FASTWÜRMS

Origins
FASTWÜRMS was founded in 1979 by Kim Kozzi (born Kim Kozolanka, Ottawa, 1955) and Dai Skuse (born David Skuse, Oldham, England, 1955), with an original third member, Napo B. (Napoleon Brousseau), who departed the collective in 1991.¹ The trio’s origin story is as unconventional as the work itself: before relocating to Toronto in 1980, all three were employed as security guards at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa — a quietly ironic beginning for artists who would spend the next four decades gleefully destabilizing institutional norms.² After settling in Toronto, the collective began exhibiting at The Ydessa Gallery in 1981, quickly embedding themselves in the city’s punk-inflected, DIY art scene.³ Today Kozzi and Skuse continue to work as FASTWÜRMS, splitting their time between Toronto and Creemore, Ontario, and holding positions as Associate Professors of Studio Art at the University of Guelph. They are represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art in Toronto.⁴

Ethos
FASTWÜRMS describes its own practice in terms that are both playful and precise: a “determined DIY sensibility, Witch Nation identity politics, and a keen allegiance towards working class, queer alliance, and artist collaborations.”⁵ At the heart of the collective is its self-identification as witches — not metaphorically, but as a genuine epistemological and political position. Witchcraft functions in their work as a lens for examining identity, community, power, and social exchange, drawing on ancient symbolism while filtering it through punk aesthetics, pop culture, and humour.⁶ The collective began in Super 8 filmmaking, producing feature-length films that disrupted conventional narrative, and over time expanded into installation, video, performance, raku ceramics, public sculpture, textile, photography, and drawing.⁷ The throughline in all of it is an insistence on art as a shared, social, emancipatory act — what they call “the free exchange and circulation of aesthetic knowledge as a public and performative narrative.”⁸

Key Works and Exhibitions
Queen Street Storefront Installations (1999–2005): Over roughly a decade, FASTWÜRMS operated a series of pop-up storefront galleries on Queen Street West in Toronto, each one a fully realized immersive environment blending Witch and queer cultures: House of Bangs (1999), Blood & Swash (2002), Pirate Head (2004), Gusset Nation (2004), and Blood Clock (2005). These “shoppes” — equal parts art installation and street-level theatre — became touchstones of Toronto’s alternative art scene.⁹

DONKY@NINJA@WITCH: A Living Retrospective (2007–2008): Described as “an event in Canadian art history,” this major retrospective at the Art Gallery of York University (later travelling to the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver and Plug In ICI in Winnipeg) restaged a decade of Queen Street storefront work alongside new commissions, including the HD video Witch vs. Ninja, shot in Venice and rural Ontario.¹⁰ A lavishly illustrated catalogue published in 2011 won the Ontario Association of Art Galleries award for Art Publication of the Year.¹¹

Bast is Best / House of Bast: Presented at The Power Plant in Toronto and internationally in Sligo, Ireland, these works drew on the Egyptian cat goddess Bast as a figure for exploring feline mysticism, queer mythology, and collective ritual.¹²

Soylent Orange / Red of Tooth and Kaw: Exhibited at the 27th Biennale de São Paulo, Brazil (2006), bringing FASTWÜRMS’ Witch Nation cosmology to an international stage.¹³

#Q33R_WTCH_P155 (2017): A major solo exhibition at Oakville Galleries that continued the collective’s ongoing exploration of queer witchcraft as political identity.¹⁴

Public Sculpture: FASTWÜRMS’ permanent public works include Monoceros in Liberty Village, Toronto (a monumental bronze frog paired with a narwhal tusk/unicorn horn), Woodpecker Column at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Ex Ovo Omnia at the Art Gallery of Guelph, and a gryphon sculpture at the entrance to the University of Guelph.¹⁵

Recognition
In 2023, FASTWÜRMS received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for Artistic Achievement — Canada’s highest honour in the visual arts — cementing their status as one of the country’s most singular and enduring art collectives.¹⁶

Footnotes
¹ Wikipedia, “FASTWÜRMS,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FASTW%C3%9CRMS. On the departure of Napo B.: “In the mid-1980s, Napo B. moved to NYC and formally left the collective in 1991.”

² Ibid. “The collective was employed as security guards at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa prior to moving to Toronto in 1980.”

