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Studio LOBE, Berlin, 2023.
Patrick Henry, Kapwani Kiwanga, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Eve Tagny
Commisssaire/Curator: Ella den Elzen
From January 20th 2024 to March 23rd 2024
Undoing Earthwriting

Performance: Eve Tagny with Élisabeth-Anne Dorléans and Sophia Gaspard
myths and partition scores
Saturday, March 23rd, 2024
4 PM


Opening: January 20 2024 4PM - 6 PM
In the presence of Ella den Elzen, Patrick Henry, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Eve Tagny

To write upon the earth is to extract, to dispossess, to inscribe violence onto land’s surface through the displacement of soil, rocks, plants, and people. Undoing Earthwriting attends to the themes of plants and land, through an Afro-diasporic lens, specifically because of the charged history that Black subjectivity has with these materials. Plants and soil, most essentially, are life-giving and required for the sustenance and survival of all beings. Conversely, botanic and geologic matter have been cultivated and extracted on a massive scale to create the apparatuses of the plantation and the mine, co-constituted with the disciplining of forced or exploitative human labour as racial capitalism.2 Through predominantly newly commissioned works, Patrick Henry, Kapwani Kiwanga, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, and Eve Tagny consider the potency of plants as symbols, commodity, and life. Because of the ways in which soil and plants are imbued with complex histories, this exhibition looks to position these materials, alongside blackness, as a set of concrete vectors that create ruptures in space and time in relation to nature.

Curatorial Essay of Ella den Elzen; Design: Studio LOB (pdf).

Undoing Earthwriting attends to the themes of plants and land, through an Afro-diasporic lens, specifically because of the charged history that Black subjectivity has with these materials. To write upon the earth is to extract, to dispossess, to inscribe violence onto land’s surface through the displacement of soil, rocks, plants, and people.1 Botanic and geologic materials have been cultivated and extracted on a massive scale to create the apparatuses of the plantation and the mine, co-constituted with the disciplining of forced or exploitative human labour as racial capitalism.2 Because of the ways in which soil and plants are imbued with these histories, while simultaneously, at times, have resisted colonial forms of knowing or capturing, the exhibition looks to position these materials, alongside blackness, as a set of material vectors that create ruptures in geographies in space and time.

Katherine McKittrick writes about the ways in which terrestrial space becomes delineated as deep space through time, specifically in relation to black geographies as the legacy and reproduction of capitalism and its racial logics, conceptualizing deep space as the production of space that becomes organized through policy and ideology. These overlapping systems that structure our environment “organize the everyday in multiple contexts and scales—within and across homes, factories, streets, local and world banks, social services, military invasions, developing and overdeveloped nations, resistance tactics, gentrification projects”.3 McKittrick conversely emphasises the potentiality and relationality of blackness to engage with geography, due to the ways in which Black subjects are often contending with multiple overlapping temporal dimensions and historicities in place.4 These overlapping temporalities also provide an opportunity to rupture the linearity of historical time whose traces are inscribed within biologic and geologic material. While the artists presented in Undoing Earthwriting have differing relationships to geography, each presents varying refusals, propositions, and complications to the linkages between property, plants, and people.

Emerging from a place of conversation, the artists met collectively over several months to discuss the exhibition’s themes. These conversations were recorded, and excerpts of their transcriptions will later be published as a companion to the works that were developed over the last several months. Patrick Henry, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, and Eve Tagny were each commissioned to make new works for Undoing Earthwriting, informed by their practices’ ongoing engagements with botanic or geologic materials. Kapwani Kiwanga’s Flowers for Africa (2013 – ongoing) provided a conceptual grounding in which to engage with, in relationship to Kiwanga’s interests in history, the archive, the representation of flowers within Western imagery, and the movement of plants planetarily. While the work is comprised of 16 flower arrangements, three works, Flowers for Africa: Nigeria, Flowers for Africa: Uganda, and Flowers for Africa: Ivory Coast are presented here. Each work is reconstructed based on a protocol, which includes archival photographs of the independence proceedings of African nation states that illustrate the transition of power between colonial o(cials and local governments. Kiwanga sourced these photographs from various state archives. The flowers themselves are the products of trade routes and geopolitical forces that entangle their trajectories, which Kiwanga researches in conversation with florists. Through this action, she examines the slipperiness of the archive, as well as the forms of power encapsulated within its record. Over the course of the exhibition these flowers will decay, as per the artist’s protocols, symbolizing the transient nature of those initiating statehood and underscoring the fragility of certain nation states.

Patrick Henry’s cast bronze sculptures, Soi-même comme un autre, depict a hybridized fictionalized flower, based on the Jamaica (hibiscus) and banana flowers. In choosing to cast a flower which carries little commercial value as a product in comparison to the fruits the same plant would bear, Henry’s works refuse notions of productivity and domestication. The hybrid plant refutes recognizability formally, by incorporating references to Henry’s own biography through his mixing of plant species with the motif of the boxing bag. Addressing duality, specifically the unexpectedness of growth and decay in relation to time – the plant holds the potential for breath – expanding or withering depending on the positionality of the viewer as they approach the work.

Kosisochukwu Nnebe’s, the seeds we carry (bury this where the one you want to trick walks) draws attention to the way plants were used to navigate the realities of life on the plantation in Jamaica, Haiti and the southern United States, either in the form of medicine for healing, poison for revenge and protection, or abortifacient for bodily autonomy. Created by healers within the community whose ability to combine healing materials and spiritual power sometimes threatened to supplant the power and control of slave owners, these concoctions were passed along covertly in vessels of various kinds, all drawing from the same roots within West and Central African spiritual traditions. As a way of honouring these ancestors and the embodied knowledge they carried while still respecting the need for secrecy and opacity, Nnebe’s sculptures reference these vessels. She adorns them in the manner of Haitian libation bottles intended as devotional altar pieces for particular loa, spirits, or – as in this case – ancestors.

Eve Tagny, Partition scores and Mythologies de la valeur are a series of photographic works that emphasize moments of tenderness in the subjects she documents across multiple geographies, including Los Angeles, Johannesburg, London, Montréal, Toronto, and Sharjah, who occupy these cities differently in relation to class, power, and use. These photographs explore the artist’s ongoing interest in land and property, and how ongoing logics of racial capitalism are extended into the built environment through forms of segregation, red-lining, gentrification and displacement. She intentionally highlights care and intimacy between her subjects, often working through forms of gesture – in some cases re-appropriating hand and bodily gestures from Eurocentric representations of Black people in Western portraiture, Tagny aims to complicate notions of subjectivity and legibility.5

With increasing urgency, scholars assert that our contemporary climate crisis situated within the current geologic age, the Anthropocene, is deeply entangled with the legacies of colonialism, slavery, the transplantation of agrarian capitalism and the invention of private property ownership to the Americas, Africa, and Asia from Western Europe.6 Sylvia Wynter troubles this notion that we, as human beings, can be collectively understood as a singular anthropos responsible for the environmental and ecological juncture we find ourselves at historically, fashioning “Man” as a self-possessed, white / European, Western subject, who had the potential to own both people (slaves, indentured labourers, wives) and land as property.7 This framing conceptually and materially situates the “Golden Spike” or beginning of our accelerated environmental crisis in 1452, the year the first slave ship travelled from the coast of West Africa to Portuguese Madeira.8 This moment in history, Wynter argues, connects all of us Earthly beings (human, plant, nonhuman) – as this was the moment Western knowledge systems including religion, property, law, gender, capitalism all became violently transposed and transcribed onto geographies outside the West, cementing these logics as the dominant worldview.9 This shift changed the relationship between “Man” and the natural world, recasting land as property and plant as commodity. These epistemologies have disproportionately impacted indigenous and Afro-diasporic peoples most severely planetarily – both within Turtle Island / North America and beyond including Africa, South America, and Asia, and these legacies continue to unfold and impact these communities and their diaspora within Europe and the West itself. To completely undo the aforementioned legacies of colonialism, slavery, and dispossession is notably ambitious, yet the works presented here aim to push up against and unsettle these histories with the natural world.

Rinaldo Walcott makes the argument for the abolition of private property and a return back towards a conceptualization of the commons, as a way of undoing the legacies of capitalism.10 The commons offers ways of engaging in reciprocity with the natural world through forms of land stewardship, as borrowed from Indigenous practices and Marxism – for human beings to acknowledge the ways in which we are entwined with soil, plants, seeds, animals. Walcott asserts that the abolishment of property is connected to everyone’s freedom. To undo earthwriting is to unravel or contest the conceptual underpinnings of modern capitalism which are predicated on accumulation through extraction, positing an understanding of plants and land as life.

- Ella den Elzen

1. The term “earthwriting” is borrowed from Kathryn Yussof, who writes about the Anthropocene within the context of colonialism and slavery. See Kathryn Yussof, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2018).

2. Racial capitalism, as defined by Cedric Robinson, posits that modern Western capitalism has its genesis in the creation of racial categories to allow for the creation of social and economic value through racial subjugation, specifically of African and Afro-descendent peoples under slavery, as well as the economic draining of Africa under colonialism. See: Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The making of the black radical tradition (University of North Carolina Press, 2000), https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mcgill/detail.action?docID=475202.

3. See Katherine McKittick, Demonic Grounds: Black Women And The Cartographies Of Struggle (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 15, muse.jhu.edu/book/31692.

4. By this, she explains the way in which historical violence, such as the spaces of the plantation, become overlaid with contemporaneous forms of spatial violence, for example, racially segregated neighbourhoods, later followed by gentrification and displacement, reproducing a “stacking” of space and time. See Katherine McKittick, Demonic Grounds, 1-36.

