The inaugurations of exhibitions are already jostling at the end of the week in galleries and artist-run centers, a sign that artists have not been idle despite the pandemic and the temporary closure of certain places. Joyfully busy, the visual arts community optimistically monopolizes attention. Make way for a hearty, varied, sensitive menu that is more open than ever, far from the gloom that has marked the last few months.
The biennial Moment, present in several places until mid-October, sets the tone for other satellite exhibitions which reflect the theme of the official program, “When nature feels”. Benny Nemer organizes a floral vocabulary in the form of a herbarium Pierre-François-Ouellette gallery. The patterns of nature are more indistinguishable, secreting an alliance with technology in the recent production of Jérôme Nadeau (Nicolas Robert gallery) and Pascal Grandmaison (gallery Blouin-Division). Already in progress or to come, ten other satellite exhibitions are added to the central proposal of the Biennale.
Nature is also in the foreground at Skol which, for its annual program, pleads for a “Return to Earth”. Against the return to normalcy, the center invites us to question our interactions with the planet, our fragile habitat. Clara Lacasse opens the season with a series of works on the Biodôme under construction. Chris Boyne will follow, who observed the dismantling of a transport vessel in Alang, India.
At the house of Dazibao, where she launches in September a large-scale cycle in three parts, Geneviève Chevalier will examine the devices of the herbarium and the menagerie, revealing traces of colonialism and climate change. Linking the living to machines, Adam Basanta devotes himself to futurology in an exhibition at the Laval House of the Arts (21 November).
“Bossal world” is the theme of the first edition ofInflux. Black transnational biennial, event organized in partnership with the Mature art gallery by Eddy Firmin. The artist-researcher, here commissioner, wants to repeatedly support African and Afro-descendant practices, to open a dialogue on delicate questions. To offer, from today until December, a varied program of exhibitions, conferences and performances, also participating museums and artist-run centers, including Speak clearly, a natural ally for its vigilance in the face of systemic racism.
Other exhibitions, in parallel, share this position. The Central presents the work of Esther Calixte-Bea around the black female body. At the house of Artexte, Joana Joachim stands with Blackity, from September 23, a trajectory of contemporary black Canadian art, including a hundred pieces from the documentation center.
Oppressed bodies and migration
In the work of Enrique Ramírez, revealed in 12 works at the UQAM Galleryfrom November, violence muffled. This Chilean born under the Pinochet regime takes us to the sea, a dismal theater of the missing bodies of political dissidents and fleeing migrants. On the side of the gallery Leonard & Bina Ellen, Commissioner Swapnaa Tamhane is interested in Constitutions the violence perpetrated by the caste system in India, with the perspectives of five artists from that country.
Witnesses, the documents serve in various ways as levers against oppressions. Iranian Sanaz Sohrabi revisited the archives of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, undermining the colonial narrative constructed by this industry (clark center). For Claire Beaugrand-Champagne and Carlos Ferrand Zavala, the documentary approach, in photos, emancipates; she, by following Vietnamese immigrants (Culture House Our Lady of Grace); him, the resistance in Peru (gallery SBC).
With the other, in text and on paper
The dream house (in progress at Maison de la culture du Plateau-Mont-Royal) combines the worlds of artist Karen Trask and writer Réjane Bougé, 30 years of dreamlike tales in some 8,000 sheets. Formed at the height of the pandemic, the collaboration between Max Lupos and Pascaline Knight dissects the communication structures in a corpus presented at Art Prim, in November. The center devoted to the printed arts is, along with others, still carrying the magazine HB, which will launch this fall on 8e number, Writings / Writings.
The text remains a popular vehicle for Give-Give, which oversees its programming of the “Translation” theme, woven of performances and interventions in urban space with in particular the duo DOIS (kimura byol + Fernando Belote).
The city as subject and context
Known for her ecstatic depictions of modern ruins, Myriam Yates scans New York’s parks and kindergartens in November at OPTICAL. Proposals outside the walls go to meet the public, in the urban space. With Circa current art, Stanley February, arkadi lavoie lachapelle and Eduardo della Foresta, each in their neighborhood in Montreal, will make interventions, between performance and sculpture.
With Parc Offsite that he created and directed for a year, Eli Kerr is bringing to life an inspiring alternative scene in Montreal, mobilizing young people and seasoned figures. An intervention in situ by Alexandre Bouffard, with Philippe Bourdeau as emerging curator, is in progress in this tiny space which has a storefront. In October, Valérie Blass will make it her showcase for new works.
Looking back
TO Produces nothing, in the Marconi-Alexandra sector, where he has his studio, the artist Peter Krausz is reserving his recent production while the University of Montreal Exhibition Center will provide an overview of his practice, five decades where the landscape reigns instead of memory. In the territory, the artist Renée Lavaillante also maintains special links, as shown by her practice in drawing, whose conventions and boundaries she challenges. Curator Dominique Chalifoux presents the phases that have been linked by black since the 1980s in an exhibition at the Laval House of the Artsinaugurated on Sunday.
The dizzying sum of a journey is expressed in Sylvia Safdie’s workshop, who will transport its elements to the heart of the Fonderie Darling (October 28). In both his videos and his collections (rocks, stems, mineral or plant materials), the artist gives substance to different forms of peregrinations, a synthesis that will evolve over the course of his interventions.
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