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Exibitions 2021

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Electronic Reproduction Fees




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Trousse pédagogique numérique destinée aux groupes scolaires, 2021. Crédit : Sandrine Côté, Frédérique Davreux-Hébert. |
Digital educational toolkit dedicated to school groups, 2021. Credit: Sandrine Côté, Frédérique Davreux-Hébert.

Activité inspirée de la pratique de Sandra Brewster | Activity inspired by Sandra Brewster practice
From January 1st 2021 to May 1st 2021
En cours, médiation : trousse pédagogique numérique pour groupes scolaires

Due to the health crisis that is significantly reducing youth’ access to art and culture, OPTICA has developed a digital educational toolkit for school groups. The kit provides an opportunity to discover the practice of the artist Sandra Brewster whose work is currently confined at OPTICA. It also allows for students to be introduced to contemporary art and to learn more about artist-run centres in general.

The kit contains a virtual tour that can be facilitated by a teacher and an accompanying guided visit scenario is made available to help guide the visit. If preferred the tour can be conducted by a mediator from the center via a video conference platform. A downloadable and printable student booklet is also made available for use; it contains a lexicon of the themes addressed in the exhibition, a short biography of the artist and 5 educational activities that can be carried out both in class and at home. The kit also includes a creative workshop that introduces students to the image transfer technique Brewster uses in her work.

To obtain a kit and/or plan a virtual visit with a mediator, please contact Sandrine at mediation[at]optica.ca.




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Sandra Brewster, Untitled (Blur), 2017 – 2019.
Détail, photographie transférée sur papier archive à l’aide d’un gel acrylique, 96 photographies,
25,4 x 17,78 cm.
Avec l’aimable permission de Sandra Brewster et Georgia Scherman Projects. |
Untitled (Blur), 2017 - 2019. Detail, Photo-based gel transfer on archival paper, 96 photographes,
25,4 x 17,78 cm.
Courtesy Sandra Brewster and Georgia Scherman Projects.

Sandra Brewster
From February 16th 2021 to April 3rd 2021
Works from series:
Smith
Blur

Video:
Walk on by


*IMPORTANT NOTICE*We are pleased to announce that OPTICA has reopened its gallery work! The exhibition will open to the public on Tuesday February 16.
But in the wake of current events surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, OPTICA is following Québec public health guidelines and implementing measures to protect both our visitors and our staff: we postponed the opening of the exbibition.

We ask that you respect the following rules:

- reservations are mandatory for exhibition visits, use this form;

or by email: communications[at]optica.ca

Unannounced visits may be accepted, depending on the number of visitors in the gallery spaces. We can accommodate a maximum of 8 people at a time.

- masks or other face covering are mandatory throughout the visit;
- hands must be disinfected upon arrival: hydroalcoholic gel is available on site;
- 2-meter distancing must be maintained between each person to facilitate circulation during your visit.

If you have COVID-19-related symptoms, please postpone your visit.

Welcome one and all!


The Potential of Movement

Sandra Brewster has exhibited widely across Canada and the US, including a recent solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She has also featured in group exhibits, such as What Carries Us: Newfoundland and Labrador in the Black Atlantic, the first diasporic Guyanese art exhibit, Un|Fixed Homeland, as well as in exhibits in the Caribbean and across the African continent – Lagos, Addis Ababa, and Cape Town. Her practice visualizes the Black diaspora, at home and abroad.

Sandra Brewster’s solo exhibit at OPTICA brings together images from Blur, its accompanying video installation Walk on by, as well as the Untitled Smith, work created over a span of eight years (2011-2019). While all these works build on the artist’s long-standing interest in portraiture, what brings these images together is a contestation of the polarized view of Blackness as either hyper-visible or disappeared.

Blur plays with the traditional notion of head and shoulder portraits; it is a series of photo-based gel transfers of Black individuals including self-portraits of the artist, whose head, hair, and body, are all captured mid-movement. Blur is the Black body in motion, both collectively and individually. The kinetic energy of the images suggests what you might miss in a blink of an eye -- a liveliness or restless motion beneath the surface.

For Brewster, born in Toronto to parents from the Caribbean, movement is many things. In these continuing times of anti-Black racist violence, movement demands we remember that change begins with political movements. The aesthetics of movement is also another way to think about migration, not as a fixed goal, but as a landing without destination (Brand, 2002). There is a potential to move forward, to return, to live in the “black and blur” between (Moten 2017), as an opening to other places. Take Kumina, a religious practice of Congolese origin practiced in Jamaica, where djembe drumbeats guide the dancers’ energetic and rhythmic motions. Miss Queenie, interviewed by scholar Maureen Warner-Lewis (1977), describes spirit possession in Kumina: “...is de ting dey call a spirit where you head ‘pin roun’ an’ you pupalick ‘pon you neck.” [Translation: is the thing they call a spirit where your head spins around and your neck does a somersault]. The kinaesthesia of Kumina is a re-orientation of the body. The spiritual possession of Kumina invoked in a ‘somersault of the neck’ suggests the power of inversions. These rapid movements and embodied connections to elsewhere are the product of diaspora and creolization. In the Caribbean, where cultures interact and – despite historical relations of dominance and subordination – potentially turn power relations upside down, orients us to the possibilities of something new. The submerged has the power to become subversive, as these gestural portraits suggests.

Similarly, the soft blurriness and timeless quality of Walk on by (recorded on a Super 8 Camera), of Black citizens simply walking in the everydayness of Toronto, implies not a recent arrival but long histories of presence that nonetheless require a navigation of invisible societal dynamics that shape movement and freedom.

Like Blur, The Smiths draws on the power of repetition. In the days of phone books, the last name Smith would be repeated in long columns, conjuring as Brewster states “sameness and invisibility.” In Untitled Smiths (Cold), multiples of Afro-silhouetted heads without faces, appear in a grid with the occasional pops of colour in clothing. In Untitled (Plain Black), the Smith characters become monotone, with white Afros and clothing, almost as if a photo negative image. Over top these white Smiths are two detailed images of young men in sports and hip hop inspired clothing from the 1980s, drawing on Brewster’s earlier portrait series Little Boy as well as Brewster’s concern for how young Black men are imaged in society. In Untitled (Whiteout), the Smiths are barely perceptible, almost completely whitewashed into the background. What are the disturbances in the embodied worlds of the Smiths (in North America) that requires Blackness to be assertive or to fade away?

Although Brewster’s art practice is grounded in the experiences of the Black diaspora, her work asks us all to interpret our own (perhaps insurgent) relations to other worlds, in the spirit and in the flesh.

Author: Nalini Mohabir

Nalini Mohabir is Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Geographies at Concordia University.

We would like to thank Georgia Scherman from Georgia Scherman Projects and Dr. Kenneth Montague from Ken Montague / The Wedge Collection.

PRESS RELEASE (pdf)



PRESS REVIEW

NIMIS, Erika. «Sandra Brewster, Works from series: Smith, Blur; Video: Walk on by», paru dans Ciel variable, Issue No. 117, «Décalé», Summer 2021, 77-79.

SIROIS-ROULEAU, Dominique. “Sandra Brewster, Optica centre d’art contemporain, Montréal,” Esse, 102 - Spring / Summer 2021.

CHARRON, Marie-Ève. “Mouvantes identitées noires chez Optica,” Le Devoir, March 20, 2021.

DELGADO, Jérôme. “Arts visuels: chanterons-nous avec les machines? ” Le Devoir, January 23, 2021.



Sandra Brewster is a visual artist based in Toronto. Her work explores identity, representation and memory, centering on Black presence. The daughter of Guyanese born parents, she is especially attuned to the experiences of people of Caribbean heritage and their ongoing relationships with back home.

Brewster’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Art Gallery of Guelph, Or Gallery in Vancouver, YYZ Artists’ Outlet and A Space Gallery in Toronto, and in group exhibitions including Mamuzic Gallery in Novi Sad (Serbia), Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Arsenal Habana (Cuba), Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, Lagos Photo Festival (Nigeria), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of Windsor, and Allegheny Art Galleries in Meadville, PA (U.S.). Brewster’s exhibition It's all a blur... received the Gattuso Prize for outstanding featured exhibition in CONTACT Photography Festival 2017 in Toronto. In 2018, she was the recipient of the Artist Prize from Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts and was the year's artist-in-residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Brewster holds a Masters of Visual Studies from University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from York University. She is represented by Georgia Scherman Projects.