5. In many instances, the historical subjects represented in the paintings Tagny contemplates are holding an abundance of tropical fruit, signifying wealth, but in many cases were property themselves. See Charmaine Nelson on François Malépart de Beaucourt’s Portrait of a Haitian Woman at the McCord Museum: Charmaine A. Nelson, “Portrait of a Negro Slave,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, last edited March 3, 2015.

6. See Heather Davis and Zoe Todd, “On the Importance of a Date, Or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene,” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 16 (4): 761-80, https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1539. See Sylvia Wynter, “Unparalled Catastrophe for Our Species? Or, to Give Humanness a Different Future: Conversations,” in Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, ed. Katherine McKittrick (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press), 9-89.

7. Kathryn Yusoff suggests this importation initiates “the ‘sugar-slave’ complex; “a massive replantation of ecologies and forced relocation of people”. Source: Kathryn Yussoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, 40-48.

8. Wynter, “Unparalled Catastrophe”, 9-89. The commons was collectively managed land in Medeval Europe. See: Rinaldo Walcott, On Property: Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition (Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2021), chap. 3, ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mcgill/detail.action?docID=6357581

Ella den Elzen would like to extend gratitude to Patrick Henry, Kapwani Kiwanga, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, and Eve Tagny for their collaboration and generosity. The development of Undoing EarthwritingUndoing Earthwriting was made possible by the Canada Council for the Arts, Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the International Studio and Curatorial Program. Thank to Marie-Josée Lafortune, Esther Bourdages and Anne St-Louis at OPTICA, Bon matin Studio, Sarah Boutin, Studio LOB, Bonsoir Fleurs, Gervais Marsh, and Mojeanne Behzadi.

PRESS REVIEWS

HOQUE, Anna Shah. « Undoing Earthwriting — Patrick Henry, Kapwani Kiwanga, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Eve Tagny », C Magazine, March 13, 2024.

MORELLI, Didier. « Undoing Earthwriting », Esse arts + opinions, 2024.



Ella den Elzen is an artist, curator, and educator based between New York City and Tiohtià:ke /Mooniyang / Montréal. She is currently a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program and holds a Master of Architecture (M.Arch.) from McGill University.

A multidisciplinary artist of Haitian origin, Patrick F. Henry explores the theme of "becoming" through sculpture, painting and installation. Through the appropriation of everyday objects deviated from their function, of reclaimed materials, his works most often unfold in the form of a site promoting relations with the viewer, which invites them to an experience of self-reconstruction.

He is an artist of Haitian origin who has been living in Montreal since 2011. Graduated of the Université du Québec à Montréal, he received the McAbbie Foundation Sculpture Excellence Grant from l’École des arts visuels et médiatiques, UQAM (2019), The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and the Explore and create Grant from the Canadian Council for the Arts for his upcoming solo exhibition in Toronto Am I a hero? (May 2024). He is a current MFA student in sculpture at Yale school of Art. He lived in Montreal since 2011.

The French and Canadian conceptual multimedia artist Kapwani Kiwanga addresses asymmetries by placing historic narratives in dialogue with contemporary realities, the archive, and tomorrow’s possibilities. Her practice is research-driven, instigated by marginalised or forgotten histories, and articulated across a range of materials and mediums including sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance. Kiwanga has developed an aesthetic vocabulary that she describes as "exit strategies", works that invite us to multiply perspectives in order to sharpen our gaze on existing structures and envisage the future differently.

She was the inaugural winner of the Frieze Artist Award (2018); the Sobey Prize for the Arts (Canada 2018); the Prix Marcel Duchamp (2020) and the Zurich Art Prize (2022). She is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University in 2022-23. She is currently showing her first major survey at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg as well as a major commission at the Capc Musée d'art contemporain Bordeaux. A solo exhibition will follow later this autumn at the Fundação de Serralves, Porto. In 2024, she will represent Canada at the Venice Biennale.

She is represented by Galerie Poggi, Paris; Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Cape Town and London; and Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin.
Sources : Galerie Poggi, Paris; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bozar, Bruxelles.

Kosisochukwu Nnebe is a Nigerian-Canadian conceptual artist, curator and writer working across installation, lens-based media and sculpture to engage with topics ranging from the politics of Black visibility, embodiment and spatiality to the use of foodways and language as counter-archives of colonial histories. Drawing inspiration from postcolonial and Black feminist thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, bell hooks, and Sylvia Wynter, at its core, Nnebe’s practice is interested in anti-colonial and -imperial world-building through acts of solidarity (human and otherwise), the troubling of colonial logics, and speculative (re)imaginings of otherwise pasts, presents and futures.

Nnebe’s work has been shown in exhibitions across Canada and internationally, including the United States and the Netherlands. She is the recipient of the 2023 G.A.S. Felllowship started by Yinka Shonibare in Lagos, Nigeria, and has been commissioned by Plug In ICA and the Mozilla Foundation. Nnebe is now based between Montreal, Canada and Lagos, Nigeria.

Eve Tagny is a Tiohtià:ke/Montreal-based artist. Her practice considers gardens and disrupted landscapes as mutable sites of personal and collective memory — inscribed in dynamics of power, colonial histories and their legacies. Weaving lens-based mediums, installation, text and performance, she explores spiritual and embodied expressions of grief and resiliency, in correlation with nature’s rhythms, cycles and materiality.

Tagny has a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University and a Certificate in Journalism from University of Montreal. Recent exhibitions include Henry Art, Seattle; Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Musée d'art de Joliette, MOMENTA Biennale de l’image, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and Centre Clark, Montreal; Nuit Blanche, The Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, Cooper Cole, Gallery 44, and Franz Kaka, Toronto. She has done live performances at the Swiss Institute, NYC; Nuit Blanche 2023, Cooper Cole and Gallery 44, Toronto. She is the recipient of the GOG Award (2023), the Plein Sud Bursary (2020), the Mfon grant (2018), has been shortlisted for the Prix en art actuels MNBAQ (2023), Gala Dynastie (2023), CAP Prize (2018), the Burtynsky Photobook Grant (2018), the GOG Award (2020) and longlisted for the New Generation Photography Award (2022).


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Atelier de création avec l'école Robert Gravel, Montréal. | Creative workshop with Robert Gravel school, Montreal. Photo: Anne St-Louis
Patrick Henry, Kapwani Kiwanga, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Eve Tagny
 From January 20th 2024 to March 20th 2024
Undoing Earthwriting / Programme éducatif public

A Major New Season for the Educational Program

To coincide with exhibition Undoing Earthwriting, the educational program will be offering a considerable number of interactive tours and creative workshops for a variety of audiences over the coming weeks. Whether as part of Contemporary Laboratories, school activities or guided tours for college and university groups, the center will be very busy, allowing for group discussions, in-gallery writing workshops and creative workshops involving the use of plant and organic materials. OPTICA is also continuing for a second year its partnership with the Centre de services scolaires Marie-Victorin (CSSMV), to offer high school classes on the South Shore artistic activities and adapted support tools as part of the Voix Migrantes project.

All our activities are free!

To schedule a guided tour and/or to take part in a workshop, simply book an appointment with the Public Education Program Coordinator Anne St-Louis: mediationoptica @ gmail.com or call us at 514-874-1666.

To keep in touch with the center's mediation activities, follow the educational program on « Instagram / OPTICA jeunesse», .

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Nuit blanche 2024, atelier d'argile. Crédit photo : Anne St-Louis.
Patrick Henry, Kapwani Kiwanga, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Eve Tagny Commisssaire/Curator: Ella den Elzen

 From March 2nd 2024 to March 2nd 2024
Nuit blanche 2024 : Atelier d’argile et d’impression de fleurs séchées chez OPTICA

On the occasion of the Nuit Blanche 2023, OPTICA is inviting the general public to a night of experimentation and artistic discovery on the theme of plants. Inspired by the current exhibition Undoing Earthwriting, come and enjoy a clay workshop, learn how to print dried plants and create a delicate key ring. Hot beverages and cookies will be provided. Places are limited!

7PM to 12AM

Free

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Eve Tagny, extrait de la performance as yet to be established, Centre for Cultural and Artistic Practices, Winnipeg, 2023.
Photo: daisy wu
Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste. | Courtesy of the artist.
Eve Tagny, Élisabeth-Anne Dorléans, Sophia Gaspard
Commissaire/ Curator: Ella den Elzen
 From March 23rd 2024 to March 23rd 2024
Autour de Undoing Earthwriting, performance myths and partition scores

Part of Undoing Earthwriting, which exhibition ends on March 23th, Eve Tagny with Élisabeth-Anne Dorléans et Sophia Gaspard will present the performance myths and partition scores,

**Saturday March 23rd, 2024, 4 pm**

myths and partition scores is a three person performance that will expend on questions of the navigation of natural and constructed landscapes as well as public and private spaces, contained in the visual artworks.

Working from a loose score, the performers will employ gesture as a method to bring forth various entanglements of visible and invisible borders, enclosures, labor, appropriation and ownership.

Tracing parallels between plants and racialized bodies, a myths and partition scores thus observes how the aforementioned entanglements impact, alter and influence processes of rooting as well as displacement of human and more than human life forms.



Eve Tagny is a Tiohtià:ke/Montreal-based artist. Her practice considers gardens and disrupted landscapes as mutable sites of personal and collective memory — inscribed in dynamics of power, colonial histories and their legacies. Weaving lens-based mediums, installation, text and performance, she explores spiritual and embodied expressions of grief and resiliency, in correlation with nature’s rhythms, cycles and materiality.

