Archives des interdisciplinary arts — MAI | Montréal, arts interculturels

Ülfet sevdi

Ülfet Sevdi is the recipient of the Joint Support Fellowship with Playwrights Workshop Montreal (PWM)+MAI for 2023-2024.

Ülfet Sevdi is a writer, theatre director, dramaturge, visual artist, and Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner based in Montreal. She graduated in Fine Arts and Theatre in Türkiye in 2001. She holds a Research and Creation Master in the INDI program at Concordia University. She is now a PhD candidate in the INDI program at Concordia University. Her work deals with oral history and social narratives. Her approach is highly conceptual, and experimental, and is theoretically grounded in the critical social sciences. She was the co-founder and artistic director of nü.kolektif (2008-2014), an Istanbul-based collective of multidisciplinary artists involved in performances dealing with political topics. She continued this line of work with Thought Experiment Productions (2015-) since coming to Montreal, a production company she also co-founded and that she co-directs. Her past work has been funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Montreal Council for the Arts, and the Cole Foundation. It has been presented in Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Ireland, Türkiye, and the USA.

Motherhood, by Ülfet Sevdi

In the moment of my artistic and academic mid-career, less than two years ago, I became a mother. I had just finished a Master’s thesis. It was still during the Covid pandemic. They say having a child changes your life. But you do not understand it until it happens to you. It is a deep, advantageous but also very demanding existential state. How do we continue, what can be done? When will we be able to regain our normal artistic life? Our performer’s body? Our capacity to focus on reading and writing? After almost a year of pregnancy follows the first months, the first year. The body has changed; physical, emotional, and psychological constraints are everywhere. Time flows outside, and life continues. This performance will be based on the technique I developed in my last performance, Numbers Increase As We Count…, a technique I have called “Performative Acting”. It is a technique that involves specific tasks and dramaturgically framed open structures. I have sketched the framework for this technique in my Research and Creation Master Thesis in the INDI program, and am currently developing it further in my current PDH studies in the same program. For this project, I intend to carry this work with different artist-mothers/mother-artists from different performative artistic disciplines.

Credit photo: Mustafa Hacalaki

lynn kodeih

Lynn Kodeih is the recipient of the Verticale — centre d’artistes (VCA)+MAI Joint Support Program 2023-2025. Lynn Kodeih will be part of VCA’s 2023-2025 programming, 𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒋𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒐𝒊𝒓𝒆, 𝒂𝒎é𝒏𝒂𝒈𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒆𝒕 𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒊𝒖𝒔 𝒍𝒐𝒄𝒊.

Lynn Kodeih was born in Beirut and has lived in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal since 2020. Her work focuses on the politics of the image and explores notions of space, borders, itinerancy, and belonging in a colonial and postcolonial world. Her art practice interweaves autotheory, video, and installation. Kodeih has a bachelor’s degree in literary studies and a DES and master’s degree in theatre and performance (Beirut, Lebanon). Her work has been presented in several international group exhibitions, including at the Kunstbanken Performance Festival (Norway), the Rotterdam Film Festival (Netherlands), Transart Triennial (Berlin, Germany), as well as Home Works – Ashkal Alwan, Beirut Art Center, and Beirut Art Fair (Lebanon).

charles gao

When I (Charles Gao) moved to Montreal in 2018, my goal became to develop my method for creating more narrative-based work from my perspective as a breaker. The idea was to use the artistic tools I had developed in my years as a breaker in tandem with the theatrical tools I was studying, to discover my form of Hip Hop theatre.

In 2019, I started working on what would eventually become “Welcome to the Digital Desert”. In 2020 during the pandemic, I staged an impromptu outdoor version of the play, where I cast Johnny Abilach – an actor as well as fellow street dancer. We’ve stayed in touch since, often dancing and exchanging together. His dedication to his practice as a popper as well as an actor mirrors my practice as a b-boy and playwright, where both disciplines feed each other. This has given us our common artistic language when working together.

Photo credit: Vickie Grondin

roberto santaguida

Since completing his studies in film production at Concordia University, Roberto Santaguida’s films and videos have been shown at more than 400 international festivals, including Tampere Film Festival (Finland), CPH: DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (Denmark), Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil (Brazil), Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival (United States), Transmediale (Germany), and Message to Man (Russia). He has also taken part in artist residencies in numerous countries, including Iran, Romania, Germany, Norway, and Australia. Roberto is the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award and a fellowship from Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany.

Summary:

I will investigate Methods of Coping — the techniques and processes implemented by artists who are facing personal challenges. I will engage in a form of cooperative dialogue with the consultants, based on asking and answering questions to draw out underlying ideas. An area of interest I will be examining with the group is the idea of bearing witness to one’s subterranean forces instead of attempting to ignore and hide from them.

Photo credit: Yasemin Ergin

marwan sekkat

Marwan Sekkat is a Franco-Moroccan interdisciplinary artist living in Quebec. Simulation, the living, subversion, the erroneous and the absurd are at the heart of his practice. Although digital technology is not central to his work, it serves as an ideal ally and tool for questioning our (his) contemporary world. His preferred mediums therefore range from installation to rap, simulation, virtual reality, glitch, VJing, subversion and the creation of real-time visuals. His recent projects involve setting up installations that explore notions of time, modernity and progress. Just as a video game provides us with a simulation of reality, he attempts to create a simulacra of what is real by concealing the digital using techniques such as cabinetmaking, textile work or botany. Fascinated by what is experimental, he hopes his works might provide a moment of sensibility to the public.