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Leila Zelli, Jim Holyoak
From March 13th 2021 to March 13th 2021
Nuit blanche à Montréal 2021 à OPTICA avec Leila Zelli, Jim Holyoak

As part of Nuit blanche à Montréal 2021, OPTICA invites the general public of all ages to join us for a virtual and creative two-part workshop directed by artists Leila Zelli and Jim Holyoak. Come discover the art practices of these two contemporary artists who will guide you through a series of playful and whimsical drawing exercises (Holyoak) and introduce you to simple animation methods (Zelli).

Please note that the session with Jim Holyoak will be conducted primarily in English and the one with Leila Zelli in French.

The number of participants is limited, we therefore invite you to register for the event by sending an email to mediation@optica.ca

You will receive the Zoom link, ID, password to participate and the evening instructions.


Leila Zelli : www.leilazelli.com

Jim Holyoak : www.monstersforreal.com

PRESS RELEASE

LÉPINE, Philippe. « Voici à quoi ressemblera la Nuit Blanche 2021 », Huffingtonpost, March 8, 2021.

nuitblanche


Born in Tehran (Iran), Leila Zelli lives and works in Montreal. Zelli has completed a master's degree (2020) and a bachelor's degree (2016) in visual and media arts from UQAM. She is interested in the relationships that we have with the idea of “others” and “elsewhere ” and more specifically, within this geopolitical space often referred to by the questionable term of“ Middle East ”. Zelli's work has been the subject of exhibitions, notably at Galerie Bradley Ertaskiran, at the Conseil des arts de Montréal, at the Galerie de l'UQAM and at the Quebec Contemporary Art Fair. Her works are now part of the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the loan collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.

Jim Holyoak is originally from Aldergrove, British Columbia. He holds an MFA in visual arts from Concordia University (2011), a degree from Álfaskólinn, the Icelandic Elf School in Reykjavik, in Elf and Hidden people studies, and has studied ink wash painting in Yangshuo, China. His work has widely circulated in Canada, the United States, and Northern Europe, particularly at the bG Gallery (Santa Monica, California), Centre OPTICA (Montreal), at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art (Kelowna, BC), The Hive, (Los Angeles, California), Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides (Saint-Jérôme), and at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (RÄ«ga, Latvia). His works are part of many Canadian collections as Artexte (Montréal), the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), the Royal Bank of Canada. He is represented by McBride contemporain (Montréal) and bG Gallery (Los Angeles, California).



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Georgia Alary-Lemay, Une grenouille en jupon, 2021.
Extrait du livre-zine réalisé par une élève de 4e année de l'école St-Arsène, dans le cadre du projet Artiste à l’école avec Cynthia Girard-Renard. Crédit photo : Sandrine Côté. | A Frog in a Petticoat, 2021.
Book-zine, Exerpt, made by a grade 4 student from St-Arsène Elementary School, as part of the Artist at School project with Cynthia Girard-Renard. Photo credit: Sandrine Côté.

Cynthia Girard-Renard
From March 25th 2021 to April 15th 2021
Artiste à l'école avec Cynthia Girard-Renard

This spring about fifty 4th grade students from Saint-Arsène Elementary School (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie) participated in a series of creative workshops offered by artist Cynthia Girard-Renard. The students discovered the artist's practice through the works of the exhibition Sans toit, ni loi : les cétacées du Saint-Laurent, which was presented at the Darling Foundry. The students were then given creative freedom and encouraged to let their imagination guide them through a series of expressive painting, drawing and writing exercises. These exercises were completed in the goal of creating collective book-zines based on the story of an animal-hero.

For more information on the various activities, please contact Sandrine Côté: mediation @ optica.ca.

OPTICA's public education program beneficits from the OPTICA Fund. In 2021, it also receives support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.




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Laura Acosta et Santiago Tavera,
The Novels of Elsgüer (Episode 4)
Camouflaged Screams
, 2020, installation multimédia et performance, dimensions variables. Avec l’aimable permission des artistes. | Multimedia installation
and performance, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artists. © Cedric Laurenty.

Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera
From April 17th 2021 to June 12th 2021
The Novels of Elsgüer (Episode 4): Camouflaged Screams

PUBLIC DISCUSSION Between Laura Acosta, Santiago Tavera and Shauna Janssen
Friday April, 23 6PM
- Live Streaming
FACEBOOK LIVE
or
ZOOM LIVE LINK

Camouflaged Screams - Immersive and Scenographic Constructions of Wilding

In Wild Things: the Disorder of Desire (2020), Jack Halberstam posits the notion of wildness as an index of “exclusion, a place of exile (...) simultaneously a chaotic force of nature, the outside of categorization, unrestrained forms of embodiment, the refusal to submit to social regulation, loss of control, the un-predictable.” [1]

Following Halberstam’s sense of wildness as a critical term, and wilding as a performative, with Camouflaged Screams Laura Acosta and Santiago Tavera’s latest immersive installation - part of a recurring narrative in their collaborative artworks that is deeply informed by their own personal and lived experiences as Canadian-Colombian immigrants - invites us to engage with aesthetics of camouflage to provoke critical reflection upon the processes by which humans adapt to their changing environments and deeply entangled survival with the epoch of the Anthropocene, planetary events, and ongoing ecological disasters.

Performance scholar Laura Levin, draws attention to camouflage not merely as a tactic for making oneself invisible, but rather as a process of “blending into the background” and as a potential site for political activism. [2] The political and critical remit of “background” in Camouflaged Screams, brings consciousness to the presence of bodies in more or less natural urban landscapes, rather than concealing or masking them; camouflage becoming a performative aesthetic from which to negotiate and adapt one’s ecological relationship to (un)natural environments. The use of large-scale panoramic video projections renders the camouflaged bodies as visible textile sculptures, but also as highly “performative body-object-events” [3] that simultaneously carry their own agency, temporality, and socioenvironmental meanings; transforming the ubiquitous white cube into a “space of pleasurable belwilderment [4]” and an environmentally charged scenographic construct.

With the use of motion sensors, the projected digital landscapes become an interface between the camouflaged bodies and viewers, inviting us to become intra-active participants and performers in constructing our own virtual relationship with narratives of “camouflage consciousness” [5] and wider body-socioenvironmental justice issues.


Author: Shauna Janssen

THE NOVELS OF ELSEWHERE
EPISODE 4
CAMOUFLAGED SCREAMS
Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera

ABOUT THE PROJECT br>
The Novels of Elsewhere is a series of transdisciplinary installations that explore notions of representation and belonging through interactive and immersive digital environments, nonlinear storytelling, experimental soundscapes, textile sculptures and performance. Each installation of this body of work is referred to as an “episode. Each “episode is a site-specific exploration of technological setups, corporeal interactions, and inquiries about experiences of “the other.Ultimately, this body of work invites viewers to experience a sense of dislocation in order to test the boundaries between body/environment, and viewer/performer.

Episode 4: Camouflaged Screams is is an interactive installation exploring the (a)symbiotic relationship between humans and the natural environment. This augmented experience incorporates large scale panoramic video projections of a recorded performance with textile pieces, along with motion sensors, enveloping soundscapes, lighting setups and sculptural elements. As the audience moves around the installation, their movements have the capacity to alter the images and sounds in the space, asking viewers to reflect on how their presence and actions have a direct effect on the environments that surround them.

Concept and Design: Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera
Performers: Aizysse Baga, Samantha Blake, Alicia Kazobinka
Technical Director and Sensor Programming: Milton Riaño
Cinematographer: Cedric Laurenty
Sound Producer and Composer: AM DeVito
Production and Studio Assistants: Amélie Charbonneau, Francisco Gonzales-Rosas, Sunna Jóhannsdóttir, Abraham Mercado, Jamie Ross.


nuitblanche


1. Jack Halbertsam, “Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire.Duke University Press, 2020: 3.
2. Laura Levin, “Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In.Palgrave MacMillan, 2014.
3. Dorita Hannah, “Alarming the Heart : Costume as performative body-object-event.Intellect Scene vol. 2, no. 1 and 2, 2014.
4. Halberstam, 10.
5. Levin, 170.

PRESS RELEASE (pdf)

PRESS REVIEW

BRACMORT, Cécilia. « Immersion dans un monde de paradoxes à OPTICA », Vie des arts, August 9, 2021.

CHRISTOFF, Stefan. « Interview radio avec Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera », Free City Radio, CKUT radio, 90.3 FM, June 3, 2021.

DU RUISSEAU, Olivier. “Interactive video installation by two Concordia artists shown at Optica, Camouflaged Screams interrogates cultural and gender identities through a combination of performance, video art and interactivity”, Faculty of Fine Arts Concordia Website, June 4, 2021.
Link:
https://www.concordia.ca/cunews/finearts/2021/06/04/interactive-video-installation-by-two-concordia-artists-shown-at-optica.html?utm_source=email&utm_medium=share



Reminder Health Guidelines

In view to protect both our visitors and our staff, we set up health implementing measures.

