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Exibitions 2023

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OPTICA Fonds (Concordia University Archives)

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Des policiers à cheval de la ville de Toronto et d’autres à pied confrontent une foule au centre-ville le 4 mai 1992, pour réprimer le vandalisme et le pillage. Photo : John Mahler, The Toronto Star, 4 mai 1992 \| Mounted Metro police officers and others on foot confront a crowd downtown on May 4, 1992, to quell vandalism and looting. Photo: John Mahler, The Toronto Star, 4 May 1992	Pamila Matharu From January 21st 2023 to April 1st 2023 *Where Were You in ‘92?* Opening, Saturday, January 21, 3pm to 5pm Commented visit of the exhibition by Pamila Matharu, 3 pm to 4 pm - in English The opuscule that documents the exhibition-to discover through this LINK (pdf). Through experimentation with sound, image, found texts and acts of counter-archiving of personal and political experiences, Where Were You in ‘92? brings forth the embodied archives of the ground-breaking legacy of Fresh Arts, a Black artist-led program that was born out of the fury of impassioned youth. Pamila Matharu, one of the mentees of Fresh Arts, returns not only to this pivotal moment but also to her mentor, Winsom Winsom, who’s more than decade-long activist history in Kingston ON is under-recognized. This research project begins with the basic premise that archives are manifested in living bodies, in repeated stories, in unfinished conversations, sparked by events of the past that persist into the present, and, importantly, in the healing practices of intergenerational connectivity. Interested in forms of feminist genealogies that cite what came before and using the archive as a forum for recognition, resilience and radical love, Matharu looks back to Toronto’s 1992 youth-led uprising on Yonge Street that gave rise to Fresh Arts. Where Were You in ‘92? traces new lines of connection across history and geography, drawing in those who inherit its legacy and holding up those who mobilized its centrifugal forces. This exhibition was originally presented at the Agnes Etherington Art Center, Kingston, Ontario (July 30 – December 4, 2022). Author: Emelie Chhangur Pamila Matharu and the team of OPTICA wish to thank Emelie Chhangur, Director and Curator, Nasrin Himada, Associate Curator, Academic Outreach and Community Engagement, and Charlotte Gagnier, Program Coordinator, and Leah Cox, Exhibition Coordinator at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston. Continued gratitude to the artist's mentor Winsom Winsom. PRESS RELEASE (pdf) PRESS REVIEW DEVEAU, Adrian. « Pamila Matharu: Where Were You in ’92?, Curated by Emelie Chhangur, Nasrin Himada and Charlotte Gagnier», Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, NO. 3, Volume 8, January 18, 2024, 343–346. DELGADO, Jérôme. " 'Sédiment': les archives, outil de survie ", Le Devoir, February 11, 2023. DELGADO, Jérôme, Nicolas Mavrikakis. "Dix expos d'arts visuels à surveiller", Le Devoir, January, 14, 2023. Note that Pamila Matharu is participating in two collective exhibitions in Montreal this season: - Sediment: the Archive as a Fragmentary Basis, at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, from February 4 to April 1, 2023. Including Sandra Brewster, Filipa César, Justine A. Chambers, Louis Henderson, Krista Belle Stewart . Curator: Denise Ryner Opening Saturday, February 4, 3p.m. – 5p.m. Guided tour of the exhibition by Denise Ryner, Saturday February 4 at 2 p.m., in English - Desire Lines. Narrative spaces on the move presented at Artexte until March 25. Curator: Felicity Tayler Including Luis Jacob, Pamila Matharu,Tomasz Neugebauer, Clive Robertson and Felicity Tayler. Pamila Matharu is a settler of Panjabi, Indian descent (Jalandhar City and the Village of Bhanolangha in the district of Kapurthala), born in Birmingham, England, and arrived in Canada in 1976. Based in TkarÃ³n:to (Toronto) – Treaty 13 territory – on the lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat. She holds a BA in Visual Arts, and a Fine Arts B.Ed. from York University. Approaching contemporary art from the position of critical pedagogy and using an interdisciplinary and intersectional feminist lens, Pamila’s work culminates in a broad range of forms including installation art, social practice, and experimental media art. Her 2019 solo exhibition debut One of These Things Is Not Like the Other, presented at A Space Gallery (Toronto), won the 2019 OAAG Award for Best Exhibition and the 2019 Toronto Images Festival Homebrew Award. Her project INDEX (SOME OF ALL PARTS) received the 2020 CONTACT Festival’s Edward Burtynsky Photobook Award. Her forthcoming monograph will launch at Brampton, Ontario’s PAMA (Peel Art Museum and Archives) in May 2023. