Learned Behaviour

Learned Behaviour is a multi-media performance by siblings Golboo and Golnesa Amani. The performance offers a fluid series of tableaus aimed at critically engaging with the acquired cultural teachings of our diasporic youth. As first-generation immigrants much of our cultural understanding is a product of the deliberate teachings of our parents and cultural community whose intention is and was to preserve our ancestral traditions and practices through ad hoc schools and at home lessons.

“I’ve been wanting to programme this piece since I first heard of it before the pandemic. So I was very happy to see their application for CAMINOS. Golboo and Golnesa are two sisters who are both amazing artists. Golboo is an incredible performance artist and Golnesa a choreographer and Burlesque performer. This piece resonated strongly with similar experiences I encounter frequently in our communities. Learned Behaviour examines the process and outcomes of a dislocated culture shared as a collection of extracurricular lessons and schoolings in lieu of immersive socialized lived experiences.” – Beatriz Pizano

September 30, 2023 at 7:30 PM

About the artist

Golboo Amani is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator and curator working with performance and social practice. Golboo produces sites for aesthetic intervention by utilizing ready-made and familiar social engagements as a point of entry in their practice. Golboo’s work often examines their relationship to learning by addressing the conditions of knowledge production that render epistemic violence as invisible, insignificant and benign. As a result, Golboo’s works often experiment with collective agency and egalitarian epistemology by producing sites where one gets to play with the conditions of learning and knowing. 

Golnesa Amani (aka. Ola Minou) is an artist and educator working with dance and movement practices informed by Iranian folk, classical ballet, and performance art. Golnesa’s choreography and performances blend burlesque with contemporary dance elements, theatrics, as well as traditional Iranian mannerisms, music and narratives as an embodying act of preservation. Golnesa transforms the stage into a space for learning, a platform for reclamation, reconfiguration, and communing for Iranian diaspora/Canadian settlers who may also intersect with marginalized social identities.