Tagny has a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University and a Certificate in Journalism from University of Montreal. Recent exhibitions include Henry Art, Seattle; Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Musée d'art de Joliette, MOMENTA Biennale de l’image, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and Centre Clark, Montreal; Nuit Blanche, The Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, Cooper Cole, Gallery 44, and Franz Kaka, Toronto. She has done live performances at the Swiss Institute, NYC; Nuit Blanche 2023, Cooper Cole and Gallery 44, Toronto. She is the recipient of the GOG Award (2023), the Plein Sud Bursary (2020), the Mfon grant (2018), has been shortlisted for the Prix en art actuels MNBAQ (2023), Gala Dynastie (2023), CAP Prize (2018), the Burtynsky Photobook Grant (2018), the GOG Award (2020) and longlisted for the New Generation Photography Award (2022).


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Appel à projets - Programmation / Programming 2026-2027
Call for Proposals
Concours ouvert du 12 avril jusqu'au 20 mai 2024, 11:59 PM, HAE, Heure avancée de l’Est (Québec)
Open from April 12th until Mai 20th, 2024, 11:59 PM, EDT, Eastern Daylight Time (Québec)
 From April 12th 2024 to May 20th 2024
Appel à projets - Concours 2024

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.

For more informations, read this page.

Online FORM

*Please note, in the visual material section, the title of your jpg must not contain spaces, accents, capital letters, quotation marks or special characters. The information is specified in the form in red.


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Laura Acosta et Santiago Tavera, The Novels of Elsgüer, Prologue, image tirée du documentaire interactif | Still of interactive documentary, 2023. Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste. | Courtesy of the artist.
Laura Acosta et Santiago Tavera
 From April 13th 2024 to June 15th 2024
The Novels of Elsgüer [Les feuilletons de l’Elsgüer] Documentaire interactif

Opening - Launch, April 13th, 3 pm - 7 pm

Laura Acosta and Santiago Tavera are a Colombian-Canadian artistic duo based in Montréal. Their collaborative practice forges an intersection between Tavera’s investigation of video practices, along with virtual and interactive environments in relation to the body, with Acosta’s exploration of identity through performance and textiles. Since 2017, Tavera and Acosta have created a series of five immersive and interactive large scale installations which are referred to as episodes under the umbrella title The Novels of Elsgüer. Through different explorations with video, virtual reality, data visualization techniques, interactive audio-visual setups, lighting installations and sculptural elements in combination with performance, textiles, and non-linear narratives, each episode within the series submerges the audience inside surreal ecosystems that deconstruct the colonialist relationship between body and space. Through these immersive scenographies and expanded performances the lines between viewer and performer are blurred, and the notions of transformation, adaptation and fluidity become anchors of empowerment.

The interactive documentary project of The Novels of Elsgüer commissioned by OPTICA with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Now grant, invites the audience to navigate the world of Elsgüer that Tavera and Acosta have created through a virtual interactive experience and a video documentary in five parts. The interactive experience offers viewers the opportunity to visit virtual renditions of the installations, finding within them curatorial texts as well as archival images and videos of the work. Alongside this, there are five video capsules with interviews and behind the scene images of each episode, shedding light on the production process and highlighting the incredible community of Bipoc and queer artists, performers and curators that have been part of this project throughout the years. Beyond the five installations and the explorations of Tavera, Acosta and their collaborators, this documentary puts forward the powerful interconnectivity of all individuals who are considered the “other”, foregrounding the potential that transdisciplinary art has to deconstruct histories, create new narratives and expand collective knowledge.

The word Elsgüer is the spanglish pronunciation of the English word “elsewhere”. This alludes to the sensation of feeling absence while being present, a sensation felt by anyone who has experienced displacement or othering. This body of work uses this sense of dislocation/displacement as a method to create environments that ask audiences to question their own perception and position within a space.

Authors: Laura Acosta et Santiago Tavera

Credits
Direction: Laura Acosta & Santiago Tavera
Artist and Developer of virtual reality: Milton Riaño
Director of Photography: Abraham Mercado
Audiovisual Production Support, Lighting and Editing: Juan David Padilla
Sound Design and Production: A.M. DeVito
Colorist: Cedric Laurenty
Production Assistant: Bronson Smillie, Cuto Reed, Carolina Etchart, Gabriel Fuks, Carlos Bruna
Script Consultant: Muhammad Elkhairy
Performers: Aizysse Baga, Sam Blake, Phoebe Yī Lìng
Chang, Beatriz Golovan del Pino, Francisco González Rosas, Alicia Kazobinka
Curatorial texts and voice over: Claudia Arana, Nuria Carton de Grammont, Shauna Janssen, Mariza Rosales Argonza, Jamie Ross
Interviewees: Eunice Belidor, Marie-Josée Lafortune Translators: Caroline Künzle, Colette Tougas, Karla Aguilar Trejo

OPTICA, Laura Acosta and Santiago Tavera would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts, and MOMENTA Biennale de l'image, la Galerie de l'UQAM and Elastic Spaces Lab of University Concordia for the kind loan of equipment. The artists wish to thank OPTICA, along with everyone who has participated in the project, for supporting this work.



PRESS RELEASE (pdf)



Laura Acosta and Santiago Tavera’s collaborative projects have been have presented through large scale exhibitions and publications in Canada and abroad. Their most important accomplishments include solo exhibitions at OPTICA, A Centre for Contemporary Art and MAI - Montréal, arts interculturels, along with their participation in group exhibitions and screenings at Articule, SUR Gallery, Projet Casa, La Grande rencontre des arts médiatiques en Gaspésie (in collaboration with the Géoparc mondial UNESCO of Percé), MTL Connecte - Printemps Numérique in Montréal and Belgium. Internationally, they have exhibited at the Changwon Sculpture Biennial in South Korea and the International Images Festival of Manizales in Colombia. They have also presented their work abroad through artist talks at Via Farini Residency in Milan, Italy.

Additionally, they have been nominated for the Plein Sud Award for their artistic accomplishments in Quebec in 2021, and in 2023 they were long listed for the Sobey Art Award. Currently Santiago is an Artist in Residence Faculty in the Intermedia Program from the department of Studio Arts at Concordia University and Laura is starting the PhD program in Humanities and research creation at Concordia in the fall 2024.


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1. Clara Gutsche, Alice, Oliver, Bainbridge Island, 2014. (Brother for Sale / Sister for Sale : $1.00 negotiable), série | series «Siblings and Singles», 2008-2022. Épreuve à développement chomogène | Chromogenic colour print, 127 x 101,6 cm, agrandissements | enlargements. Avec l'aimable permission de l'artiste | Courtesy of the artist. ©Clara Gutsche / SOCAN (2022)
2. Clara Gutsche, Sarah and Noémi, série | series «Jeanne-Mance Park», 1982-1984. Épreuve à la gélatine argentique, virage au sélénium et à l’or sur papier photographique traditionnel | Gelatin silver print, selenium and gold toning on traditional photographic paper, 40 x 50,4 cm. Collection Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal.©Clara Gutsche / SOCAN (2022)
Clara Gutsche
 From May 31st 2024 to May 31st 2024
Prix de photographie Banque Scotia 2024, félicitations à Clara Gutsche !

OPTICA is proud to be associated with the success of photographer Clara Gutsche, who had a solo exhibition at OPTICA in 2022 and has participated in numerous projects with the center over the years.

On May 30th, during a ceremony held in Toronto, the Scotiabank Photography Award 2024 was presented to Clara Gutsche. This award highlights the work of mid-career or established artists, allowing Canadians to become familiar with photographic art and to be aware of the issues and driving forces of our time.


Gutsche uses portraiture to explore personal relationships, while her work with urban landscapes and architectural interiors invites the viewer to reflect on cultural values.
“Over the 54-year span of my art practice, I have explored multiple modes of documentary photography in the context of contemporary art. I continue to question the theoretical and material understanding of the category through my critical writing and my subjectivity-inflected documentary projects,” she says in her artist statement.


“Gutsche’s art explores the depths of personal relationships and the intersection of culture and urban landscapes through a unique and powerful photographic perspective. At Scotiabank, we are proud to have founded this award which helps to support and elevate the arts and artists, Canada’s foremost storytellers, across the country and around the world, ” said Scotiabank’s Chief Marketing Officer Laura Curtis Ferrera.

The Scotiabank Photography Award was co-founded in 2010 by internationally-renowned Canadian photo artist Edward Burtynsky and Scotiabank with a goal of recognizing and accelerating artists’ careers as they reach the next level of national and international recognition. Gutsche receives a $50,000 cash prize, a solo Primary Exhibition during the 2025 CONTACT Photography Festival and a published book of her work distributed worldwide by renowned art book publisher, Steidl. The other two finalists are Nicolas Baier and Thaddeus Holownia.


Native de Saint-Louis (Missouri), Clara Gutsche est professeure au département des arts visuels (Studio arts) de l’Université Concordia où elle enseigne la photographie. Ses œuvres font partie d’importantes collections publiques et particulières au Canada et à l’étranger. Elle a participé à de nombreuses expositions au Canada, aux États-Unis et en Europe, principalement en Belgique, en France, en Italie et au Portugal.


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Anouk Verviers
 From June 12th 2024 to June 12th 2024
Prix Pauline-Desautels 2024, Félicitations à Anouk Verviers!

Awarded by CIRCA art actuel, Anouk Verviers won the Pauline-Desautels Award for the exhibition Qu'est-ce qu'on peut construire sur un sol en mouvance, presented at OPTICA in 2023. The award ceremony took place on Wednesday, June 12th at CIRCA art actuel and was followed by a performance by the artist and a presentation of the winning exhibition.