We ask that you respect the following rules:

- reservations are mandatory for exhibition visits, use this form:

https://form.jotform.com/202475220037243

or by telephone: 514-874-1666;

Unannounced visits may be accepted, depending on the number of visitors in the gallery spaces. We can accommodate a maximum of 8 people at a time.

- masks or other face covering are mandatory throughout the visit;

- hands must be disinfected upon arrival: hydroalcoholic gel is available on site;

- 2-meter distancing must be maintained between each person to facilitate circulation during your visit.

If you have COVID-19-related symptoms, please postpone your visit.
Welcome one and all!



Santiago Tavera and Laura Acosta (b. 1988, Bogota) are Colombian-Canadian artists based in Montréal. Their collaborative practice forges an intersection between Tavera’s investigation of virtual technologies and interactive environments in relation to the body, with Acosta’s exploration of performance through wearable textiles. Through this, they create site specific immersive experiences and expanded performances in which the audience questions their own position within a space. Their collaborative projects have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and presented in Canada at MAI-Montréal, arts interculturels, Articule, and SUR Gallery, as well as Internationally at the International Images Festival of Manizales and the International Symposium on Electronic Art-ISEA.

Santiago Tavera constructs immersive and interactive installations that explore virtual narratives of dislocation and perception. In Tavera’s work, multimedia compositions of videos, 3D graphic animations, text, sound and reflective materials evoke experiences of physical, digital and queer processes of identification and representation. Tavera holds a Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University.

Laura Acosta creates surreal scenes that integrate improvised movement, textile structures and multimedia elements, as a way to explore themes of identity and displacement. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Fibres and Material studies from Concordia University, an interdisciplinary Bachelor in Fine Art from NSCAD University, and an advanced diploma in Fine Arts from Fanshawe College.

Shauna Janssen is an interdisciplinary curator of site-responsive, collaborative, multimedia and activist urban art projects. Since 2009, in Tiohtià:ke/ Montreal she has been commissioned to undertake artistic and curatorial public art projects for the Centre d’Histoire de Montréal, La Fonderie Darling, and has given talks and collaborated on numerous community-engaged events and cultural exchanges with institutions such as Mutek, Heritage Montréal, Montréal Arts Interculturel, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Articule, the Atwater Library Digital Literacy Group, and the McCord Museum. Internationally Shauna has designed and curated installations for Città Invisibili (Fara Sabina, Italy, 2018), The Performance Arcade (Aotearoa/ New Zealand, 2020), and the XX Chilean Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, Chile (2018), among others. Shauna is an assistant professor at Concordia University, where she has taught in Studio Arts, the Department of Art History, and currently teaches in the Department of Theatre.




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Charlotte Clermont, microsleeps, 2020,
photogramme : image numérique transférée sur 16mm, couleur. Avec l’aimable permission de l'artiste. | Videostill: Digital image transferred to 16mm, color.
Courtesy of the artist.

Charlotte Clermont
From April 17th 2021 to June 12th 2021
microsleeps

With a background in experimental film, Charlotte Clermont creates a dialogue between video and audio explorations to examine our perceptions of the real. The performative aspect of her practice, moved by a desire to transpose the illusiveness of lived moments, is embodied in her singular way of working with analogue recording devices. Using materials from her immediate environment, she works upon the chemical sensitivity of film through various alterations, while leaving a large place to chance.

Her works testify to an intimate relationship with the materiality of the medium. Imbued with a sensuality and eroticism, they reveal a dissension among polarities by inscribing themselves in the interval between the accessible and inaccessible. These tensions arouse fantastical projections of the imminent, deployed on the porous boundary of the real, the proposed fragmentary combinations serving as points of entry into a precise spacetime that allows one to observe the fragility of ephemeral sensations. Woven of autofictional fragments, they draw on an intimate memory, mingling dreams and memories and de/sanctifying reminiscences. Clermont’s approach also borrows from musical codes, using rhythmical structures and leitmotifs to assemble textures and chromatic bursts that create a narrativity and semiology of the image. Her work generally develops an inherent, autonomous, and symbolically encoded metalanguage.

The installation microsleeps was shot in 16 mm and Super-8, then transposed to three digital channels, with soundtracks produced by Émilie Payeur, an experimental music and noise composer. Clermont uses, among other things, the technique of mordanting—a procedure that deteriorates the image by altering and lifting the film’s chemical emulsion—to fleetingly reveal the micromovements of various strata of pictorial composition. The sensations of immensity elicited by the captured places and moments permute randomly, giving substance to fleeting but pronounced states of being. The installation proposes a succession of latent universes, inscribed in the interstices of a moving present where states of intimacy and extimacy (Lacan) are intertwined. microsleeps reflects the plurality of “intra” and “extra” personal relationships of which we are composed and summons us to a remarkable encounter with them.

Author: Myriam Le Ber Assiani

Translator: Ron Ross

PRESS RELEASE (pdf)

Reminder Health Guidelines

In view to protect both our visitors and our staff, we set up health implementing measures.

We ask that you respect the following rules:

- reservations are mandatory for exhibition visits, use this form:

https://form.jotform.com/202475220037243

or by telephone: 514-874-1666;

Unannounced visits may be accepted, depending on the number of visitors in the gallery spaces. We can accommodate a maximum of 8 people at a time.

- masks or other face covering are mandatory throughout the visit;

- hands must be disinfected upon arrival: hydroalcoholic gel is available on site;

- 2-meter distancing must be maintained between each person to facilitate circulation during your visit.

If you have COVID-19-related symptoms, please postpone your visit.
Welcome one and all!



Charlotte Clermont holds a bachelor’s in Studio Arts from Concordia University. She lives and works in Montreal. Her work has been presented in Canada and internationally in the framework of festivals and exhibitions, including the International Festival of Films on Art (Canada), Fracto (Germany), the Festival des cinémas différents et expérimentaux de Paris (France), IFF Rotterdam (Netherlands), Künstlerhaus Bethanian (Germany), CROSSROADS (United States), Arctic Moving Image and Film Festival (Norway), and the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Scotland). She was artist in residence at Studio Kura (Japan), Signal Culture (United States), Fusion Gallery (Italy), Shiro Oni (Japan), and Skaftfell (Iceland).

The artist wishes to dedicate microsleeps to Daniel Oxley and she warmly thanks for their support the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Main Film artist centre, Vidéographe, OPTICA, Alexendre Brault, Charles-André Coderre, Jonathan Lachance, Émilie Payeur, Guillaume Vallée, Erin Weisgerber, and Big Dick Panther.

Myriam Le Ber Assiani is interested in risks and transformation as drivers of existence and resistence. Grounded in interdisciplinarity, her practice is articulated on the fringes of action art, video and sound arts, and installation. She holds BFA in theatre studies from UQAM and her works have been presented in Canada, the United States, and in Europe.




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Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera,
The Novels of Elsgüer (Episode 4): Camouflaged Screams, 2020. Installation multimédia : projections vidéo, capteurs de mouvement
branche, plexiglas réfléchissant,
néon ; performance.
Dimensions variables. Avec l’aimable permission des artistes. | Multimedia installation:
video projections,
set of motion sensors, branch, reflective plexiglass, neon light; performance.
Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artists.

Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera avec Shauna Janssen
From April 17th 2021 to June 12th 2021
Opuscule et entretien vidéo

With the aim of developing aspects of the current programming, OPTICA recently launched a new series of video interviews and a new edition format in the form of a digital opuscule, comprising an exhibition text, a selection of images, a biography, a selective bibliography, and a gallery layout. We are pleased to share with you in a digital version the opuscule that documents the exhibition by Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera entitled The Novels of Elsgüer (Episode 4): Camouflaged Screams, including the text by scholar and curator Shauna Janssen (Montreal) - to be discovered through this LINK (pdf).

We also invite you to consult the video interview between Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera with Shauna Janssen (April 23, 2021) -
WATCH THE VIDEO BY THIS LINK (youtube).




Santiago Tavera and Laura Acosta (b. 1988, Bogota) are Colombian-Canadian artists based in Montréal. Their collaborative practice forges an intersection between Tavera’s investigation of virtual technologies and interactive environments in relation to the body, with Acosta’s exploration of performance through wearable textiles. Through this, they create site specific immersive experiences and expanded performances in which the audience questions their own position within a space. Their collaborative projects have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and presented in Canada at MAI-Montréal, arts interculturels, Articule, and SUR Gallery, as well as Internationally at the International Images Festival of Manizales and the International Symposium on Electronic Art-ISEA.