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, the Ashanti Maroon multimedia artist, Winsom Winsom, immigrated to Canada in the 1970s and lived in the Kingston, Ontario, area from 1974 to 1989. As the co-founder of Kingston’s Black Women’s Collective, she worked with the Mayor’s office on issues of racism and attracted many Black activists to Kingston, including Angela Davis, Odetta, Dr Mavis Burke and Lincoln Alexander. Entwined with her career as an artist and activist, Winsom has a longstanding history as an art educator. She influenced the emergence of several Canadian artists, such as Pamila Matharu and d’bi.young anitafrika. Toronto-born artist and award-winning writer and curator, Emelie Chhangur is the Director/ Curator of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Prior to this, she was the Senior Curator at the AGYU, Toronto, where she was known for her socially engaged curatorial practice, long-term collaborative commissions, and institutional practice of “in-reach.â€ She is the recipient of the inaugural OAAG BIPOC Changemaker Award (2019) and the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence (2020).
Leyla Majeri, Garden Archive : There's a wasp who penetrates the ladybug. Circa Art Actuel, Montréal, 2019. Crédits photos : Jean-Michael Seminaro / Leyla Majeri	Leyla Majeri From February 16th 2023 to February 16th 2023 En conversation avec Leyla Majeri, récipiendaire de la résidence Intersections 2022 12:45 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. Université du Québec à Montréal Pavillon Judith-Jasmin, space J-7130 (on the 7th floor) 405 Sainte-Catherine Street East (corner St-Denis) H2L 2C4 Please take note that the talk will be held in French. The artist Leyla Majeri is interested in notions of ecofeminism, that is, the reactivation of craftwork and ethnobotanical know-how through a practice of installation, sculpture, and experimental film. During this conversation, she will discuss her artistic approach, the research she produced during her residency at OPTICA, as well as her studio productions at UQAM’s visual and media arts department. The discussion will be hosted by Romeo Gongora, professor at the École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM, and OPTICA director Marie-Josée Lafortune. The public presentation will be followed by a question period. Bring your friends! Intersections Residency Program: The Intersections research, creation and production residency rewards emerging first or second generation immigration artists who are members of an ethnic or visible minority and are graduates of the École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM. This new program aims to provide support to culturally diverse artists by giving them access to professional accompaniment to complement their university education in the Montreal arts milieu. For more information please see the website. The Intersections Residency is a joint initiative of the Conseil des arts de Montréal, Centre d’art contemporain OPTICA, and École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM. Holding a master's degree in Visual and Media Arts from UQAM, Leyla Majeri's practice focuses on sculptural installation and experimental animated film, bringing them into closer attention to ecologies between matter, the imagined and the political. With Harness the Sun (Arprim, Montreal, 2016), she initiates a dialogue between her art practice and her gardening practice to envision ways of ‘making’ that are rooted in the idea of commitment, as both an artistic process and as a mode of resistance. She furthers this exploration in Don't Blame Us If We Get Playful (Galerie de l'UQAM, 2018) and in Garden Archive – There's a wasp who penetrates the ladybug (CIRCA, Montreal, 2019) where she combines different languages and territories of practice, materialities, life forms and biotopes. Her current research draws on fictional approaches to ethnography, speculative biology and forms of intangible knowledge – which she re-imagines from a plot of land located on an agricultural field, where she established a food garden, a pharmacopoeia of medicinal plants and, more recently, plants she will incorporate into her new artwork. In addition to these projects, her work has been shown at Parisian Laundry, Eastern Bloc, Paved Arts / Sounds Like (Saskatoon) in 2016 and soon to be exhibited at the Skol Centre in 2023. Leyla Majeri is a recipient of project grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and a research residency at the Centre Est-Nord-Est (Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, 2017). Leyla Majeri lives in Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyaang / Montréal where she was born. Website of Leyla Majeri.