Since 2021, the Pauline-Desautels Award is awarded annually to a committed artist whose work in sculpture or installation, relating to CIRCA’s mission, has been outstanding in the eyes of the public and the artistic community during the last three years. Pauline Desautels’ generous contribution to CIRCA has enabled the creation of this award.



Anouk Verviers engages in extensive long-term art projects revolving around discussion on collective issues. She articulates her art practice as a bicephalic entity: one head exists in the social realm, through collaborative and research-based projects, and the other exists in the art world, in artworks and interdisciplinary exhibitions. Anouk Verviers is an MFA candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London, in the UK (2021-2023), and holds a BA in visual and media arts from l’Université du Québec à Montréal (2017) in Montreal (un-ceded territory of Tiohtià:ke and Mooniyang).


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Programme éducatif public | saison 2023-24.
Public Education Program | Season 2023-24
Design: Pastille rose
Programme éducatif public /Public Education Program 2023-24
Bilan annuel
From June 14th 2024 to June 14th 2024
Programme éducatif public | saison 2023-24

The 2023-2024 public education program was a great success! To read the annual report, please consult this LINK

All our activities are free!

To schedule a guided tour and/or to take part in a workshop, simply book an appointment from September with the Public Education Program Coordinator Anne St-Louis: mediationoptica @ gmail.com or call us at 514-874-1666.

Accessibility

OPTICA pays particular attention to providing everyone an optimal and successful visit. With a constant desire to improve matters of inclusion and accessibility, the Centre steers its efforts toward responding in the best possible way to the challenges posed by contemporary issues. OPTICA is committed to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment.

The head of the educational program received a training on accessibility in artist centres from the RCAAQ and Kéroul. In addition, remember that there is no cost to exhibition tours or to participation in creative workshops.

An access ramp is located at the north-side entrance, at 5455, avenue de Gaspé. If you have any questions or have specific needs, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

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Rick, le 6e Backstreet boi, All I have to give, collage numérique | digital collage, 2021. Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste. | Courtesy of the artist.
Rick, le 6e Backstreet boi
 From September 6th 2024 to October 19th 2024
I didn't want it that way

Opening Friday, September 6, from 5pm to 10pm - Rentrée de Gaspé!
Between 6pm and 8pm, join Rick for a SuperNintendo game in the exhibition!

Commented visit of the exhibition with Rick during the Galeries Weekend and the Journées de la culture 2024:
Thursday, September 26th,3 pm to 4 pm
Friday, September 27th, 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm
Saturday, September 28th, 3 pm to 4 pm

Everything Changed Around 1997

The Grunge years—defined as much by the alternative rock music as by its associated unkempt, everyday fashion style—were petering out and pop was reclaiming the spotlight with an irresistible deluge of boy bands that took over everything. 98 Degrees, NSYNC, The Moffatts, and Hanson were playing non-stop everywhere. Factory-generated boy bands, custom made to flourish in young girls’ secret gardens, as Take That, Boyz II Men, New Kids on the Block, and Jackson 5 had done for previous generations.

In Quebec, it was the Backstreet Boys. We like to say that the phenomenon was born here and that the world tagged along. Commercial radio here was the first in North America to play their songs. MusiquePlus followed suit, and it was fans in Quebec that got the bandwagon rolling. There’s something very québecois in the BSB’s meteoric rise and dizzying progress.

From the autograph signings in the Place Vertu shopping mall and at the Fuzzy night club in Laval in 1996 to the laid-back interviews with Sonia Benezra and chaotic visits to the MusiquePlus studios where strident shreeks drowned out the singing, Nick, Howie, AJ, Brian, and Kevin created an unprecedented commotion.

The changing of the guard was confirmed when their single “We’ve Got It Going On” won over the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” on Combat des Clips, the weekly show hosted by a young Véronique Cloutier at MusiquePlus, during which two video clips compete for votes called-in by the audience members. The years of Rock had come to an end, and the boy band movement held sway. Such things rarely last. The media, sceptics, and naysayers predicted a flash in the pan for BSB. But a whole generation of admirers—preponderantly women—still idolize the group nearly 25 years later. The concerts are packed and boisterous, as the closed out shows of the 2022 DNA tour testified once again. Millennial nostalgia wins the day. The Backstreet Boys knew no back street other than the band’s name, despite a faint romantic aura of life on the fringes. Unless one counts Nick’s legal troubles over the years.

The only group member really marginalized from the perfect existence of the sentimental quintet is Rick, the 6th Backstreetboi. A “tender-hearted little guy” hailing from Centre-du-Québec, a free-thinker the BSB recruited from off a beach in Florida in 1993 and then promptly dropped in 1995. A missed opportunity for the Backstreet Boys to add some depth to their art and to address, as Rick had wanted, such topics as rape culture and the toxicity of the industry. Rick always identified as a researcher—a charcheur (“chercheur”) as Rick puts it.

One might think the divorce a painful one. Yet by turning toward fine arts institutions, and encouraged by their agent arkadi lavoie lachapelle, Rick’s quest for healing gave rise to a series of varied artistic interventions on the crossroads of elitist art and pop culture.

By offering lachapelle’s protégé their own solo exhibition, I didn’t want it that way, OPTICA is allowing the “Wounded” Backstreetboi to conclude a healing cycle and is inviting the public not only to discover Rick’s universe, past and present, but also to reflect on the impact of boy bands on the collective imagination.

With an array of derivative products cobbled together from the local drugstore and homemade video clips, Rick leaves the victimized stance behind, sets their own path to glory with their support community, and prepares the follow-up. A first solo album may be on the way, our sources tell us.

Author: Marc-André Mongrain

Marc-André Mongrain has been columnist, critic and active music journalist since 2002. An avid cultural observer, he is the founder and editor in chief of the arts and culture magazine Sors-tu? He also makes appearances on Radio-Canada and he sits on several juries in the music industry.

For more information, please contact their official agent: arkadi lavoie lachapelle.

PRESS RELEASE (pdf)

PRESS REVIEWS

TARDIF, Dominic. «Il restera toujours la culture», Ici Première, Radio-Canada radio, 19 septembre 2024.



BOUCHARD, Karine. « Arts visuels, Rentrée culturelle, Direction les galeries et centres d’artistes », La Presse, Thursday, September 19, 2024.




Rick, the sixth backstreet boi is a mushroom, an oyster mushroom, in fact. They escaped the greenhouse where they conceived to seek out a special sauce recipe, one that would best reveal his delicate, slightly licorice-y voice. Rick is an ear that cries underneath the willow trees. Seeking a new group with which they could sing, they invite us to think humbly about the industrialization of musical mycology, and about the ways in which we can create a world that is hospitable for all. In their quest, Rick wants to meet living archives, like Sonia Benezra, a woman who, through interviews with mycological celebrities, has been able to thwart our scandal-oriented monoculture and to rehumanize ‘objects’ constructed through the commodification of folklore. Stretching their foot towards other worlds, the little boi imagines that their road to recovery will inspire other living beings to sprout magnifically on the compost of their childhoods.

Marc-André Mongrain has been columnist, critic and active music journalist since 2002. An avid cultural observer, he is the founder and editor in chief of the arts and culture magazine Sors-tu? He also makes appearances on Radio-Canada and he sits on several juries in the music industry.


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Cindy Dumais, Quand je suis très seule (avec Clarice Lispector), 2021, détail, encre sur Phototex marouflé sur bois. Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste. | detail, ink on Phototex mounted on wood, Courtesy of the artist.
Cindy Dumais
 From September 6th 2024 to October 19th 2024
Garder le contact

Opening Friday, September 6, from 5pm to 10pm - Rentrée de Gaspé!
Commented visit of the exhibition by Cindy Dumais from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM.!

Cindy Dumais initiated an extensive artistic investigation in 2017 titled ENTRETIENS. In this project, produced in collaboration with artists and writers, Dumais deploys an array of installations to stage interdisciplinary dialogues. Drawing from the rough drafts of literary works, she is particularly concerned with the raw state of the text, with gesture and the materiality of writing, and engages them in a conversation with her art practice. The exhibition Garder le contact [Keep In Touch], while pursuing this investigation, opens up another avenue of reflection: how to engage in dialogue with the material itself?

The invitation to “keep in touch” may appear contradictory, because it invites us to engage in a dialogue at the very moment it has ceased to be. Yet, this apparent contradiction underlines the fact that distance is a prerequisite for dialogue. Engaging in dialogue is also to maintain a solitary distance that makes it possible. The material existence of the pieces brought together in this body of work is enabled by the dialogue. What appears in Dumais’s works corresponds to a certain exigency. It is not a matter of representing a dialogue that the artist has conducted with others, but of mobilizing the materials of the dialogue: the traces of the distance, of an encounter that silently endures the gap that separates one from the other all while maintaining the relationship. If matter itself comes to speak, it is to say that it cannot do otherwise but remain silent, that it secretly prefers to keep at a distance.

Garder le contact is not just a metaphor. Giving spatial actuality to narratives, encounters, and dialogues requires work. Though it makes an unassuming appearance, as does everything to do with the working world, the theme of work in this collection showcases the demands of human relationships and creative work. Keeping in touch requires time and occupies a space, whether mental or physical. Dialogue involves activity, along with an attention to that which is striving to be expressed. Dumais, though her works, invites us to not lose sight of ourselves, to keep listening, and to maintain the existence of the plurality of voices, narratives, and encounters traversing the extant materiality that bears witness to them. The presented objects, like accumulated memories, bring to imminent awareness the possibility of future encounters.