³ Ibid. “In 1981 FASTWÜRMS began exhibiting at The Ydessa Gallery in Toronto.”

⁴ Plug In ICA, “STAGES 2019 | FASTWÜRMS,” https://plugin.org/exhibitions/stages-2019-fastwurms/. “Together they teach studio art at the University of Guelph, Ontario.” See also Paul Petro Contemporary Art, https://www.paulpetro.com/artists/38–FASTW%C3%9CRMS/CV.

⁵ Paul Petro Contemporary Art, “FASTWÜRMS,” https://www.paulpetro.com/arc/fastwurms/index.php. This phrasing appears consistently across the collective’s official gallery materials and institutional documentation.

⁶ Kavi Gupta Editions, Fastwürms: DONKY@NINJA@WITCH (catalogue), https://kaviguptaeditions.com/products/fastwurms-donky-ninja-witch. “Fastwürms are Witches, artist Witches who take ancient symbols like the pentagram, and apply a punk do-it-yourself sensibility to them, treating them more as ephemera than ritual objects.”

⁷ Ibid. “They began working in super 8 film, producing feature length films that both built and disrupted the flow of conventional narrative structures. Since then they have branched out to embrace a multiplicity of media.” See also Paul Petro Contemporary Art CV: FASTWÜRMS “was formed in 1979 to make independent films, build installations, create paintings, drawings and prints, make photographs and text art, sculptures and raku ceramics, textile and performance art.”

⁸ Paul Petro Contemporary Art, “FASTWÜRMS,” https://www.paulpetro.com/arc/fastwurms/index.php. “FASTWÜRMS is a Witch polity and epistemology, creating and circulating aesthetic knowledge as a shared emancipation and liberation narrative.”

⁹ Art Gallery of York University / Goldfarb Gallery, “FASTWÜRMS DONKY@NINJA@WITCH,” https://thegoldfarbgallery.ca/project/fastwurms-donkyninjawitch/. The storefront titles and dates are documented in the exhibition re-staging: House of Bangs (1999), Blood & Swash (2002), Pirate Head (2004), Gusset Nation (2004), Blood Clock (2005). Philip Monk’s account of the Queen Street storefronts also appears in “Fastwurms (2011),” http://www.philipmonk.com/fastwurms-2011.

¹⁰ Art Gallery of York University, “FASTWÜRMS DONKY@NINJA@WITCH: A Living Retrospective,” http://agyu.art/project/fastwurms-donkyninjawitch-a-living-retrospective/. On the video: Goldfarb Gallery, “FASTWÜRMS DONKY@NINJA@WITCH”: “Witch vs. Ninja is a radical ‘no budget’ artist cinema project … shot on location in Venice, Italy and Scarlet Hill, Ontario.”

¹¹ Paul Petro Contemporary Art, “DONKY@NINJA@WITCH Catalogue Launch,” https://www.paulpetro.com/exhibitions/64-DONKY@NINJA@-WITCH-FASTWURMS-CATALOGUE-LAUNCH. “Winner of two awards at the Ontario Association of Art Galleries annual awards night … Art Writing Award to Sally McKay … and Art Publication of the Year.”

¹² Paul Petro Contemporary Art, “FASTWÜRMS,” http://www.paulpetro.com/arc/fastwurms/index.php. “House of Bast in Sligo, Ireland, and Bast is Best at The Power Plant.”

¹³ Ibid. “Exhibitions include Soylent Orange and Red of Tooth and Kaw at the 27th Biennale de Sao Paulo, Brazil.”

¹⁴ Wikipedia, “FASTWÜRMS.” “Recent notable solo exhibitions include #Q33R_WTCH_P155 (2017) at Oakville Galleries in Oakville, Ontario.”

¹⁵ Ibid. “FASTWÜRMS’ permanent public art sculptures include Ex Ovo Omnia at the Art Gallery of Guelph; Woodpecker Column at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre; Monoceros at Liberty Village in Toronto; and a large sculpture of a gryphon at the entrance of University of Guelph.”

¹⁶ CBC Arts, “Think Like An Artist: FASTWÜRMS,” https://www.cbc.ca/artsprojects/thinklikeanartist/fastwuerms. “In 2023, Fastwürms won a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.” See also Wikidata record confirming the award: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19877840.