Santiago Tavera constructs immersive and interactive installations that explore virtual narratives of dislocation and perception. In Tavera’s work, multimedia compositions of videos, 3D graphic animations, text, sound and reflective materials evoke experiences of physical, digital and queer processes of identification and representation. Tavera holds a Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University.

Laura Acosta creates surreal scenes that integrate improvised movement, textile structures and multimedia elements, as a way to explore themes of identity and displacement. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Fibres and Material studies from Concordia University, an interdisciplinary Bachelor in Fine Art from NSCAD University, and an advanced diploma in Fine Arts from Fanshawe College.

Shauna Janssen is an interdisciplinary curator of site-responsive, collaborative, multimedia and activist urban art projects. Since 2009, in Tiohtià:ke/ Montreal she has been commissioned to undertake artistic and curatorial public art projects for the Centre d’Histoire de Montréal, La Fonderie Darling, and has given talks and collaborated on numerous community-engaged events and cultural exchanges with institutions such as Mutek, Heritage Montréal, Montréal Arts Interculturel, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Articule, the Atwater Library Digital Literacy Group, and the McCord Museum. Internationally Shauna has designed and curated installations for Città Invisibili (Fara Sabina, Italy, 2018), The Performance Arcade (Aotearoa/ New Zealand, 2020), and the XX Chilean Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, Chile (2018), among others. Shauna is an assistant professor at Concordia University, where she has taught in Studio Arts, the Department of Art History, and currently teaches in the Department of Theatre.




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Charlotte Clermont, microsleeps, 2020-2021.
Installation vidéo, 16mm et Super 8 numérisés,
 écrans autoportants, muret, objets divers : argile peinte et façonnée, eau, bocaux, miroir, grenade, tissu synthétique; 4 canaux mono, 4 min.
 Dimensions variables. Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste. | Video Installation, 16mm and Super-8 Film digital transfer, freestanding screens, low wall, various objects: painted and shaped clay, water, jars, mirror, pomegranate,
synthetic fabric; 4 mono channels, 4 min.
Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

Charlotte Clermont et Stefano Miraglia
From April 17th 2021 to June 12th 2021
Opuscule et entretien vidéo

With the aim of developing aspects of the current programming, OPTICA recently launched a new series of video interviews and a new edition format in the form of a digital opuscule, comprising an exhibition text, a selection of images, a biography, a selective bibliography, and a gallery layout. We are pleased to share with you in a digital version the opuscule that documents the exhibition by Charlotte Clermont entitled microsleeps, including the text by author Myriam Le Ber Assiani (Montreal) - to be discovered through this LINK (pdf)

We also invite you to consult the video interview between Charlotte Clermont and Stefano Miraglia (May 25, 2021) -
WATCH THE VIDEO BY THIS LINK (youtube).




Charlotte Clermont holds a bachelor’s in Studio Arts from Concordia University. She lives and works in Montreal. Her work has been presented in Canada and internationally in the framework of festivals and exhibitions, including the International Festival of Films on Art (Canada), Fracto (Germany), the Festival des cinémas différents et expérimentaux de Paris (France), IFF Rotterdam (Netherlands), Künstlerhaus Bethanian (Germany), CROSSROADS (United States), Arctic Moving Image and Film Festival (Norway), and the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Scotland). She was artist in residence at Studio Kura (Japan), Signal Culture (United States), Fusion Gallery (Italy), Shiro Oni (Japan), and Skaftfell (Iceland).

Stefano Miraglia est un artiste et commissaire basé à Paris, France. Son travail a été présenté à l'international dans des musées et galeries tels que Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, Centrum (Allemagne), Museo Mar (Argentine) et dans de nombreux festivals de cinéma. En tant que curateur, il s'intéresse à la façon dont la cinéphilie fonctionne à l'intersection entre l'art, la pédagogie et la pensée collective. Il travaille sur la redécouverte et la réévaluation de l'œuvre d'Ellis Donda depuis 2019.

Stefano est le fondateur et curateur de Movimcat ainsi que curateur associé dans divers collectifs, et membre actif de C|E|A / Association française des commissaires d’exposition.

Stefano Miraglia is an artist and curator based in Paris, France. His work has been presented internationally in museums and galleries such as Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, Centrum (Germany), Museo Mar (Argentina) and in many film festivals.

As a curator, he is interested in how cinephilia works at the intersection of art, pedagogy and collective thinking - focusing on Italian cinephilia from the 70s and 80s and how that particular knowledge can be interpreted and passed to contemporary practitioners. He works on the rediscovery and reappraisal of the work of Ellis Donda since 2019. He is the founder and curator of Movimcat as well as associate curator in various collectives, and an active member of the French association of art curators C|E|A.




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Intersections, 2021.

Nouveau partenariat entre le Conseil des arts de Montréal, l'École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l'UQAM et OPTICA
From April 25th 2021 to May 31st 2022
Intersections - Résidence de recherche, création et production_date limite de dépoÌ‚t: 25 avril 2021

Nouveau partenariat entre le Conseil des arts de Montréal, l’École des arts visuels et médiatiques (ÉAVM) et OPTICA, centre d’art contemporain
APPEL DE CANDIDATURES


Date limite de dépôt: 25 avril 2021
Séance d'information virtuelle : 13 avril à 11h

Pour plus de renseignements, une séance d'information virtuelle aura lieu le 13 avril aÌ€ 11h. Vous eÌ‚tes invité.e aÌ€ vous inscrire pour recevoir le lien Zoom d’ici le 11 avril aÌ€: intersections@uqam.ca

Le Conseil des arts de Montréal (CAM), le Centre d’art contemporain OPTICA et l’École des arts visuels et médiatiques (ÉAVM) de l’UQAÌ€M lancent un appel de candidatures pour les artistes issu.e.s de l’immigration (de premieÌ€re ou de seconde génération) qui sont membres des minorités ethniques ou visibles**. Les candidat.e.s éligibles auront terminé leurs études ou seront prochainement diploÌ‚mé.e.s de la maiÌ‚trise aÌ€ l’ÉAVM.

Ce nouveau partenariat vise à offrir un soutien de recherche, de création et de production à un.e artiste en lui donnant accès à un accompagnement professionnel, complémentaire à sa formation universitaire dans le milieu artistique montréalais.

Ce projet pilote prend la forme d’une résidence en vue de la réalisation d’une œuvre qui entre en dialogue avec des archives (fonds documentaire du centre d’art contemporain OPTICA ou autre, en fonction de la recherche de l’artiste). AÌ€ la fin de la résidence, OPTICA présentera une exposition de l’artiste sélectionné.e. Le lauréat ou la lauréate tiendra aussi une présentation publique sur sa pratique artistique au centre. Un accompagnement par l’ÉAVM et OPTICA sera fourni dans le cadre du projet d’une durée d’un an.

Conditions d'admissibilité

- eÌ‚tre un.e artiste issu.e. de l’immigration (de premieÌ€re ou de seconde génération) membre des minorités ethniques ou visibles**;
- eÌ‚tre un.e artiste professionnel.le** en arts visuels; - avoir été diploÌ‚mé du programme de maiÌ‚trise aÌ€ l’ÉAVM entre 2017 et 2021;
- eÌ‚tre citoyen.ne canadien.ne ou résident.e permanent.e du Canada aÌ€ la date de dépoÌ‚t de la demande; - eÌ‚tre domicilié sur le territoire de l’iÌ‚le de Montréal depuis au moins un an;
- être disponible pour toutes les activités incluses dans le cadre du projet.

Soutien offert

- trois mois de résidence de recherche aÌ€ l’automne 2021 au centre d’art contemporain OPTICA incluant un espace de travail et un acceÌ€s aux équipements de bureau, aux archives et aÌ€ la documentation;
- un studio pour la création et la production, ainsi qu’un acceÌ€s aux ateliers techniques spécialisés de l'ÉAVM pour une durée d’un an; « sous toutes réserves d’approbation par les instances de l’UQAM – en processus »
- un accompagnement professionnel totalisant 60 heures par OPTICA (30h) et l’ÉAVM (30h);
- une subvention de recherche (max. 1500$);
- un cachet de production (3,000$), d’exposition (2,120$) et de présentation publique (125$);
- une plage d’exposition ou de diffusion du projet final dans la programmation d’OPTICA et une présentation publique au cours de l’année 2023.
Veuillez noter que nous ne prenons pas en charge les frais d’hébergement ou de transport. Le calendrier et les conditions de travail peuvent eÌ‚tre modifiés en fonction du contexte pandémique.