Be they in the form of a book or a page, of fabric or the billowy surface of a pillow, these installations appear at the junction of a narrative space and a material space. Rather than distinguish between them, the artist’s work invites us to consider these objects’ dual status, giving rise to a dialogue in which each thing exists both alone and solely in coexistence. As evinced in the quote from Clarice Lispector: “I exist only in dialogue.” In dialogue, solitude is not obliterated in the collectivity. On the contrary, each element of this body of work is presented in its dismemberment, in parts, as if it were open and awaiting a response. Neither symbol nor raw object, their materiality, crisscrossed by signs, brings to the surface the forms and narratives of society that cannot be reduced to symbols. Thus the importance given to the objects’ plastic dimension, which does not contradict their conjured textuality.

A question remains to rekindle the dialogue: What kind of society, what kind of Us transpires from this dialogue with the material? Those willing to do so can, in silent, distant complicity, become guardians of the contact.

Author: Émile Lévesque-Jalbert

Translator: Ron Ross

PRESS RELEASE (pdf)

BOUCHARD, Karine. « Arts visuels, Rentrée culturelle, Direction les galeries et centres d’artistes », La Presse, Thursday, September 19, 2024.




Cindy Dumais' research focuses on the transposition of language into material, questioning identity and reference through the experience of the body. Excerpts from literature and philosophy, recorded in her notebooks, are part of a process of questioning artistic production itself, in a dialogical form.

She has presented around fifteen solo exhibitions and participated in nearly fifty group exhibitions in Canada and abroad, the most recent of which was at Das Esszimmer (Bonn, Germany) in May 2024. Her works have been acquired by private and public collections, including the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Loto-Québec Collection. She was selected for a residency at Annandale Artist Residency (Prince Edward Island) in June 2023. In 2021, she received the Creator of the Year Award for Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean, awarded by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. She has held the dual role of author and publisher since 2005 with LaClignotante and has also co-founded AMV/Art-Mobilité-Visibilité.

Émile Lévesque-Jalbert is a PhD candidate at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. His research focuses on ecological thinking, literary arts, and contemporary French and French-speaking literature. His writings have been published in Québec, France, and the United States.


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Maria Hoyos, Trabajador cortando caña de azúcar [Travailleur coupant la canne à sucre], Villa Rica, Cauca, 2024. Image extraite d'une séquence vidéo. | Image extracted from a video sequence. Courtesy of the artist.
Maria Hoyos
 From September 16th 2024 to September 16th 2024
En conversation avec Maria Hoyos, récipiendaire de la résidence intersections 2023

LUNDI 16 SEPTEMBRE 2024, 12H45 À 13H45 UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL PAVILLON JUDITH-JASMIN, LOCAL J-7130 (SITUÉ AU 7E ÉTAGE) 405, RUE SAINTE-CATHERINE EST (ANGLE ST-DENIS) H2L 2C4

L’artiste Maria Hoyos s’intéresse aux questions historiques et culturelles en lien avec ses origines colombiennes. Marquée par l’exploitation sucrière qu’elle a connue enfant, elle aborde les relations de pouvoir et les abus d’un passé colonial qu'elle projette dans le présent. L’espace d’exposition devient le réceptacle d’une mémoire, à la recherche d'une réconciliation et d'un apaisement. Au cours de cette conversation, elle fera part de sa démarche artistique et de la recherche qu’elle a réalisée pendant sa résidence au centre OPTICA. Elle s’entretiendra aussi sur sa production effectuée dans les ateliers de l’École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM. La discussion sera animée par Romeo Gongora, professeur à l’École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM, et Marie-Josée Lafortune, directrice du Centre d’art contemporain OPTICA. Une période de questions suivra sa présentation avec le public.

Programme de résidence artistique Intersections : La résidence Intersections de recherche, de création et de diffusion récompense des artistes émergent.es, issu.e.s de l’immigration (de première ou de seconde génération), qui sont membres des minorités ethniques ou visibles et diplômé.e.s de la maîtrise à l’École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM. Ce programme vise à offrir un soutien aux artistes de la diversité en leur donnant accès à un accompagnement professionnel, complémentaire à leur formation universitaire dans le milieu artistique montréalais. Pour de plus amples informations, consulter : http://intersections.uqam.ca//

La résidence Intersections est une initiative conjointe du Conseil des arts de Montréal, du Centre d’art contemporain OPTICA et de l’École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM.



Columbian artist Maria Hoyos lives in Abya-Yala and also on the unceded territory of the Tiohtiá:ke First Nations. Deeply attached to her home town of Santiago de Cali, she has been interested in video from the start, exploring the moving image throughout her studies in Bogota, Madrid, and Havana. She discovered installation art at the El Instituto Departamental de Bellas Artes in Cali, as well as a passion for working with materials. Immigrating to Quebec in 2002, she obtained an MFA from the École des arts visuels et médiatiques at UQAM (2022) and a bachelor in education in visual and media arts from the same university.

Abya-Yala. Self-designation in the Kuna language: Mature land, living land, flowering land, land of blood.


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Rick, le 6e Backstreet boi, Backstreet Gars : The inner artist coloring book, 2024. Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste. | Courtesy of the artist.
Rick, le 6e Backstreet boi
 From September 26th 2024 to September 28th 2024
OPTICA ouvre ses portes lors des Galeries Weekend et des Journées de la culture 2024!

OPTICA is opening its doors for the 2024 Gallery Weekend Montreal and Journées de la culture. Audiences are invited to gather round the works of Rick, the sixth backstreet boi (official agent: arkadi lavoie lachapelle).

Start off by discovering Rick’s fascinating, pop-culture-infused universe, while sipping a glass of chocolate milk and munching on bowl of squeaky cheese! Rick will be there! After perusing their digital collages, you can help solve a puzzle and fill out colouring pages right in the gallery. With a little luck, you can even join Rick in a video game!

In the centre’s mediation centre, we also invite you to create a colouring book. Inspired by Rick’s colouring pages on display in the gallery, create your own using images culled from magazines and the Internet, or use those from your personal collection. Have fun!

Schedule

Creative workshop:
Thursday, September 26, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Friday, September 27, noon to 7 p.m.
Saturday, September 28, noon to 5 p.m.
Sunday, September 29, noon to 5 p.m.

Guided tour with Rick: Thursday, September 26, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Friday, September 27, 5:30 p.m to 6:30 p.m.
Saturday, September 28, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.

For more information, please contact their official agent: arkadi lavoie lachapelle.

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Maria Hoyos, Trabajador cortando caña de azúcar [Travailleur coupant la canne à sucre], Villa Rica, Cauca, 2024. Image extraite d'une séquence vidéo.
Résidence Intersections 2024 - Appel de candidatures
NOUVELLE DATE limite de dépôt : 1er novembre 2024
NEW DEADLINE: November 1st, 2024

 From October 15th 2024 to November 1st 2024
Appel de candidatures. Intersections - Résidence de recherche, création et production 2024-2025 / Partenariat entre le Conseil des arts de Montréal, l’EAVM et OPTICA, centre d’art contemporain

Appel de candidatures

-> NEW DEADLINE: November 1st,2024

Le Conseil des arts de Montréal (CAM), le Centre d’art contemporain OPTICA et l’École des arts visuels et médiatiques (EAVM) de l’UQAM lancent un appel de candidatures pour les artistes issu.e.s de l’immigration (de première ou de seconde génération) qui sont membres des minorités ethniques ou visibles**. Les candidat.e.s éligibles sont diplômé.e.s de la maîtrise à l’EAVM. Ce 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 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). À 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’EAVM et OPTICA sera fourni dans le cadre du projet d’une durée d’un an.

Conditions d'admissibilité

- être un.e artiste issu.e. de l’immigration (de première ou de seconde génération) membre des minorités ethniques ou visibles**;
- être un.e artiste professionnel.le** en arts visuels;
- être diplômé.e du programme de maîtrise à l’EAVM;
- être citoyen.ne canadien.ne ou résident.e permanent.e du Canada à la date de dépôt de la demande;
- être domicilié.e sur le territoire de l’île 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 à l’hiver 2025 (janvier – mars) au centre d’art contemporain OPTICA incluant un espace de travail et un accès aux équipements de bureau, aux archives et à la documentation;
- un studio pour la création et la production, ainsi qu’un accès aux ateliers techniques spécialisés de l'EAVM, « sous toute réserve» en raison des travaux en cours ou pour d'autres impondérables à l’UQAM, pour une durée de 8 mois; - un accompagnement professionnel totalisant 60 heures par OPTICA (30h) et l’EAVM (30h);
- des frais de recherche conditionnel aux disponibilités financières et en collaboration avec La Faculté des arts de l’UQAM (max. 1 500 $);
- un cachet de production (4 375$), d’exposition (2 380$) et de présentation publique (125$);
- une plage d’exposition ou de diffusion du projet final dans la programmation d’OPTICA et une présentation publique au cours de l’année 2025.

Veuillez noter que nous ne prenons pas en charge les frais d’hébergement ou de transport. Le calendrier et les conditions de travail peuvent être modifiés en fonction des disponibilités financières des partenaires.

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. 400 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 être soumis dans un seul document PDF (taille maximale du fichier de 15 Mo) et envoyé au plus tard le 1er novembre 2024 à minuit à 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, vous êtes invité.e à participer à la séance d'information virtuelle qui aura lieu le mardi 24 septembre à 10h via ce lien :
https://uqam.zoom.us/j/82546397978

Vous pouvez également consulter notre site web à l'adresse suivante : www.intersections.uqam.ca

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



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Vente d'échantillons par Rick, le 6e Backstreet boi /Sample Sale by Rick, le sixth Backstreet boi
Design : Rick, le 6e Backstreet boi
Rick, le 6e Backstreet boi
 From October 19th 2024 to October 19th 2024
Vente d'échantillons par Rick, le 6e Backstreet boi

On Saturday, October 19, starting at 3 p.m., join us for Rick's sample sale!