Transmission is a summary of his research-creation work around themes of intimacy and intra-familial transmission. By contrasting his artistic practice with traditional Moroccan craft practices, Marwan seeks to question and deconstruct his relationship with his identity. These works explore intergenerational transmission, cultural heritage and the notion of leaving a trace.

Website : marwansekkat.art
Photo credit: Taken during a Jano Lapin residency by Chris Mackenzie

dani carter

Dani Carter is a Tkaronto-born, Tiohtià:ke-based writer and performance artist.

Project Description: TIPS is an interdisciplinary exploration of Blackness, desirability, the internet, and the hidden erotic underbelly of labour. It follows the myth of the Black body into the noise of cyberspace.

The work is an aggregation of data—an absurd, burlesque, corrosive archive—collected from imageboards, message boards, Reddit communities, TikTok live streams, and the artist’s lived experience. How does the internet and its content, pornographic and non-pornographic, affect the shape of fetishization? Can a text that dehumanizes be radicalized by the dehumanized? As Gayatri Spivak writes, can the subaltern speak? These are questions that TIPS is interested in asking—if not answering, given their vastness—in the context of writing, performance, and their intersection.

Photo credit: Dani Carter

auro moura

Auro Moura is a singer/songwriter, composer, and music educator who has been working in the field of music for nearly 20 years. He holds a Master’s in Music and a degree in Music Education from the Federal University of Paraná (Curitiba, Brazil) as well as a diploma in Audiovisual Production from the Institut Grasset (Montréal). Auro has a long and prominent career as a music educator. He is currently the co-founder of the program Les Brasileirinhos, and music director to the “Choeur Scénique Brésilien”, both in TioTia:Ke/Montréal. As a researcher, Auro has published in congresses and symposiums in Brazil, Italy, Canada, and in magazines specialized in education. He published the book “Making Music with Children”, currently in its 3rd edition. As a musician, he has composed and performed music for 4 albums, 1 EP and 1 DVD. Besides his personal projects, Auro also works as a composer of songs and soundtracks for children’s projects, short films, and advertising, among others.

Website: www.auromoura.com

emilio wawatie

Emilio Wawatie is an Algonquin-Anishnabe from Kitigan Zibi and Barrier lake, Quebec, and is a musician, filmmaker, researcher, and educator. Born in Maniwaki and raised throughout Anishnabe Aki in parc la Verendrye, Abitibi, and Gatineau; he now resides in Moniak, where he studies at Concordia University in Music and First People’s Studies. Emilio began his musical journey when he discovered playing the guitar at the age of 12 through the influence of his grandfather and continued his passion for music and classical guitar studies at the age of 22. It was at Cambrian College where he began to build his musical foundation and received training on the Classical guitar with Mathew Gould and Alan Yzereef, where he prepared, organized, and performed a graduating recital. In the last few years, Emilio’s work has been geared towards research and creation with strong focus on Algonquian music and artistic styles of both traditional and contemporary practices. He is currently undertaking work on his first EP as an artist with InPath and composes for the Classical guitar.

tam khoa vu

The PRIM Centre and the MAI have partnered to offer long-term joint support to an artist wishing to experiment, develop their skills and create work in the field of media arts. PRIM provides the artist with filming equipment and facilities for the production of a work in video art, documentary, fiction, and audio art. The selected artist will be offered the opportunity to present their work in the MAI spaces as part of the official program during the 23-24 season.

Tam Khoa Vu is an artist based in Tiohtià:ke / Montreal. His work challenges common representations and depictions of Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Canadian identity, while playfully opening up spaces of abundance, possibility, and nuance. Using various visual and digital art forms, his practice explores themes of production, manufacturing, power, representation, and identity by exploring the nuances of the “third space” resulting from the diasporic experience between Vietnam and Canada. Notable presentations of the artist’s works include MAI – Justice Project (2022), Montreal, QC (2022); ARTCH Emerging Artists Exhibition, Montreal, QC (2021), Eastern Bloc, Montreal, QC (2016). He has received grants from funding bodies and institutions such as OBORO (2022), Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (2022, 2021), and the MAI (2022). In 2017, he completed his BFA at Concordia University in Design and Computation Arts.

f.k.a. art club

F.K.A. Art Club Collective Bio

Favielle Petit Clair, Kathleen Charles and Awa Banmana form the newly founded collective: F.K.A. Art Club. With a co-conspirator relationship, the artists trace similarities between Fav and Kat’s Haitian heritage and Awa’s Senegalese heritage. Together, they form a powerful artist collective focused on how multidisciplinary creative expression can be used to build community resilience and resistance in the face of systemic oppression, for individuals who live at the intersection of racialized and homophobic violence.

Born in France, Spanish-Senegalese artist Awa Banmana’s is an Queer Afropean emerging artist. Their work is centered around multidisciplinary. In 2020, Banmana was involved in the creation of the Black Lives Matter mural «La Vie des Noir.e.s Compte» and was selected to be in residence for Moebius magazine. Banmana’s video clip «KICKER», co-directed with musician Kaya Hoax, was also featured in the Melbourne Midsumma Festival 2021.

Favielle “Fav” Petit Clair, is a Queer woman from Haitian descent. Having grown up in such a rich and crowded city her proximity to people and the social bonds she formed tainted her approach to art. With an Afrocentric artistic practice, Favielle obtained her first exhibition in 2017 for FOVA during Black History month.

Kathleen Charles is a queer Haitian writer, songstress, performer, therapist in training and community organizer. Their poetry explores the power that art has to heal communities. Their art, whether it be music or poetry is made to heal themselves and to heal others by providing validating imagery to move through the traumas of systemic oppression.