Archives des exhibition — MAI | Montréal, arts interculturels

à suivre: a showcase of the alliance program

À suivre is a unique opportunity to discover what goes on behind the scenes at MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), in the context of the Alliance program. Conceived in two distinct parts, this showcase illuminates the creative genius of artists working in visual and performing arts.

The first part of the event will take place in the MAI café-bar on November 15th, where artists Reihan Ebrahimi (21.22 cohort), Zahra BuAli (22.23 cohort), Marc-Alain Félix (22.23 cohort), Jongwook Park (22.23 cohort) and Hea R. Kim (21.22 cohort) will exhibit their work. An ASL and LSQ interpreter will be on-site to facilitate networking. Migration, the notion of rootedness and the quest for identity will weave the narrative thread of this exhibition.

The second part of the showcase will take place in the MAI theatre on November 17, with an evening dedicated to the performing arts. In the intimacy of the theatre, the public will be treated to performances by talents such as Willywonka (21.22 studio residency), Natsumi Sophia Bellali (22.23 cohort), Kozmic Joy (Joy Rider & Kozmic, 22.23 cohort), Myth (studio residency x Studio303, 22.23 cohort), & roots2reach (21.22 cohort). LSQ and ASL interpreters will be on site before the performances. Artist introductions and performances with dialogue will be interpreted in LSQ and ASL.

About Alliance

Hosting 10-15 artists, collectives and companies per year, Alliance is a unique support program conceived for artists from all fields who encounter systemic and structural obstacles. The program strives to eliminate barriers to their full participation in the arts by offering customized financial allocations and guidance that are adapted to the learning and creative needs and desires of each participant. Consult the alliance page for more information about the program.

À suivre : Visual Arts

Free entry

Opening: November 15th, 5pm

Exhibition: November 16th, 12pm to 6pm + November 17th, 12pm to 9:30pm

Accessibility: ASL + LSQ interpreters on-site during the vernissage

Artists: Reihan Ebrahimi, Zahra BuAli, Marc-Alain Félix, Jongwook Park et Hea R. Kim

→ More information on the works presented

À suivre: Performing Arts

November 17th, 7:30pm

Accessibility: LSQ + ASL interpreters on site before and during the performances

Artists: Willywonka, Natsumi Sophia Bellali, Kozmic Joy (Joy Rider & Kozmic), Myth & roots2reach

performances and credits

✦ IN NA

— Willywonka

Credits:

Lighting Design: Laure Anderson, Sound Design: Maucina Sone, Costume Design: Joanna Gourdin, Outside Eye: Jean-Pierre Mecdy, Showcase Lighting Designer: Lee Anholt

✦ Salam Tata

— Natsumi Sophia Bellali

Credits:

Choreography: Natsumi Sophia Bellali in collaboration with Saxon Fraser, Original text: Natsumi Sophia Bellali with consultation of Solomon Krause-Imlach, Mentor: Saxon Fraser, Sound Design: Solomon Krause-Imlach, Lighting Design: Marguerite Hudon, Dramaturgy Consultants: Sarah Elkashef, Aki Matsushita, Outside Eye: Alida Esmail, Artistic Consultant: Yvon Soglo (Crazy Smooth), Signer for the opening: Ashley Hefnawy, Costume: Mayumi Ide-Bergeron, Showcase Lighting Designer: Lee Anholt

✦ Mad About The Girl

— Kozmic Joy (Joy Rider & Kozmic)

Credits:

Video: Becca Redden, Costume Design: Joy Rider, Performers: Marbella Carlos aka Joy Rider, Chloé Seyrès aka Kozmic, Showcase Lighting Designer: Lee Anholt

✦ Ode

— Myth

Credits:

Performer: Myth, Residency partner: Studio 303, Mentor: Shérane Figaro, Showcase Lighting Designer: Lee Anholt

✦ roots2reach

— Alida Esmail, Hodan Youssouf, Sophia Wright

Credits:

Co-creators: Alida Esmail, Sophia Wright, & Hodan Youssouf, Performer: Alida Esmail, Sound and Vibration Designer: Samuel Thulin, Costume: Nalo Soyini Bruce, Dramaturg: Fatma Sarah Elkashelf, Consultant in Deaf Culture: Daz Saunders, Showcase Lighting Designer: Lee Anholt

the traces that remain

The Traces That Remain explores the after-effects. The exhibition asks: what reverberating repercussions remain in the body and mind following significant events that have affected us? Are we the only ones affected? How do these traces manifest over the course of a minute, a year, a lifetime? Are they always obvious, or do they slip into the subconscious in the form of memories and nightmares? Do they always eventually become experience, resilience? Addressing these questions, this exhibition brings together artists who reflect on what lingers after the fact/the effect.

Shaya Ishaq introduces these questions through her interest in the liminality of rites of passage; Po B K Lomami fashions an intimate experiment to interrogate how grief remains; Zinnia Naqvi exposes the scars left by institutions that choose not to support visible minorities; and Lan Florence Yee probes the painful consequences that follow difficult situations. On top of this, The Traces That Remain also explores the form archives can take, as well as who and what is remembered.

Curated by: eunice bélidor

Featuring work from : Po B. K. Lomami + Zinnia Naqvi + Shaya Ishaq + Lan Florence Yee

hybrid condition

In Hybrid Condition Vietnamese-Canadian artist Tam Khoa Vu explores cultural hybridity through multiple video and audio installations using a blend of personal, archival, and modern-day footage. Vu’s work is playful, even mischievous, as the artist aims to create spaces of abundance, possibility, and nuance around the issues involved in representing liminal Vietnamese identities. Vu navigates a diasporic “third space” between Vietnam and Canada. In Hybrid Condition, footage emphasizing Vietnamese identity and diaspora allows the artist to dig into the roots of cultural, ethnic, and national identities in such a way as to call into question Western hegemony and its influence over Vietnam, Vietnamese, and Vietnamese-Canadian identity.

driving in palestine

Palestinian-born and Montreal-based interdisciplinary artist Rehab Nazzal employs a variety of media to examine the devastating effects of settler-colonial violence on the Palestinian people, land and non-human life. Driving in Palestine is a multimedia installation that combines photography, video, printed matter, and sound to offer glimpses of Israel’s structures of segregation, confinement, surveillance and restriction to freedom of movement that proliferate the occupied West Bank. Captured from moving vehicles on Palestinian roads spanning 2010 to 2020, a decade of images compels viewers to question the link between suppression and debilitation of Indigenous people and the attempts to expropriate and destroy their land. Nazzal’s work reveals a regime that suffocates, surveils and controls the Palestinian’s mobility within and beyond their territories. It invites viewers to witness manifestations of this regime including the apartheid wall, military checkpoints, gates, fences, watchtowers, and roadblocks that Palestinians have had to navigate for the past 70 years.

➞ Curatorial text by Stefan St-Laurent

phosphos

In PHOSPHOS, Montréal-based lighting designer, visual artist, and educator Paul Chambers looks to reimagine the use of lighting in live stage arts. Challenging the codes of theatrical practice, Chambers creates lighting installations that question how we perceive light when we are immersed in it. PHOSPHOS makes space for lighting that is tangible and communicative. Chambers accomplishes this through creating a haptic experience that places the viewer inside a dimly lit space where their vision is heightened, giving them access to very subtle changes, making them more vulnerable and receptive. A space in which our eyes question the legitimacy of what we are seeing. This visual arts installation / immersive space will be activated by artists of different disciplines, in collaboration with the MAI.

A CHA Collective production.