Welcome to the closing event of Rick, the 6th Backstreet boi’s exhibition! Attendees can buy samples from the exhibit to help fund three organizations that support the resistence and survival of people brutally impacted by colonialism.

In a guided tour before the sale, Rick will present the significance of the samples—and explain why you’re paying more than the drugstore cost value of Rick’s derivative products.

This is both a fund-raising activity and a ritual of closure: no more victimhood for the 6th Backstreet boi! Make way for excitement and adventure: In Search of Lost Rick! Bring friends and family!

There’ll be chocolate milk and cheese sticks for all!

SCHEDULE
3pm Welcome
3:30 pm Rick, the 6th Backstreet boi, speaks
4pm Guided tour of samples by
4:30 pm Sample sale begins

Accessibility
info@optica.ca

PRESENTATION OF THE ORGANIZATIONS

RAVEN raises legal defence funds to assist Indigenous Peoples who enforce their rights and title to protect their traditional territories.
https://raventrust.com/
https://www.instagram.com/raven_trust/

Crips for eSims is an initiative co-created by @pipagaopoetry, @disability_visibility & @thellpsx, to send eSims to Gaza so people there can communicate with each other and the world.
https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/.../crips-for.../
https://www.instagram.com/disability_visibility/
https://www.instagram.com/thellpsx/
https://www.instagram.com/pipagaopoetry/

REMAN (Réseau des Migrant-e-s d'Afrique Noire au Liban)is a group of African migrants in Lebanon, are coordinating an emergency response to support the migrant women and their families in the face of the crisis in Lebanon.
https://www.gofundme.com/.../please-help-migrant-workers... https://www.instagram.com/remanorganization/



Rick, the sixth backstreet boi is a mushroom, an oyster mushroom, in fact. They escaped the greenhouse where they conceived to seek out a special sauce recipe, one that would best reveal his delicate, slightly licorice-y voice. Rick is an ear that cries underneath the willow trees. Seeking a new group with which they could sing, they invite us to think humbly about the industrialization of musical mycology, and about the ways in which we can create a world that is hospitable for all. In their quest, Rick wants to meet living archives, like Sonia Benezra, a woman who, through interviews with mycological celebrities, has been able to thwart our scandal-oriented monoculture and to rehumanize ‘objects’ constructed through the commodification of folklore. Stretching their foot towards other worlds, the little boi imagines that their road to recovery will inspire other living beings to sprout magnifically on the compost of their childhoods.


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Programme éducatif public 2024-2025, détail. Graphisme : Tamzyn Berman, Pastille rose. | Public Education Program 2024-2025, detail. Design: Tamzyn Berman, Pastille rose.
Programme éducatif public| Public Education Program OPTICA 2024-2025
 From October 20th 2024 to June 14th 2025
Programme éducatif public | Automne - Printemps 2024-25

OPTICA’s public education program proposes various creative workshops and interactive tours for audiences of all ages, from 4 and up. Daycare centres, public and private, elementary schools, high schools, colleges, universities, retirement homes and community organizations can all participate in our activities. These ones place in an atmosphere conducive to discussion and reflection, in order to learn more about current creative production.

All our activities are free!

To schedule a guided tour and/or to take part in a workshop, simply book an appointment with the Public Education Program Coordinator Anne St-Louis: mediationoptica @ gmail.com or call us at 514-874-1666.

CONSULT OUR 2024-2025 ANNUAL PROGRAM IN PDF FORMAT




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Jinny Yu, Rolodex, 2024.
Rolodex, circa 1980, provenant du Département d’arts visuels de l’Université d’Ottawa, où l’artiste travaille,
20 x 12.5 x 20.5 cm. Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste et du Département d’arts visuels de l’Université d’Ottawa.|
found at the Department of Visual Arts, University of Ottawa where the artist works, 20 x 12.5 x 20.5 cm.
Courtesy of the artist and the Department of Visual Arts, University of Ottawa.
Rihab Essayh, Shaya Ishaq, Sarah E.K. Smith, Snack Witch/Joni Cheung & Brandon A. Dalmer, Jinny Yu
Commissaires / Curators : Amber Berson, Felicity Tayler

 From November 2nd 2024 to December 14th 2024
Educating Our Desires, equity-deserving action within artist-led spaces

Opening: November 2nd, 2024, from 3 pm to 5 pm.

Round table : November 16, 2024, from 3 pm to 5 pm
Futurisms: Retraining Our Dopamine Hits
Description below:



A timeline, objects, and documents. In this exhibition, we highlight historical instances of equity-seeking action within artist-led spaces, and how the resonances of these actions are indexed in this contemporary moment of digital futurisms. Contemporary works are framed as expressions of desire for alternative futures, “educated” by the actions of the past.

Library of Infinities by Shaya Ishaq is a web platform for and by Black and Afro-diasporic communities, and a growing database of books by authors of the afro-diaspora. Canadian BIPOC Art is a personal project of Rihab Essayh to enrich the knowledge of BIPOC artists across Canada. Jinny Yu’s Canadian BIPOC Rolodex Project mimics an analogue “Rolodex,” referencing ways in which BIPOC artists have been historically known through personal and artistic networks rather than through institutions.

Drawing on a 1987 Independent Artists’ Union panel, Sarah E.K. Smith presents historical instances of subjective resistance to dominant structures of power in the arts through union structures identifying artists as equity-deserving workers, as reflected in fair wages for their work.

Amber Berson shares a historical yet timely conversation between a variety of positions in cultural advocacy, acknowledging trends in equity in the arts and the disagreement around timelines and intensity for demands. Hosted by the Women’s Art Resource Centre in 1994, this conversation is a scathing analysis of gender, race, and culture at the time, and viewers are invited to update the calls to action and complaints of the video via annotations.

With Cycling Intentions, Snack Witch/Joni Cheung and Brandon A. Dalmer conducted a consultation process compiling timeline data of equity-seeking events from disparate sources. The timeline circles in a maelstrom formation, as intersectional alliances shift in and out of view. There is no linear progress in this formation, rather we are swept up in the shared experience, and intergenerational transmission, of memory and cyclical forgetting. The title, Educating Our Desires, comes from scholar Ruth Levitas, who uses it as part of her utopian methodology. In short, she tells us, if we want to create change, we need to look back to the past to understand how we created our current set of circumstances and we then need to take the time to educate our desires for what a future for this issue could be. Applied to equity in the arts, we see a constant cycling of conversations and themes stifling actual advancement and we desire that some of these new projects can advance change.

The exhibition builds on the curators and artists lived experience in artist-led milieus, and individual artistic and curatorial research around the cultural histories of artist-led communities from the 1970s onwards. In their research, both curators noted a historical bias to isolate the shared histories of equity demands across marginalized identity groups in the arts. This division of interest mirrors the current situation where artist-led engagements toward equity conjure feelings of frustration, dissatisfaction, and anxiety. The inherited circumstances leave few involved feeling good.

By highlighting these historical expressions of desire as events that cycle through space and time through a process of “education,” the exhibition makes the argument that the milieu learns from itself through conscious and subconscious cyclical processes. An awareness of this process can propel collective actions toward hopeful repetitions. Aesthetic practices educate our desires to be the drive that moves us towards seemingly impossible horizons.

In spite of dreaming about an expansive exhibition that equitably treats these complex histories and compensates the labour of those involved in the project, the curators would like to acknowledge that this project did not receive Council funding from provincial or national sources. The modesty of this endeavor therefore reflects the austerity of our current situation in the arts.

The curators would like to thank the artists who participated; the gallery for hosting; Deanna Fong, Literary Editor at the Capilano Review and BJJ badass; many other invisible contributors through time who nourished our thinking around this; the currently Jellofied, formerly Centre de recherche urbaine de Montréal (CRUM); SSHRC for supplementary material support; and our families for loving kindness.


Projects Description

Amber Berson

A continuous screening of a recording of a 1994 panel discussion hosted by the Women’s Art Resource Centre (Toronto) at the National Gallery of Canada in the Fall of 1994. The original panel was moderated by Fay Cromwell-Tollenaar and featured Edythe Goodridge from the Canada Council for the Arts; Angela Lee, a Toronto-based researcher working in theatre and community arts; then-Equity Officer at the Canada Council LeeAnn Martin; independent curator Sylvie Fortin; Janice Seline of the National Gallery; artists Jane Ash Poitras and Wilma Needham; and Linda Abrahams of WARC. The panel was a scathing analysis of gender, race, and culture at the time, and it is troubling to observe how relevant the issues raised then remain today. Participants both on the panel and in the audience commented over and over again on how slow change was, and how important affirmative action could be in getting people into the room. They demonstrated a relatively sophisticated understanding of the interrelations between class, race, and gender in their discussions. Artist-run centres are stuck in a feedback loop of continually revisiting the same questions. Poor documentation, impossible access to documentation, or little time and resources to properly process documentation causes amnesia, forcing us to spend our time rehashing the past instead of imagining a future. In addition to screening the film, we will host an activity for annotating the transcript. Together the curators and the public will update the calls to action and complaints of the video, visualizing the progress of the last thirty years and pushing the discourse further instead of further into a spiral.