Dossier de candidature

- une lettre de motivation décrivant le projet de recherche proposé, les objectifs prévus, l’échéancier pour les trois mois de la résidence et sa pertinence pour la démarche artistique (max. 500 mots);
- une courte biographie (max. 100 mots);
- une démarche artistique (max. 500 mots); - un curriculum vitae (max. 3 pages);
- 10 images maximum au format JPG d'un poids maximal de 1Mo par image et/ou extraits vidéo et audio (5 minutes maximum, par hyperliens) avec une liste descriptive des images et/ou des extraits audiovisuels;
Le dossier de candidature doit eÌ‚tre soumis dans un seul document PDF (taille maximale du fichier de 15 Mo) et envoyé au plus tard le 25 avril 2021 aÌ€ minuit aÌ€ l’adresse courriel: intersections@uqam.ca

Seuls les documents exigés seront transmis aux membres du comité d'évaluation. Il n'y aura pas de commentaires du jury.

Pour plus de renseignements, une séance d'information virtuelle aura lieu le 13 avril aÌ€ 11h. Vous eÌ‚tes invité.e aÌ€ vous inscrire pour recevoir le lien Zoom d’ici le 11 avril aÌ€: intersections@uqam.ca

** Pour plus d’information sur les termes utilisés, consulter le Glossaire du Conseil des arts de Montréal: https://www.artsmontreal.org/media/artistes/aide/financement/transitoire/glossaire.pdf






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Le Camouflage, fiche pédagogique destinée aux groupes scolaires et aux familles, 2021.
Développement du contenu : Sandrine Côté et Marie Drapeau. Graphisme : Tamzyn Berman.|
Educational flashcards intended for school groups and families, 2021.
Content development: Sandrine Côté and Marie Drapeau. Graphic Design: Tamzyn Berman.


Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera
From June 1st 2021 to June 12th 2021
Nouveaux outils éducatifs chez OPTICA à découvrir!

Following the Digital Education Toolkit launched this winter around the Sandra Brewster exhibition, OPTICA is offering a brand new educational tool for its young public. The centre is now offering a series of educational flashcards and a short video, which echo the practice of artists Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera and their installation The Novels of Elsgüer (Episode 4): Camouflaged Screams, currently on display at OPTICA.

The five thematic flashcards are intended for school groups and families (8 to 13 years old). While the general objective of these cards is for children to discover the work of the artists, they also allow them to explore, alone or in teams, the notions of identity, camouflage, immersion, interactivity and interdisciplinarity in relation to the art installation. The various playful activities and educational strategies that are presented (Sensory Map, Situation Setting, Investigation Tools, etc.) will contribute to the students’ understanding of the issues that inform the exhibition. The flashcards are also accompanied by an interview with the artists presented in the form of a short video with the goal of illustrating the career of professional artists.

For more information on the educational flashcards, please contact Sandrine Côté at mediation[at]optica.ca.




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L’artiste Maryam Eizadifard,
crédit : Experimental Film Society.

Maryam Eizadifard
From September 1st 2021 to April 30th 2022
Récipiendaire de la Résidence Intersections!

The Conseil des arts de Montréal (CAM), contemporary art centre OPTICA, and UQAM’s École des arts visuels et médiatiques (ÉAVM) are very pleased to announce that Maryam Eizadifard is the recipient of the Research, Creation, and Production Intersections Residency, first edition 2021.

Maryam Eizadifard is interested in notions of space and time that are inherent to immigration and uprootedness. She explores the ephemeral nature of places and their impact on memory and the body. These experimentations nourish her developing concept of “city-body.” As part of her residency, Eizadifard intends to pursue her reflection on migratory movement and the status of immigrants, inspired by explorations into the psychology of the body in its relation to space and of the body as an inhabited and geographically perceived space.

Chaired by Julia-Anamaria Salagor, project manager – cultural diversity in the arts at the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the jury this year was composed of Romeo Gongora, professor at the ÉAVM, OPTICA director Marie-Josée Lafortune, and curator Mariza Rosales Argonza.

The Research, Creation, and Production Intersections Residency rewards emerging artists with a first or second generation immigration background, who are members of an ethnic or visible minority and are recent graduates of the Master’s program at ÉAVM.

For more information on the Research, Creation, and Production Intersections Residency, please visit: the website.



This residency is offered thanks to a partnership between the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the École des arts visuels et médiatiques at Université du Québec à Montréal, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, and OPTICA.

USEFUL LINKS

Website of Maryam Eizadifard

Study at l'ÉAVM

Conseil des arts de Montréal

OPTICA, centre d'art contemporain

For more information on the Research, Creation, and Production Intersections Residency, please visit, glossary of the Conseil des arts de Montréal





Maryam Eizadifard is a graduate of the Faculty of Arts and Architecture at the University of Teheran (2007). Having left Iran in 2011 in order to pursue graduate studies in visual arts, Eizadifard now holds a master’s in visual and media arts from UQAM (2018). She focuses on the ephemeral nature of spaces and their influence on memory and the body.

“The influence of intimate and private environments is key to my understanding women’s condition. What makes me a woman? By analyzing these spaces, I explore the tensions between emptiness and the occupation they convey. When the human being is absent, is this private space truly empty?”

These experimentations fuel the concept of “city-body” that she has developed.

maryamizadifard.com




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Portrait de l'artiste Leila Zelli, 2020. Avec l'aimable permission de l'artiste. |
Portrait of artist Leila Zelli. Courtesy of the artist. Photo Credit: Leila Zelli.


Leila Zelli
From September 1st 2021 to May 30th 2022
OPTICA en parascolaire

In September, OPTICA will be ready for back-to-school with a brand new project that will take the form of weekly art workshops. Offered as an in-class activity for a duration of six months, this project will allow a group of ten to fifteen students from Saint-Arsène School (Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie) to participate in a guided visual arts experience with Iranian-born artist Leila Zelli, accompanied by Sandrine Côté, our cultural mediator. The students will also meet and exchange with specialists from various fields who will share their passion for their profession through presentations and practical workshops. At the end of the course, the students will create a collective multidisciplinary installation that will be integrated into their school environment. The final work will be presented to the public in May 2022.

This initiative is supported by the ministère de la Culture et des communications du Québec through the Parcours éducatif program.



Born in Tehran (Iran), Leila Zelli lives and works in Montreal. Zelli has completed a master's degree (2020) and a bachelor's degree (2016) in visual and media arts from UQAM. She is interested in the relationships that we have with the idea of “others” and “elsewhere ” and more specifically, within this geopolitical space often referred to by the questionable term of“ Middle East ”. Zelli's work has been the subject of exhibitions, notably at Galerie Bradley Ertaskiran, at the Conseil des arts de Montréal, at the Galerie de l'UQAM and at the Quebec Contemporary Art Fair. Her works are now part of the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the loan collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.

https://leilazelli.com/




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Portrait de Claudia Goulet-Blais, 2021. |
Portrait of Claudia Goulet-Blais, 2021. Photo credit: Claudia Goulet-Blais.

Claudia Goulet-Blais
September 1st 2021
Bienvenue à Claudia Goulet-Blais!

OPTICA is pleased to welcome Claudia Goulet-Blais who will be joining our team as Cultural Mediation and Digital Assistant. Claudia has recently completed a Bachelors in Fine Arts at Concordia University majoring in Photography and Art History - Studio Arts. Her studies have led her to develop a focus on image-based contemporary art as an academic research topic and creative practice that lies within the social relations of class, gender and sexuality through photography and bookmaking. She completed an internship at OPTICA during the course of her studies in 2019-2021 and since then has been collaborating with our team. Welcome Claudia!

https://www.claudiagouletblais.com/




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BUSH Gallery, Hashtag Tmícw, 2014, peinture d'arpentage. Vue d’installation, SecwepemcúÍecw, 2014. Avec l’aimable autorisation des artistes. | Landmarking paint. Installation view, SecwepemcúÍecw, 2014.
Courtesy of the artists.

MOMENTA Biennale de l'image; Commissaire | Curator: Stefanie Hessler, with | en collaboration avec | Camille Georgeson-Usher, Maude Johnson, Himali Singh Soin | BUSH Gallery : Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Peter Morin, Tania Willard
From September 8th 2021 to October 23rd 2021
MOMENTA x OPTICA DIFFRACTION. DE LA LUMIÈRE ET DU TERRITOIRE

Exhibition presented by MOMENTA Biennale de l’image and produced in partnership with OPTICA.

