festival Of Sexual Diversity in São Paulo Brazil, the Modern Art Museum in Warsaw Poland, Le Centre d’art contemporain in Paris, the Abrons Art Center in NYC, the Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga Springs, the OFFTA and Les Rendez-vous du Cinéma Québécois in Montreal, and the Summerworks Theatre Festival in Toronto. She is also part-time faculty at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill University, and at Concordia University in various humanities and fine arts departments. She has a PhD from The Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University.

As part of her residency, Dayna worked with outtakes from pandemic lecture footage she produced for a Gender Studies course at IGSF in 2020. Watch it .

Dayna McLeod
she / her / hers
P. Lantz Digital Artist-in-Residence
McGill University
dayna.mcleod [at] mcgill.ca