Visuel de l'activité de collage inspirée de la pratique de Pamila Matharu, février 2023. Crédit photo : Anne St-Louis. Visual of the collage activity inspired by the art practice of Pamila Matharu, February 2023. Photo Credit: Anne St-Louis.	Pamila Matharu From February 25th 2023 to February 25th 2023 Nuit blanche 2023 : Venez décorer un carnet de notes personnel chez OPTICA! On the occasion the Nuit Blanche 2023, OPTICA is inviting the general public to a night of experimentation and discovery inspired by the practice of Pamila Matharu and her exhibition Where were you in ‘92? After touring the exhibition space, participants of all ages are invited to take part in a collage workshop during which they will be able create the cover page of a notebook while sipping a hot drink with cookies! OPTICA will hold two workshops: the first is aimed at young children and their families, and the second at the wider public. Throughout the evening, the centre will also propose interested visitors a short presentation of the artist’s practice and a guided tour of the exhibition. Gallery doors will be open to the public all evening for those wishing to visit independently. In a warm and relaxed atmosphere, the proposed activity is meant as a way to archive one’s thoughts, use one’s senses, relax, have fun, discover, disconnect from the everyday, develop one’s intuition and creativity, and also gain a better understanding of oneself and/or of a subject. Please note that entry to both the exhibition and workshops is free of charge. We’re looking forward to seeing you all! Here is a more detailed evening schedule: - 7 pm to 12 am: guided tours of the exhibition - 7 pm to 8:30 pm: Collage workshop for families and their young children - 8:30 pm to 9 pm: Guided tour of the exhibition hosted by the OPTICA mediator - 9 pm to 12 am: Collage workshop for the general public
Anouk Verviers, Tu m'as donné ton pot à bines (lettre à ma grand-mère). Vue d'exposition à Deptford X (Londres, UK), 2022. Installation vidéo. Structure de contreplaqué, pots en argile crue, projection sur bois. Vidéo 4K et son pour écouteurs. Avec l'aimable permission de l'artiste. \| Exhibition view at Deptford X (London, UK), 2022. Video installation. Plywood structure, raw clay pots, projection on wood. 4K video and sound for headphones. Crédit photo : Anouk Verviers. Courtesy of the artist.	Anouk Verviers From April 22nd 2023 to June 17th 2023 *Qu'est-ce qu'on peut construire sur un sol en mouvance* In CONVERSATION between Anouk VERVIERS and Didier MORELLI at OPTICA, on April 29, from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Link of the event: here Qu'est-ce qu'on peut construire sur un sol en mouvance interweaves several narratives belonging to the same story. The first is that of a ceramic bean pot given to the artist by her grandmother, which prompts a reflection on the significance of collective projects across generations. The second is that of the industrialization of butter production on the territory we call Canada, from homestead production, mostly carried out by women until the 19th century to mass production in the 20th. There is then the closely related story of commercial relations between Canada and the United Kingdom in a colonial context, the products of Canadian agriculture being rationalized for profit, thus eroding a subsistence economy. The exhibition delves into the workings of an “economic system that divides usâ€ by traversing the layers of time and the articulations of the single history of dispossession. By interconnecting different perspectives on a rapport to the land and the relationships this generates, Verviers works through a series of tensions in which we must learn to live. Repetition \| Transformation Inscribing words into substance, performing malleability, telling with gestures, reflecting, building, deconstructing, reconstructing, holding nothing as definitive, in search of transformation, of repair. The forms, gestures, and narratives that intertwine in the exhibition space work on the transformative power of repetition. They embody the possibility of articulating our relationships to history, identity, and territory differently, inscribing the narratives in the very presence of a thinking body: the artist’s own. Architectural forms frame the space while finding new extensions in their dislocated rearrangements. They conjure the Canadian Pavilion at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, which was covered with jars containing “the fruits of Canadian agriculture.