MOMENTA Biennale de l’image is proud to present its 17th edition, Sensing Nature, organized by curator Stefanie Hessler in collaboration with Camille Georgeson-Usher, Maude Johnson, and Himali Singh Soin. The biennale joins forces with OPTICA for the exhibition by BUSH Gallery: Diffracting. Of Light and of Land.

Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal - From September 8 to October 23, 2021, at OPTICA, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Peter Morin, and Tania Willard of BUSH Gallery present an exhibition that examines alternative photographic processes and the political implications of site-specific creation. Some of the works were produced in summer 2021, during a residency in Secwepemcúĺecw. Together, the artists highlight land as a living entity and the many cultural inflections that it engenders.

MOMENTA Creative
SUN PRINTS
Join a dialogue around the resonances among light, land, and photographic processes with the Indigenous collective BUSH Gallery. Then, create a sun print from natural materials to generate a shared and ephemeral archive.

Augmented reality route
MOMENTA's first augmented reality project, the Liquid Crystals interactive route presents 11 augmented reality works near the exhibition spaces. Wander around the city and experience the works, accessible as filters using your mobile device. Visit momentabiennale.com/liquidcrystals to access the project website and the augmented reality works. Featuring: Frances Adair Mckenzie, alaska B, Scott Benesiinaabandan, Anna Binta Diallo, Maryse Goudreau, Ts̱ēmā Igharas, Lisa Jackson, Kama La Mackerel, Malik Mckoy, Alex McLeod, Sabrina Ratté.

An Indigenous community garden in the heart of downtown
Under the title TEIONHENKWEN Supporters of Life, an urban ecosystem is taking shape in the outdoor space north of the Grande Bibliothèque/BAnQ. Created by artist T'uy't'tanat-Cease Wyss in collaboration with Silverbear and Joce TwoCrows Mashkikii Bimosewin Tremblay, the garden features local varieties of native plants. It is a gathering space accessible to all.

About MOMENTA Biennale de l’image

MOMENTA Biennale de l’image is an international contemporary art biennale devoted to the image. Its mission is to generate a sensitive and sensible impact on the world around us by means of images. The event implements unifying and structuring initiatives for art dissemination and education, to encourage reflection on and access to contemporary art. Founded in 1989 as Le Mois de la Photo aÌ€ Montréal, the organization was renamed MOMENTA Biennale de l’image in 2017. At its last edition in 2019, the biennale included 13 exhibitions, 39 artists, and 40 public events, and public attendance totalled more than 210,000 exhibition visits.



PRESS RELEASE (pdf)

PRESS REVIEW

WILKINSON, Jayne. " Natural Causes," Artforum, October 20, 2021.

NESBITT, Sarah. " 'Sensing Nature / Quand la nature ressent' 17th MOMENTA Biennale de l’image Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal," Flash Art, October 20, 2021.

ALLARD, Alexe. Interview with Esther Bourdages. Café - Ckut radio, 90.3 FM, October, 1, 2021.

MORELLI, Didier. " MOMENTA 2021 Centres Indigenous and Nonhumanist Notions of Nature," Frieze magazine, September 30, 2021.



BUSH Gallery: Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (Métis, born in Comox, Canada; lives in Vancouver, Canada), Peter Morin (Tāłtān, born in Telegraph Creek, Canada; lives in Victoria, Canada), and Tania Willard (Secwépemc, born in Kamloops, Canada; lives in Chase, Canada) form this deployment of BUSH Gallery, a space created by an Indigenous-led collective of artists centred on Indigenous territory, experiences, and rights. BUSH Gallery explores ways in which art—its institutions, disciplines, and histories—can be modulated by centring Indigenous life, knowledge, traditions, and cultures.

Stefanie Hessler is a curator, writer, and editor. Her work focuses on ecologies, technology, and expanded definitions of life and non-life from an intersectional feminist perspective. Hessler is the director of Kunsthall Trondheim in South Sápmi, Norway.

Camille Georgeson-Usher is a scholar, artist, and arts administrator from Galiano Island, British Columbia, which is the land of the Pune’laxutth’ (Penelakut) Nation. She is writing on ontologies of gathering and how protocols from different nations intersect in urban centres.

Maude Johnson is a curator and writer who lives and works in Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal. In her explorations of performative and curatorial practices, she probes methodologies, mechanisms, and languages in interdisciplinary works. She is the executive and curatorial assistant for MOMENTA Biennale de l’image.

Himali Singh Soin is a writer and artist based between London and Delhi. She thinks through ecological loss, and the loss of home, seeking shelter somewhere in the healing power of performance and the radicality of love.




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Portrait des artistes Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera. Avec l'aimable permission des artistes. |
Portrait of artists Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera. Courtesy of the artists. Photo credit: Cedric Laurenty

Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera
From September 15th 2021 to May 1st 2022
OPTICA, Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera, récipiendaires de la subvention Présent numérique du Conseil des arts du Canada!

OPTICA is the proud recipient of the Digital Now grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. This grant will enable the creation of a digital interactive 360-degree website, an adaptation of episodes from The Novels of Elsguer series by artists Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera. The project offers an immersive and interactive experience based on the notion of displacement (migrations, diasporas). An independent website will also be created incorporating a documentary component.

The Novels of Elsguer by Canadian-Colombian artist duo Laura Acosta and Santiago Tavera is a series of transdisciplinary installations that explore notions of representation and belonging through interactive and immersive digital environments, non-linear narratives, landscapes experimental sound, textile sculptures and performances.



Santiago Tavera and Laura Acosta (b. 1988, Bogota) are Colombian-Canadian artists based in Montréal. Their collaborative practice forges an intersection between Tavera’s investigation of virtual technologies and interactive environments in relation to the body, with Acosta’s exploration of performance through wearable textiles. Through this, they create site specific immersive experiences and expanded performances in which the audience questions their own position within a space. Their collaborative projects have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and presented in Canada at MAI-Montréal, arts interculturels, Articule, and SUR Gallery, as well as Internationally at the International Images Festival of Manizales and the International Symposium on Electronic Art-ISEA.


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BUSH gallery, Atelier Impressions solaires, 2021.
Avec l'aimable permission des artistes.
Crédit photo : Jean-Michael Seminaro
|BUSH gallery, Creative Sun Prints Workshop.
Courtesy of the artists. Photo Credit: Jean-Michael Seminaro.

Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill, Peter Morin et Tania Willard
From September 25th 2021 to September 25th 2021
Journée de la culture : impressions sous le soleil chez OPTICA à 13h!

OPTICA invites you to immerse yourself into the works of the exhibition Diffraction. Of Light and Territory by the Indigenous artists' collective BUSH Gallery for the duration of an afternoon as part of its Public Education Program. A great opportunity to share thoughts and create!

Over complimentary tea, come and discover the creative process of artists Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill, Peter Morin and Tania Willard and the works they created during a residency on the Secwépemc Nation territory in the Neskonlith Reserve in Secwepemcúĺecw, BC. You will have the opportunity to experiment with the sun printing technique used by the artists and design your custom reusable harvesting bag from natural and plant-based materials that you will use to make your print. During the event, we will reflect on the relationship we have with nature, territory and the environment.

The activity is free, open to all and will be adapted in case of rain. With friends and family or solo, join us at the center on Saturday, September 25 at 1pm.

The BUSH Gallery exhibition is presented as part of MOMENTA Biennale de l'image and produced in partnership with OPTICA. This activity is an adaptation of the sun print workshop by artists Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill, Peter Morin and Tania Willard from BUSH Gallery collective in collaboration with MOMENTA Creative and OPTICA, center d'art contemporain. Courtesy of the artists. OPTICA would also like to thank MOMENTA Creative.

RESERVATION: mediation@optica.ca
or 514-874-1666
OPTICA, centre d'art contemporain
Espace 106, 5445 av. De Gaspé
Montréal
H2T 3B2




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Fiches pédagogiques et matériel didactique, 2021.
Conception : Sandrine Côté & Marie Drapeau. Signature visuelle : Tamzyn Berman. Crédit photo : Sandrine Côté. | Educational cards
and didactic material, 2021. Conceptualization: Sandrine Côté & Marie Drapeau. Visual signature: Tamzyn Berman. Photo credit: Sandrine Côté.


Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera
From October 1st 2021 to November 30th 2021
Nouvel atelier en classe pour les élèves du primaire!

This fall, OPTICA is also offering a new in-class workshop in relation to its series of educational cards developed around the art practice of the Canadian-Colombian artist duo Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera and their installation The Novels of Elsgüer (Episode 4): Camouflaged Screams. The one-hour workshop will introduce groups of elementary school students to contemporary art and the artists' practice through 5 thematic cards accompanied by video clips which include a short interview with the artists to demystify their practice, and a multitude of didactic materials.