Free entrance

From Tuesday to Saturday from 12pm to 6pm.

making revolution: collective histories, desired futures

Making Revolution explores forms of struggle and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa through video art and installation. This exhibition curated by Farah Atoui and Viviane Saglier revisits histories of uprisings through the production and circulation of images. While the 2011 upheavals are often considered a turning point in the region’s political history, the six film and video works and the three installations featured in Making Revolution engage with different temporalities, earlier revolutions, and their political and poetic legacies. They foreground the physicality of corporealities in uprisings, thereby drawing attention to the embodiment of revolution through the medium of the moving image.

This incisive and hopeful investigation seeks to convoke new, grounded imaginaries and understandings for the struggles and movements to come.

otipemisiwak

Showcasing recent process-based works on paper, textile and 360º animation, Otipemisiwak* celebrates the lives and material cultures of three women: the artist’s great grandmother, Eléanore; her grandmother, Clémence; and her mother, Anita. Works feature a digital-beading technique the artist invented called ‘Berries to Beads’. The technique mirrors spectacular traditional Métis beading; it is both a meticulous and technically demanding practice and art form.

Daphne Boyer is a Canadian visual artist and plant scientist. Her iterative practice combines plant material, high-resolution digital tools and women’s traditional handwork to create art that convokes her family’s Métis heritage and honours plants as the basis of life on earth.

* People who live by their own rules.

live in palestine (suspended indefinitely)

[highlight background=”#e2011e” color=”#ffffff”]— Montreal is in red zone since October 01, 2020. This exhibition is suspended until further notice. See MAI’s latest updates related to COVID-19 . —[/highlight]

This exhibition brings together performance work that asks the viewer to consider how bodies, actions and images produce meaning in particular geopolitical spaces. Showcasing prominent and emerging contemporary artists currently living and working in Palestine, Live in Palestine focuses on work that combines performative practices with political engagement, addressing some of the complexities of living in occupied Palestine.

Curated by Anna Khimasia (Los Angeles), Stefan St-Laurent (Gatineau) and Rehab Nazzal (Bethlehem), Live in Palestine was initiated at the Art & Resistance conference in Dar al-Kalima University (Bethlehem). Organized by AXENÉO7 in partnership with DAÏMÔN (Gatineau) and A Space Gallery (Toronto).

ONLINE SUPPLEMENT

Documentation surrounding the exhibition, including 360-degres views of the gallery, biographies, photos and media/support/technique information of works presented to put them in context : here.

VIDEO PROJECTION

Free admission, limited seating – RSVP required. In English and Arabic with subtitles.

On September 25, 2020 at 7:30 pm at MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), screening of a video program related to the exhibition Live In Palestine, in partnership with Vidéographe, AXENÉO7 and Filmlab: Palestine.

GUIDED TOURS

Free admission, limited seating – RSVP required. Duration of 45 minutes.

September 25, 2020 at 4:00 pm and 5:00 pm, in English, facilitated by Rehab Nazzal.
October 2, 2020 at 4:00 pm and 5:00 pm, in French, facilitated by Najat Rahman.

the novels of elsgüer (episode 5); if i saw you, i don't remember

The Novels of Elsgüer (Episode 5); If I saw you, I don’t remember is an immersive audiovisual installation and performance piece that translates the movements of an unseen body into visual data in the form of hairlike filament animations, intermittent reflections, and flickering shadows. As a sensorial experience, this work asks how different individuals – visible or not- have the potential to create new spaces, raising questions on perception of visibility, inclusion and exclusion. This is the fifth episode in a series of transdisciplinary installations co-created by Colombian-Canadian artists Santiago Tavera and Laura Acosta since 2015.

colonial body-islands

In this powerful convergence of collective suffering and individual tale, we are forced to confront our own engagement. This immersive experience tightens the delicate link between perception and action. In an homage to victims of forced migration, the sculpture of a man makes visible vulnerabilities that are too often seen without really being witnessed. Multidisciplinary artist Payam Mofidi explores the fragility of human suffering through a perspective that is both dreamlike and political. With degrees in animation (Paris) and graphic design (Tehran), this Montreal artist of Iranian origin works at the crossroads of traditional media and new technologies.