â€ Here, the displays support replicas made of wax, earth, and cob, powerful yet precarious due to their degradable properties. Revealing the gestures of their handmade , the artist proposes objects—pots, bricks, octagonal units, a cloak—that invite us to both recognize and reinterpret the stories that run through them. Subjectivity \| Dispossession The narrative substance of this project is also rooted in the individual experiences of people met in Haute-Yamaska as part of a residency at 3e Impérial conducted between 2020 and 2022, as well as in reflections the artist develops from her own history. This narrator, who confides that “I ended up being afraid of collective project,â€ investigates the challenges faced by people who initiate, lead, or maintain collective initiatives. Based on an intimate experience of recent history, her project attempts to embrace the complexity of colonial forms of oppression. It connects current lifestyles with the mechanics of extractive thinking, which reproduces oppressions on the very people complicit in its reproduction. However, these encounters are not made visible or explicit. The works betray few traces of the conversations, rather taking the form of memory in the making. The artist undertakes the subjective rewriting of a shared experience, expressed in a different space, whose codes and dynamics of exclusion are simultaneously put into play. She therefore refuses to objectify the subjectivities, or to extract artistic material from them. Her narrative device avoids exposing those who interacted with her in a social space other than the gallery’s or in a reciprocal relationship that was not meant to be public. She therefore chooses to draw the gaze upon herself and to inhabit the story with her own presence. Exhaustion \| Care The foundation of this project is the materiality of the body: its work considered a form of engagement, its exhaustion a form of dispossession. Reciprocity, sustenance, performativity, and power are intertwined to both celebrate and mourn parts of the world as we believe it to be. Author: Véronique Leblanc The artist acknowledges that her research was conducted on the unceded territories of the W8banaki and Huron-Wendat Nations and realizes that, while colonial structures have contributed and still contribute to the oppression of women, they have, through a system that persists to this day, resulted in the particularly systematic oppression of First Nations. Anouk Vervier would like to thank Véronique Leblanc, Didier Morelli, Louis-Charles Cloutier, Évelyne Gévry, Julie Gavillet, Youssef Fahem, Caroline Gosselin, Sylvie Tourangeau, Noémie Fortin, and the entire staff at 3e Impérial, Centre d’essai en art actuel, and at Optica, Contemporary art centre. She is also grateful to the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for its support. Translator: Ron Ross PRESS RELEASE (pdf) 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. 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). Her work has been shown in Canada, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom: this includes solo exhibitions at OPTICA (2023, Montreal), Vaste et Vague (2023, Carleton) and Regart (2019, Lévis); group exhibitions at Futures_After (2022, London, UK), and Dogo Residenz (2019, Lichtensteig, Switzerland); artist residencies with CCE@HGAED (2022, London, UK) and Dogo Residenz (2019, Lichtensteig, Switzerland); and community projects presented by 3e Impérial (2021, Granby) and Dare Dare (2016, Montreal). As a researcher, she is a member of the Centre for Research in Social Innovation and Transformation (CRITS) at St-Paul University in Ottawa (un-ceded territory of Odawa) and has published in Research in Arts and Education Journal (2022) from the Aalto University, Espoo, in Finland. Véronique Leblanc is a curator, an author, and a teacher. She sees curating, writing, and the pedagogical adventures in which she is involved as shared learning opportunities. Her current work focuses on the commoning imaginaries in contemporary art.