Divided into 5 teams and guided by one of our cultural mediators, the students will explore the themes and notions of identity, camouflage, immersion, interactivity and interdisciplinarity specific to the installation work. The different pedagogical strategies proposed will lead the students to reflect and exchange with each other and to put into action their new acquired knowledge for a better integration of these notions.

For more information on the workshop content, please contact Sandrine Côté: mediation[at]optica.ca.



Santiago Tavera and Laura Acosta (b. 1988, Bogota) are Colombian-Canadian artists based in Montréal. Their collaborative practice forges an intersection between Tavera’s investigation of virtual technologies and interactive environments in relation to the body, with Acosta’s exploration of performance through wearable textiles. Through this, they create site specific immersive experiences and expanded performances in which the audience questions their own position within a space. Their collaborative projects have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and presented in Canada at MAI-Montréal, arts interculturels, Articule, and SUR Gallery, as well as Internationally at the International Images Festival of Manizales and the International Symposium on Electronic Art-ISEA.

Santiago Tavera constructs immersive and interactive installations that explore virtual narratives of dislocation and perception. In Tavera’s work, multimedia compositions of videos, 3D graphic animations, text, sound and reflective materials evoke experiences of physical, digital and queer processes of identification and representation. Tavera holds a Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University.

Laura Acosta creates surreal scenes that integrate improvised movement, textile structures and multimedia elements, as a way to explore themes of identity and displacement. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Fibres and Material studies from Concordia University, an interdisciplinary Bachelor in Fine Art from NSCAD University, and an advanced diploma in Fine Arts from Fanshawe College.

Shauna Janssen is an interdisciplinary curator of site-responsive, collaborative, multimedia and activist urban art projects. Since 2009, in Tiohtià:ke/ Montreal she has been commissioned to undertake artistic and curatorial public art projects for the Centre d’Histoire de Montréal, La Fonderie Darling, and has given talks and collaborated on numerous community-engaged events and cultural exchanges with institutions such as Mutek, Heritage Montréal, Montréal Arts Interculturel, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Articule, the Atwater Library Digital Literacy Group, and the McCord Museum. Internationally Shauna has designed and curated installations for Città Invisibili (Fara Sabina, Italy, 2018), The Performance Arcade (Aotearoa/ New Zealand, 2020), and the XX Chilean Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, Chile (2018), among others. Shauna is an assistant professor at Concordia University, where she has taught in Studio Arts, the Department of Art History, and currently teaches in the Department of Theatre.




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BUSH Gallery, Couverture zine | Zine Cover, 2021.

BUSH Gallery, zine
From October 12th 2021 to October 23rd 2021
# BUSH Gallery \ Manifestos and other Emergencies\

New publication, Zine distributed for free at OPTICA!
#
BUSH Gallery
\ Manifestos
and other
Emergencies \

In addition to the Bush Gallery manifesto translated into Aboriginal languages, a guidebook outlines emergencies and steps to mitigate damage not only to property but also to protect spirit, sanity, culture and more. The publication includes a gluten free bannock recipe.

Zine produced by BUSH Gallery in collaboration with
MOMENTA Biennale de l’image and OPTICA
Authors: BUSH Gallery
2021, 35 p., 12,5 x 19 cm.
Texts in Secwepemctsín, Kanienkehaka, English, French



BUSH Gallery: Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (Métis, born in Comox, Canada; lives in Vancouver, Canada), Peter Morin (Tāłtān, born in Telegraph Creek, Canada; lives in Victoria, Canada), and Tania Willard (Secwépemc, born in Kamloops, Canada; lives in Chase, Canada) form this deployment of BUSH Gallery, a space created by an Indigenous-led collective of artists centred on Indigenous territory, experiences, and rights. BUSH Gallery explores ways in which art—its institutions, disciplines, and histories—can be modulated by centring Indigenous life, knowledge, traditions, and cultures.




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OPTICA reprend ses Laboratoires contemporains avec les CPE | OPTICA Resumes its Contemporary Labs with Child Care Centres, 2021. Crédits photo : Sandrine Côté et Claudia Goulet-Blais.

Myriam Yates
From November 1st 2021 to January 30th 2022
OPTICA reprend ses Laboratoires contemporains avec les CPE!

OPTICA is pleased to announce the resumption of its Contemporary Labs for child care centres, daycares and preschool groups.

In a friendly environment, the workshop Come Play with me at the Park allows children, ages 4 to 6, to be introduced to contemporary art and to Myriam Yates' art practice. In large groups and guided by a mediator from the centre, the children will share their observations of the artworks in the exhibition Parcs. Playgrounds, which presents photographs of children's parks in New York City. They will then be invited to imagine and create a playground using a multitude of colored shape cut-outs, in order to continue the reflection begun around the works presented.

In order to respect the Public Health guidelines, the educators from OPTICA will animate the activity on the premises of the establishments. This workshop promotes the development of children's language and vocabulary, stimulates their imagination and creativity, and improves their orientation and spatial composition skills.

For more information or to schedule a workshop, contact us at mediation[@]optica.ca.




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Myriam Yates, Classic Playground, Upper West Side, Manhattan, NY, 2018, impression numérique, 35,56 x 53,34 cm. Avec l’aimable permission de l'artiste. | Digital print, 35,56 x 53,34 cm.
Courtesy of the artist.

Myriam Yates
From November 6th 2021 to December 18th 2021
Parcs. Playgrounds

Open from Saturday, November 6, 2021 - 12PM to 5 PM

Artist Myriam Yates in attendance

-Opuscule to be discovered through this
LINK (pdf).

Reservation highly recommended through this form:
https://form.jotform.com/202475220037243

Parcs. Playgrounds presents a meditation on public space through documentation of empty playground sites across New York City, captured by Myriam Yates in 2018. The formal composition of these photographs, shot front-on and at a distance, encourages us to observe the modernist overtones in public play sites. When captured without human interaction, these structures mirror minimalist architecture and sculpture with their materials of steel, concrete, fibreglass and plastic. This parallel gives each site the aura of a monument and by extension, the potential to become a ruin; with the possibility for abandonment, erosion, and nature’s repossession.

Across the series, many playgrounds are surrounded by apartment buildings and urban structures. Windows, gates, and air conditioners occupy the space of horizons, edges, and borders. In contrast, the sites that show green space and surrounding nature, convey different social signifiers of class, access, and capital despite the absence of human subjects. This tension between how a space is designated socially and it’s formalist reality, is a thread across Yates broader practice.

Often filming or photographing abandoned sites such as racetracks and airport terminals, Yates is drawn to interstitial space. These zones are in a temporal transition; shifting from the pace of human activities like leisure, travel, and play, to the stillness of material breakdown through weathering and geological time. In an era when climate change has focused our attention to the future and the need for sustainability, Yate’s work presents a concurrent landscape often overlooked yet all around us; the slow material breakdown of modernity. Parcs. Playgrounds presents a compelling body of work that typifies such transitory space; documenting sites that we occupy in our development stages, later abandon, and sometimes return to.

April Thompson

PRESS RELEASE (pdf)

Myriam Yates would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts (for the shooting stage and the stay in New-York) and Patric Lacasse.

Reminder Health Guidelines

In view to protect both our visitors and our staff, we set up health implementing measures.

We ask that you respect the following rules:

- Reservation highly recommended, use this form:

https://form.jotform.com/202475220037243

or by telephone: 514-874-1666;

Unannounced visits may be accepted, depending on the number of visitors in the gallery spaces. We can accommodate a maximum of 15 people at a time.

- masks or other face covering are mandatory throughout the visit;

- hands must be disinfected upon arrival: hydroalcoholic gel is available on site;

- 2-meter distancing must be maintained between each person to facilitate circulation during your visit.

If you have COVID-19-related symptoms, please postpone your visit.
Welcome one and all!

PRESS REVIEWS

POIRIER, Josianne. «Myriam Yates, Parcs. Playground», Ciel variable, no. 120, «Figures d'/of affirmation», Summer 2022, p. 95-96.

CHARRON, Marie-Ève. «Galeries et centres d’artistes au diapason de la diversité», Le Devoir, September 11, 2021.



Myriam Yates has exhibited her work across Canada, and internationally in Paris and Berlin. Working in photography and film, Yates has featured her work in various contexts from film festivals, to exhibitions, and magazines. In 2015, she was the recipient of the Victor-Martyn-Lynch-Staunton Prize in Media Arts from the Canada Council for the arts.