Rihab Essayh

Inspired by vernacular architectures from Norther African regions, this textile work is suspended in space as a reminder that it is possible, and desirable, to build worlds from local materials and with anti-colonial knowledges. In these building traditions new materials may be tried but they will not endure unless they soften into the land and the environment in which they are grounded. Older styles persist in relation to the stressors of the environment; just as newer, imported technologies may fail, unless they adapt to the atmospheric conditions and the desires of the inhabitants of the villages in which these structures are built. As a metaphor for the social media platforms of digital spaces, we can apply similar principles to the information architecture that structures the representation of artists and their work on the Instagram account.

Shaya Ishaq

Library of Infinities is a digital space that celebrates the diversity and creativity of the Black imagination through literature, film, and music. As a web platform we invite people to add to a growing database of books by authors of the afro-diaspora. This space invites people to leave their mark for future visitors of this user generated archive where we can share and learn from each other's perspectives. As a digital library, we value sharing and aim to provide work and resources for deepening our understanding of the work featured on this platform. Library of Infinities strives to be a portal of connection on a shared respect and love for Black and afro-diasporic literature.

Shaya Ishaq began the Library of Infinities through exhibitions in artist-led spaces Khyber Centre for the Arts (Halifax, 2017) and SAW Gallery (Ottawa 2021). As this project continues to evolve through physical and digital spaces, questions that drive Ishaq include: How can a web platform be a generative space for learning and sharing? What does collaboration look like in this digital realm? How can the Library of Infinities facilitate dynamic ways of storytelling?

Sarah E.K.Smith

The precarity and inequality of cultural labour is increasingly recognized, yet the history of artists’ efforts to understand and organize to improve their conditions are not well documented in Canada. This project surfaces historic efforts to advance equity in the art world, focusing on initiatives in Ontario in the 1980s that contributed to subsequent federal cultural policy changes. Addressing an event recording from the Condé Beveridge fonds at the Queen’s University Archives, this work presents a transcript of a 1987 panel discussion organized by the Independent Artists’ Union in partnership with A Space Community Arts, hosted at the A Space artist-run centre in Toronto. Titled Working Odds - A Forum on Issues of Race in the Arts System, the panel addressed equity in the arts, featuring Beatrice Bailey, Clifton Joseph, Richard Fung, Midi Onodera, and Chet Singh. A frank discussion of the challenges faced by BIPOC artists, as well as artists who faced discrimination due to other intersectional identity positions, this conversation offers significant insights into the challenges and structures of the Canadian art world. Presented over three decades later, the discussion resonates with ongoing barriers faced by living artists today, raising the question of progress with respect to reducing discrimination and improving access in the arts.

Jinny Yu

The Canadian BIPOC Rolodex Project was started by professors Jinny Yu and Celina Jeffery (from the University of Ottawa) and Ming Tiampo (from Carleton University) at a time of racialized tension on campus. The project is a searchable database of Canadian BIPOC artists, which facilitates and encourages research, teaching, and exhibitions on BIPOC artists, who continue to be underrepresented in publications, exhibitions, and curricula. Mimicking an analogue “Rolodex,” the database references the ways in which BIPOC artists have been historically known through personal and artistic networks rather than through institutions. It seeks to increase accessibility to BIPOC artists during first-phase curatorial and art historical research and subsequently increase their representation in curriculum, publications, and art institutions. It is conceived of in equal measures as a curated platform, digital humanities project, and advocacy work.

Snack Witch/ Joni Cheung & Brandon A. Dalmer

Cycling Intentions

For over 60+ years, conversations around equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility have flickered in and out the consciousness of Canadian cultural institutions, artist-run-centres, and artist-led milieus. How can studying the work of those before—reflecting on successes, the things that fell apart, those that have reappeared, and what has been transformed—spark potential for pathways forward? We gather to host conversations and questions: How can we move in time with the intergenerational knowledge and collective work of past and current artist-led unions? Do all our movements need to be forward in order for change to occur? Is there something fruitful in taking steps back: through repetition, examining in between the lines of recurring historical and contemporary patterns.

November 16, 3 pm - 5 pm

Description,round table:

Futurisms: Retraining Our Dopamine Hits
Online and in presence, in English, translation available in realtime

The conversation, which features Jinny Yu (Canadian BIPOC Artists Rolodex), Rihab Essayh (@canadianbipocart), and Shaya Ishaq (Library of Infinities), is facilitated by Felicity Tayler and focuses on artist-led spaces as they share a method of reaching towards possible horizons of sustainable ways of living and creating. We will have an open-ended discussion about the work of digital networks and databases as mediums for representation, for articulating a way towards liberation. But these projects and practitioners are also acutely aware that the digital archival space they are creating works within constraints which are not inherently progressive. The social and economic conditions producing this archival space do not get better. Instead, they are engaged in a cycle of renewal and repeated engagement that links the calls to equity from the past to those of the future. It has been long recognized that digital spaces replicate real-world oppression, and do not inherently produce liberation, equity, or inclusive practices. And yet, artist-led spaces have consistently engaged with networked relational forms and practices of lists and directories, exploring the body and identity as circumscribed by grids and systems. In racialized and otherwise marginalized communities these modes build internal capacity and enact mutual aid to counter hostility produced by bad actors and structural inequities. The work of aesthetics is not only to shift the mind to new ways of thinking, but also has the power to retrain our dopamine hits to new neural pathways (Sylvia Wynter).

Authors: Amber Berson, Felicity Tayler

PRESS RELEASE (pdf)



Amber Berson

Executive Director of The Visual Arts Centre in Montreal (CA), Amber Berson is a writer, a curator, and an Art Historian. She holds a doctoral degree from Queen’s University where her SSHRC-funded research examined artist-run culture and feminist, utopian thinking. She is also an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at Concordia University, in Montréal, where she is working on a long-term research project on the history of equity-seeking artist-run centres tentatively titled Parallel. In her spare time, Berson works on knowledge equity projects, especially with the Art+Feminism Wikipedia project, where she worked in various capacities for a decade and now sits on the Board. In addition to her curatorial work, Berson’s writing has been published in a variety of Canadian and international publications.

Felicity Tayler

Felicity Tayler’s research interests include metadata modeling, data visualization and the print culture of literary and poetic community. She is the Outreach Director of the Data Literacy Research Institute and a Research Associate of the Humanities Data Lab at the University of Ottawa. Currently a co-applicant on the SSHRC-funded SpokenWeb Partnership, which foregrounds a coordinated and collaborative approach to literary historical study and digital development, with diverse collections of spoken recordings from across Canada and beyond. As a member of the Digital Research Alliance RDM National Training Expert Group, she was the lead author on the bilingual OER, Data Primer: Making Digital Humanities Research Data Public / Manuel d’introduction aux données : rendre publiques les données de recherche en sciences humaines numériques. Also a visual artist and curator, she has produced exhibitions and published scholarly writing exploring co-publishing relationships in literary and artistic communities.

Rihab Essayh

Rihab Essayh was born in Morocco and raised in Montreal. Essayh is an interdisciplinary artist whose large-scale, immersive installations emerge as supports for the conditions of "radical softness" – an idea that suggests that showing emotions and vulnerability is a political gesture in a society that prioritizes intellect and indifference. Essayh uses lightness and delicacy, which is the cumulative effect of the constructed landscape as a vision of a soft futurism; an imagined future, a hopeful new space that is de-centering, intersectional, inclusive, and radically soft. Her research considers issues of isolation and disconnection in the digital age, imagining futurities of soft-strength and social reconnection by proposing a heightened attunement to colour, costume, tactility and sound. She completed her MFA at the University of Guelph in 2022. Her work has been shown at the festival ARTCH (Montreal), La Centrale Powerhouse Gallery (Montreal), Never Apart (Montreal), the plumb (Toronto), the Art Gallery of Guelph (Guelph), Union Gallery (Kingston), Arsenale (Toronto), and Mcbride Contemporain (Montreal).

Shaya Ishaq

Shaya Ishaq is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and writer currently based in Portland, OR. Her research interests in her art practice are engaged in craft, diaspora, design anthropology, and afrofuturism. She obtained a BFA in Fibres & Material Practices from Concordia University where she minored in Anthropology and has previously attended NSCAD University. Shaya has pursued her research as a fellow of the Textiles + Materiality Research Cluster, a branch of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture, and Technology where she was awarded an undergraduate research fellowship. Additionally, she was the inaugural Black Perspective Research fellow at Concordia University in 2022. She has pursued residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (Maine, USA), Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (Maine, USA), and the Arquetopia Foundation (Puebla, Mexico), among others.

She has exhibited her work at venues including SAW, Patel Brown, Khyber Centre for the Arts (Nova Scotia), Ottawa Art Gallery, and Art Gallery of Burlington (Ontario). She has also given presentations on her art practice and research at places such as the NIA Centre, NSCAD University, and Concordia University, and the School of Art at the University of Manitoba. Her writing has been featured in Canadian Art, Studio Magazine, and Public Parking. Shaya has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and was a recipient of the William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists (2023).

Sarah E.K. Smith

Sarah E.K. Smith is a scholar whose research examines visual art, creative labour, and cultural diplomacy. She has curated exhibitions of contemporary art for the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Museum London, and the Carleton University Art Gallery. Sarah holds the Canada Research Chair in Art, Culture and Global Relations at Western University, where she is an associate professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies. She is interested in the ways that artists advocate for change and is currently writing a book about the Independent Artists’ Union with Greig de Peuter.