Racquel Rowe, Making Sweet Bread with Gran, 2020. Détail. Vidéo, 11 min. 32 s. Avec l'aimable permission de l'artiste. \| Detail. Video, 11 min. 32 sec. Courtesy of the artist.	Racquel Rowe From April 22nd 2023 to June 17th 2023 *The Chicken Is Just Dead First* Opening: April 22 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., in the presence of the artist. Commented visit of the exhibition by the artist in English, from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. It’s an age-old question: what comes first, the egg or the chicken? One can play devil’s advocate and find arguments for both sides, or one can follow interdisciplinary artist Racquel Rowe’s example and force oneself to dwell on the question, investigating and contextualizing why it is on our minds in the first place. For why is this question interesting to us and why will it always be so? Originally from Barbados and currently living in Waterloo, Ontario, Rowe works in many disciplines, particularly video, performance, and installation. Strongly influenced by her family upbringing and Barbadian origins, the works in The Chicken Is Just Dead First concern matrilineal cultures and the differences and similarities between the various experiences of black people in the diaspora. Rowe’s performances, when produced in Canada, are done alone and consist of repeating a familiar gesture. In the gallery, we see her washing rice, a gesture learned and inherited from her mother. While paying homage to the matriarchs in her family, the idea of having such an intimate relationship with rice also comes from her research into its history in the Caribbean. With degrees in law, history, and English from Barbados Community College, her readings on food, identity, and their context on Caribbean soil are important drivers in building her artistic practice, and in grounding herself in cultural identity. Her intimacy with rice goes so far as to see her lie naked, buried within it, wanting to live a bodily experience, similar to the practice of Carlos Martiel, one of her influences, who uses his own, often naked body in his performances. In fact, she specifically wanted to live a state, over an extended period, in which there was no barrier between her and the food. At the time of creating her performances, her nudity was not a political tool as it is for Martiel, who subjects his body to physical hardship to explore issues of racism, colonialism, and gender; Rowe wanted to give free rein to her body and her desires. Being naked is also her own rebellion, a nod to the influence of rebellions in Caribbean history that she read and learned about in her research. During the pandemic, upon returning to Barbados and its patriarchal and religious society, she could no longer perform in the same way. This return home forced her to work differently: she began to document and build a family archive. She candidly admits that there is something selfish about her work, that she would have created and presented her archive even if she had no audience. Learning from her grandmother was the motivation behind her most recent work; her love/obsession with food has always been an important part of her practice, especially after moving to Canada, where she couldn’t always reproduce the tastes and smells of home due to the specificity and origin of some local ingredients. Rowe, then, presents videos of her mother and grandmother “performingâ€ and passing on recipes from her childhood, such as macaroni pie or salt fish rice. These moments of going back and forth, recording, and translating between her Caribbean culture and her life as a newcomer in Canada are similar to experiences described by the protagonist of Zalika Reid-Benton’s Frying Plantain, which chronicles the life of a first-generation Canadian of Jamaican descent. The Chicken Is Just Dead First is a euphemism that she borrows from this collection of short stories and that synthesizes her quest and research. She confidently answers that, really, the chicken just died first. This exhibition was originally presented at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Ontario ( April 15th-May 1st, 2021). Author: eunice bélidor Racquel Rowe would like to thank Ed Video Media Arts Centre for the continued support of her practice. Her collaborators, namely her Mother, and Granny, for their enduring labours of love. And the University of Waterloo MFA program for all the encouragement throughout developing this body of work. PRESS RELEASE (pdf) Racquel Roweis an interdisciplinary artist from the island of Barbados currently residing in Canada. She holds an MFA from the University of Waterloo and a BA in History and Studio Art from the University of Guelph. Her practice is continuously influenced by many aspects of history, matrilineal family structures, diasporic communities, and