April Thompson is a writer currently based on the unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nations, in Vancouver. Her practice is guided by critical investigations of photography and the moving image, spatial politics and new media.



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Gabriela Löffel, [Performance], 2017-2018, installation vidéo, 2 canaux, haut-parleurs, 25 min. Avec l’aimable permission de l'artiste. | 2-Channel video installation, speakers, 25 min. Courtesy of the artist.

Gabriela Löffel
From November 6th 2021 to December 18th 2021
[Performance]

Open from Saturday, November 6, 2021 - 12PM to 5 PM

-Opuscule to be discovered through this
LINK (pdf).

Reservation highly recommended through this form:
https://form.jotform.com/202475220037243

Gabriela Löffel’s multi-video installation [Performance] (2017-18) represents at once a moment of tuition and deconstruction. Shot in an empty conference room from multiple angles, the piece follows oral communication coach Amy Carroll and her co-protagonist, Rudi van der Merwe, intently listening to an audio excerpt Löffel recorded at a trade show for the security industry some time before. Having familiarized with the material, Carroll and Van der Merwe go on to rework the words and the posture of the invisible speaker in the comfort zone of their solitary setting, eventually turning what was admittedly an awkward presentation (the original is laced with ‘ers’ and ‘hus’ and inhibited by a rather hesitant tone of voice) into a perfectly fine-tuned and persuasive introduction. Even the invitation to ‘buckle your seat belt and enjoy the ride’, a crowd-teaser that in the anonymous security man’s version falls hopelessly flat, comes across as a masterpiece of gravitas and confidence after having received the Carrol treatment.

At first glance, Löffel’s analytical approach seems to concentrate on the form but what she is really aiming to is the content. Security, a foundational aspect in contemporary society, is rarely heard being discussed in such technical and academic terms. The context in which this address takes place (a trade fair) is a clear indicator that the primary driving force animating the attending parties is not sharing knowledge or investigating new possibilities but securing a big slice of very profitable fastest-growing market areas. (e.g. regions or countries either marred by conflict or in the process of developing a technology that requires to be protected). When viewed from this perspective, Carroll’s training technique, who include exhortations like ‘it’s my job to make you successful’ or ‘powerful people take time and space’ sound particularly chilling. But if the idea of a facet like personal security being governed exclusively by moral regulations is somehow naïve, the fashion in which the discussion takes place raises pivotal questions over the very notion of ‘protection’ – dangerously slipping into Orwellian territory. The fact that Carroll and van der Merwe’s performance take place in front of a set of devices who capture every single nuance and emphasis further stresses the irony of the situation. Löffel’s proclivity for showing how the simplest gesture can beset the most complex structure is here illustrated by the short visual black-out separating the coaching segment from the final rendition of the text. It’s an unexpected and powerful moment, and one that acts as a reminder of how even the most sophisticated and efficient technology, can often lead to vulnerability when complacent.

Michele Robecchi

PRESS RELEASE (pdf)

Gabriela Löffel would like to thank Amy Carroll, Cristiano Fernandes, Erika Irmler, Maria Pineiro, Eleonora Polato, Swiss Tech Convention Center EPFL (Lausanne), Masé Studio (Genève), Michele Robecchi, Rudi van der Merwe, The Foundation Pro Helvetia, Consulate General of Switzerland in Montreal, OPTICA’s team.

Prohelvetia


Reminder Health Guidelines

In view to protect both our visitors and our staff, we set up health implementing measures.

We ask that you respect the following rules:

- Reservation highly recommended, use this form:

https://form.jotform.com/202475220037243

or by telephone: 514-874-1666;

Unannounced visits may be accepted, depending on the number of visitors in the gallery spaces. We can accommodate a maximum of 15 people at a time.

- masks or other face covering are mandatory throughout the visit;

- hands must be disinfected upon arrival: hydroalcoholic gel is available on site;

- 2-meter distancing must be maintained between each person to facilitate circulation during your visit.

If you have COVID-19-related symptoms, please postpone your visit.
Welcome one and all!



Gabriela Löffel (Oberburg, 1972) lives in Switzerland. She works with temporal media and is interested in the spheres of politics and finance. The artist continues her research analyzing the systems and structures that govern the representation of realities, which could be called a space of mediation. Fragmenting, translating and shifting from the document, the immediate, to interpretation and staging are strategies that she uses in her creative process. This method allows her to create and propose spaces for questioning, raising reasonable doubts and disrupting linear reading. This results in audiovisual compositions that are then translated into multi-channel video installations displayed in physical spaces.

Michele Robecchi is a writer and independent curator based in London, where he is a commissioning editor for contemporary art at Phaidon Press.



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Appel à projets - Programmation 2023-2024
Call for Proposals - Programming 2023-2024
From December 1st 2021 to March 15th 2022
Concours ouvert le 1er décembre 2021 - Jusqu’au 15 mars 2022 avant minuit

For more informations, read this page.

Online FORM

Every year, OPTICA presents a varied program of exhibitions, symposia, and artists’ talks, while investing in curated exhibitions on themes developed at the centre. These activities all propose a critical reflection on current issues in art, sustained and accompanied by the production of relevant publications.

The centre comprises two exhibition spaces and provides professional technical support in the gallery. Artists and curators are invited to submit projects for the gallery’s regular program. Project proposals are reviewed by the programming committee, which makes its recommendations for production.




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Marie Warsh par/by James Warsh; Myriam Yates par/by l'artiste

Myriam Yates
From December 2nd 2021 to December 2nd 2021
Discussion publique sur Zoom : Myriam Yates (Montréal) avec Marie Warsh (New York, États-Unis)

With the aim of developing aspects of the current programming, OPTICA launched a new series of video interviews. We invite you to two discussions which will take place live on the Zoom platform.

Please note that the discussion will be lead in English and the Q&A session will be bilingual.

Please reserve your presence at communications[@]optica.ca
Public Discussion:
Myriam Yates (Montreal) with Marie Warsh (Historian for the Central Park Conservancy, New York, United States)

Thursday, December 2nd, 2021 at 7 pm (EST)

Live on Zoom

« Zoom Link »

Meeting ID: 845 7744 0678

Secret Code: 122736



Myriam Yates has exhibited her work across Canada, and internationally in New York, Paris and Berlin. Working in photography and film, Yates has featured her work in various contexts from film festivals, to exhibitions, and magazines. In 2015, she was the recipient of the Victor-Martyn-Lynch- Staunton Prize in Media Arts from the Canada Council for the arts.

Marie Warsh is a landscape historian and writer who has worked for the Central Park Conservancy since 2005. She is the author of numerous articles about the history of parks and playgrounds as well as the book Central Park’s Adventure-Style Playgrounds: Renewal of a Midcentury Legacy, Bâton-Rouge, LSU [Louisiana State University Press], 2019.

In Central Park's Adventure-Style Playgrounds, Marie Warsh tells the engrossing story of playscapes built in the famous New York City park in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the midcentury experimental “playground revolution.” Warsh explores their connections to the art, recreational design, urbanism, grassroots movements, and child-development theories of the period. She brings the narrative up to the present, detailing the preservation and renewal of the playgrounds decades later by the Central Park Conservancy.




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Michele Robecchi par/by Katherine Carter; Gabriela Löffel par/by Erika Irmler

Gabriela Löffel
From December 8th 2021 to December 8th 2021
Discussion publique sur Zoom : Gabriela Löffel (Genève, Suisse) avec Michele Robecchi (Londres, Angleterre)

With the aim of developing aspects of the current programming, OPTICA launched a new series of video interviews. We invite you to two discussions which will take place live on the Zoom platform.

Please note that the discussion will be lead in English and the Q&A session will be bilingual.

Please reserve your presence at communications[@]optica.ca

Public Discussion:
Gabriela Löffel (Geneva, Switherland) with Michele Robecchi (London, England)

Wednesday, December 8th, 2021 at 12 pm (EST)

Live on Zoom

« Zoom Link »

Meeting ID: 826 2961 3747

Secret Code: 708828



Gabriela Löffel (Oberburg, 1972) lives in Switzerland. She works with temporal media and is interested in the spheres of politics and finance. The artist continues her research analyzing the systems and structures that govern the representation of realities, which could be called a space of mediation. Fragmenting, translating and shifting from the document, the immediate, to interpretation and staging are strategies that she uses in her creative process. This method allows her to create and propose spaces for questioning, raising reasonable doubts and disrupting linear reading. This results in audiovisual compositions that are then translated into multi-channel video installations displayed in physical spaces.

Michele Robecchi is a writer and independent curator based in London, where he is a commissioning editor for contemporary art at Phaidon Press.