Jinny Yu

Jinny Yu is an artist and educator. Her artistic practice is an inquiry into the medium of painting as a means of trying to understand the world around us. Her work presented during the 56th Venice Biennale addresses themes about migration, which resonate with larger political concerns globally. Yu works simultaneously to scrutinize conventions and to explore new possibilities within the medium of painting, oscillating between the fields of abstract painting and the object. Her work has been shown widely, including exhibitions in Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy, Portugal, South Korea, UK and USA.

Snack Witch/ Joni Cheung & Brandon A. Dalmer

Snack Witch/Joni Cheung is a Canadian-born Hong Kong-Chinese anglophone, queer woman. They are a certified Sculpture Witch with an MFA from Concordia University. A wicked #magicalgirl eating art + making snacks, her interdisciplinary practice investigates the relationship between objects↔place↔migration↔identities, always with humour, sometimes with food.
Brandon A. Dalmer explores image generation and technology through fabrication, generative processes, and robotic assistance. His open-source painting practice contextualizes unseen processes and serves as an archive. Dalmer has exhibited widely in Canada and internationally. He lives in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal.


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Maria Hoyos, Trabajador cortando caña de azúcar [Travailleur coupant la canne à sucre], Villa Rica, Cauca, 2024. Image extraite d'une séquence vidéo. | Image extracted from a video sequence. Courtesy of the artist.
Maria Hoyos
From November 2nd 2024 to December 14th 2024
La zafra

Opening: November 2nd, 2024, from 3 pm to 5 pm.

Transdisciplinary artist, Maria Hoyos ((*laureat of the Intersections Residency 2023-2024) infuses her Columbian heritage throughout a production that includes themes of identity, memory, and ritual. Hoyos studied various forms of artistic creation and art education in Spain, Colombia, and Cuba, furthering her extensive training in Montreal since relocating in 2002. She earned a master’s degree in 2023, showcasing her graduate work at UQAM’s art gallery, participated in numerous group exhibitions, was awarded prizes and distinctions, is a member of the Intervals Collective, and divides her time as an artist and educator.

Growing up surrounded by sugarcane plantations in Santiago de Cali had a profound impact on Hoyos’s sensibility. Since its cultivation in the Americas and Caribbean during colonisation, hunger for sugar shaped global history, trade, and geopolitics, propelling a nefarious industry tainted by power and labour exploitation. At OPTICA, Hoyos presents the culmination of a corpus confronting the abuse, violence, poverty, and discrimination endured by workers, both past and present, alongside damaging environmental consequences. Motivated by an urgency to expose these tribulations, she draws on the symbolism within circles to express her angst.

At the entrance, a crown of sugar-coated barbed wire hangs from the ceiling, supporting strings of beads. These hover above a mound of dirt serving as an homage to untainted soil and an appeal to appreciate the earth. The gestures of creation involved in generating this artwork are vital to its intention. Shaping spiked wire is painful but humbling when evoking the cane cutters’ acute suffering. Manipulating earth denotes sustainable farming. Modelling clay into rosary beads is meditative and repetitive, a sacred act performed with women united in a circle. Echoing the artist’s participation in rituals in Columbia, including prayer circles, reciting the rosary, and cacao ceremonies - all paramount in shaping Hoyos’s identity - the circular formations comprising this work reveal the power of community and prayer in a quest for spiritual appeasement.

Low-lying circular containers are physical and conceptual enclosures, embodying Hoyos’s plea to end global cycles of corruption pervading industries, by confining and preventing dispersal of their contents. Dried sugarcane implanted in earth highlights soil degradation and loss of fertile land, amplified by the recording of a cane cutter’s testimonial. Water represents the need for abundant irrigation while receptacles with ashes and burned sugarcane reference air pollution resulting from the burning of fields before harvest. These fires facilitate manual cutting, but they also emit harmful pollutants that adversely affect the workers’ health and populations nearby, covering the region with dust and ash. Hoyos’s documentary video depicts corteros - Colombia’s sugarcane cutters - hacking at stalks in scorched fields.

Inspired by artist Raphaëlle de Groot’s Dust Collection (2000-2001) and the concept of artists as anthropologists, ethnologists, and archaeologists elaborated upon in her thesis, Hoyos enacts the role of scientist for an installation featuring charred pieces of plants and ash. She collected samples while visiting Cali during field burning, each carrying material evidence of the detrimental process that produced them. Through her resolve as an artist seeking to reconcile with and negate their destructive energy, she displays these scientific specimens in Petri dishes, and by isolating them in sterile environments, she honours and purifies these particles, transposing them into offerings.

Hoyos thus imbues her works with curative properties. In her tribute to Indigenous and African slaves, to the corteros, and to oppressed workers worldwide, she exorcises the layers of agony embedded in collective memories and provides a haven for purification and solace. OPTICA becomes a sacred space, a temple for reflection and a place to gather and heal communally. And to consider alternatives aimed at respecting human needs and environmental wellbeing in commerce driven by capitalism.

Iris Amizlev

PRESS RELEASE (pdf)

*The Intersections residency is a joint initiative of the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Centre d'art contemporain OPTICA and the École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l'UQAM.




Of Columbian origin, artist Maria Hoyos holds an MFA (2022), BFA, and Bachelor of Art in education from the École des arts visuels et médiatiques at UQAM. Deeply attached to her home town, Santiago de Cali, she has always been interested in video, exploring the moving image throughout her studies in Bogota, Madrid, and Havana. Hoyos discovered a passion for installation art at the El Instituto Departamental de Bellas Artes. Immigrating to Québec in 2002 where she completed her studies, Hoyos exhibited at the Maison de la culture de Rosemont, Maison de la culture de Verdun, and Galerie de l’UQAM. She also curated the El Barrio, Tu Barrio project as part of the Mois de l’héritage latino-américain (Latin American Heritage Month) in Montreal and participated in the exhibition Mi-lieu, at the Écomusée du fier monde, a partnership with the UQAM arts department. Since 2023, she has been teaching visual arts in adult education centres and in French-language welcoming classes in the Jeanne-Mance and Pierre-Laporte high schools. Hoyos lives on the generous land of Abya-Yala, which, in the Kuna language, denoted the North-American continent before European colonization, and on the un-ceded First-Nations territory of Tiohtià:ke/Montreal.

Iris Amizlev is Curator of Special Projects at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. She has a doctorate in Art History and Anthropology from the Université de Montréal and has curated numerous exhibitions in various institutions on her fields of expertise, including contemporary, Pop and Land Art.


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Shaya Ishaq, Library of Infinities Ephemera (Documents éphémères de la Bibliothèque des infinis), 2022-2024. Avec l'aimable permission de l'artiste | Printed matter. Courtesy of the artist.
Rihab Essayh, Shaya Ishaq, Sarah E.K. Smith, Snack Witch/Joni Cheung & Brandon A. Dalmer, Jinny Yu
Commissaires / Curators : Amber Berson, Felicity Tayler

 From November 16th 2024 to November 16th 2024
Educating Our Desires; Table ronde, Futurismes : Réentrainer nos montées de dopamine

November 16th, 2024, 3 pm to 5 pm

Online and in presence, in English, translation available

ZOOM LINK

The conversation, which features Jinny Yu (Canadian BIPOC Artists Rolodex), Rihab Essayh (@canadianbipocart) and Shaya Ishaq (Library of Infinities), is facilitated by Felicity Tayler and focuses on artist-led spaces as they share a method of reaching towards possible horizons of sustainable ways of living and creating.

We will have an open-ended discussion about the work of digital networks and databases as mediums for representation, for articulating a way towards liberation. But these projects and practitioners are also acutely aware that the digital archival space they are creating works within constraints which are not inherently progressive. The social and economic conditions producing this archival space do not get better. Instead, they are engaged in a cycle of renewal and repeated engagement that links the calls to equity from the past to those of the future. It has been long recognized that digital spaces replicate real-world oppression, and do not inherently produce liberation, equity, or inclusive practices. And yet, artist-led spaces have consistently engaged with networked relational forms and practices of lists and directories, exploring the body and identity as circumscribed by grids and systems. In racialized and otherwise marginalized communities these modes build internal capacity and enact mutual aid to counter hostility produced by bad actors and structural inequities. The work of aesthetics is not only to shift the mind to new ways of thinking, but also has the power to retrain our dopamine hits to new neural pathways (Sylvia Wynter).

image
Clara Gutsche
 From November 27th 2024 to November 27th 2024
Lancement - NOUVELLE PARUTION: Clara Gutsche Portraits d'enfants. Children

OPTICA, centre d’art contemporain
invites you to the launch of the monograph
Clara Gutsche
Portraits d’enfants. Children
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
6 pm to 8 pm
At Le port de tête bookstore
222, avenue du Mont-Royal Est
Montréal, QC H2T 1P5
514.678.9566

Publisher
OPTICA, centre d'art contemporain
Montréal, 2024

Authors
Diane Charbonneau
Marie-Josée Lafortune
Foreword by Zoë Tousignant

Softcover printed book
26.6 cm x 20.6 cm
180 pages / color and B&W ill.
Text in FR and EN
ISBN 978-2-922085-16-7
[$50]
Launch price: $45
10% discount

This book brings together portraits of children from the series "Siblings and Singles", Clara Gutsche’s most recent body of photographic work, produced over the last fifteen years. In these images, Gutsche explores the themes of childhood and intergenerational relations and continues her reflection on the photographic medium, time, and representation.
This abundantly illustrated book illuminates her engagement with the photographed subject through a practice that has spanned five decades since the 1970s, and has left its mark on the imagination and history of Canadian photography.

For press copies please
contact: Esther Bourdages
communications@optica.ca
Distribution: OPTICA

Best wishes,
OPTICA's Team