her upbringing in Barbados. Exhibited widely across Ontario, her work takes the form of performance, video, site-specific work, and installation. Exploring the notion of compulsory visibility and subverting dominant ideologies, Rowe’s practice embraces the differences and similarities between the various Black experiences across the Diaspora. Engaging in critical conversations around race, migration, and colonialism, furthers her ability to understand and break away from colonial representations. Rowe’s practice is largely influenced by her surroundings, for example being in Barbados for extended periods of time allows her to expand into new environments, researching, and performing within familial and community structures. She has had solo exhibitions at the Scarborough Museum, Toronto, Ontario (2022); Struts Gallery, Sackville, New Brunswick (2022); University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Waterloo, Ontario (2021). In recent years, her projects have been presented in group exhibitions at the Cambridge Art Galleries, Cambridge, Ontario (2021), as well as at festivals: InterAccess Vector Festival, Toronto, Ontario (2021) and Lumen Festival, Waterloo, Ontario (2020). She was the recipient of the Sylvia Knight Award in Fine Arts of the University of Waterloo in 2021. Born in Montreal, eunice bélidor is a curator, writer, and researcher. She is an assistant professor affiliated with the Department of Art History at Concordia University. Her current practice focuses on questioning as a method, epistolary writing as creator of self-theory, and its intersection with care, feminism, and racial issues. She has curated several exhibitions in Canada and Europe and her writing has been published in Esse, Canadian Art, Hyperallergic, le Journal of Curatorial Studies, Invitation, InCirculation and ESPACE. eunice belidor is the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation - TD Bank Group Awards for Emerging Curator of Contemporary Canadian Art (2018). She has worked at articule, the FOFA Gallery at Concordia University (Montreal), and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Anouk Verviers, documentaion. Briques de terre crue compressées (terre et terra cotta), caisses de bois faites à la main (bois recyclé), terre au sol, 2022. Crédit photo : Anouk Verviers. \| Compressed raw clay bricks (earth and terra cotta), handmade wooden crates (recycled wood), ground soil.	Anouk Verviers From April 27th 2023 to April 30th 2023 Reprise du programme Artiste à l’école avec Anouk Verviers! OPTICA is pleased to announce the return of Artist at School, a program that allows elementary-school children to discover contemporary works of art accompanied by the centre’s cultural mediator and the artist on the program. At the end of April, a welcoming class for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders at the Iona School in Montreal will take part in two workshops in connection with Anouk Verviers’s exhibition, Qu’est-ce qu’on peut construire sur un sol en mouvance. The Artist at School program takes a two-step approach: a tour of the exhibition at OPTICA, where students are able to come into direct contact with the art centre, the artist, and their works; and a creative workshop in the classroom, where they can explore the material and pursue their reflections by getting their hands “dirty,â€ so to speak, producing a work inspired by the artist’s practice—here with a small brick of clay, which can then become a souvenir of the activity, a symbol of the experience. In a warm and welcoming atmosphere, this activity will inevitably provide for special encounters between the students, the artist, and the artworks. It will also be an opportunity for sharing experiences, ideas, and knowledge. Adapted to the needs of the host school groups, the tour and the workshop are sure to contribute to the development of the students’ expressive skills. 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 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). Her work has been shown in Canada, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom: this includes solo exhibitions at OPTICA (2023, Montreal), Vaste et Vague (2023, Carleton) and Regart (2019, Lévis); group exhibitions at Futures_After (2022, London, UK), and Dogo Residenz (2019, Lichtensteig, Switzerland); artist residencies with CCE@HGAED (2022, London, UK) and Dogo Residenz (2019, Lichtensteig, Switzerland); and community projects presented by 3e Impérial (2021, Granby) and Dare Dare (2016, Montreal). As a researcher, she is a member of the Centre for Research in Social Innovation and Transformation (CRITS) at St-Paul University in Ottawa (un-ceded territory of Odawa) and has published in Research in Arts and Education Journal (2022) from the Aalto University, Espoo, in Finland.
Leyla Majeri, Sans titre, 2023, crédit photo: Édouard Larocque. Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste.\| Courtesy of the artist.	Appel de candidatures. Résidence Intersections de recherche, création et production Date limite de deÌpoÌ‚t : 5 octobre 2023 From August 11th 2023 to October 5th 2023 Intersections - Résidence de recherche, création et production 2023-2024 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 mâtrise 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 du programme de mâtrise 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 2024 (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, pour une durée de 8 mois; - un accompagnement professionnel totalisant 60 heures par OPTICA (30h) et l’EAVM (30h); - une subvention de recherche (max. 1500$); - un cachet de production (3,000$), d’exposition (2,240$) et de présentation publique (125$); - une plage d’exposition ou de diffusion du projet final dans la programmation d’OPTICA et une présentation publique au cours de l’année 2024. 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 5 octobre 2023 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 contacter : 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/
Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes, The Pond, 2022. Image animée en 3D, feedback vidéo \| 3D animated graphics, video feedback © Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes	MOMENTA Biennale de l'image; Commissaire \| Curator: Ji-Yoon Han From September 8th 2023 to October 21st 2023 MOMENTA x OPTICA \| Mascarades. L’attrait de la meÌtamorphose; Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes, Mirages sur l’étang Opening: Friday, September 8, 2023 - 5PM to 10pm Public presentation and guided tour of the exhibition by Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes: October 14, 2023, 3pm. OPTICA is proud to participate in the 18th edition of MOMENTA Biennale de l’image, Masquerades: Drawn to Metamorphosis, curated by Ji-Yoon Han. OPTICA will present individual exhibitions by the artists Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes and Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde. Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal — From September 8 to October 21, 2023, OPTICA will present solo exhibitions by the artists Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes and Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde, whose works activate processes of transformation, mimetics, and mutation through living beings. Individuals are constantly recorded, formatted, fixed as same and identical, so how do we (re)set in motion our understanding of identities and differences? This question offers avenues for exploration and paths for reflection around the Biennale’s theme and the works of its artists. Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes examines the ambivalent relationships between humans and the natural world within the context of ecological destruction. As she builds virtual realms populated with hybrid beings inspired by real flora and fauna, including those from the tropical forest of her native Costa Rica, her 3D animation works simulate an opulent natural environment that evolves in parallel to humanity. Technology itself is likened to an organism composed of multiple layers of superimposed and interlinked images, offering possible ways to reconnect with our devastated environment. For the multimedia installation The Pond, Arroyo-Kreimes revisits the diorama, a staged reconstruction of wildlife in its environment, found in natural history museums. Imaginary creatures vibrate and pulsate in screen-enclosures, immersed in an aqueous setting of pearlescent reflections. Although captive, they navigate and metamorphose through feedback loops that convert digital signals into analog ones, then re-encode them in digital format. Here, we find ourselves caught within this phantasmagoric refuge, at times coexisting with the butterflies, millipedes, and chimerical salamanders. So who, now, is the subject of this show? Exhibition presented by MOMENTA Biennale de l’image and produced in partnership with OPTICA. This artist is supported by the MOMENTA x RBC Foundation program. Animation 3D: Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes Sound: Philippe Lambert Augmented reality developement: Teo Zamudio, Milo Reinhardt MOMENTA Creative La Biennale includes the MOMENTA Creative program, a series of educational activities, creative workshops, and guided tours. Each activity, organized in relation to the Biennale’s theme, is free of charge and offered to groups, families, and individuals. Designed with a concern for inclusion and representativeness, our program conveys our desire to provide innovative cultural mediation. The workshop Les êtres invisibles, designed for preschool and elementary-school groups, is centred around the art practices of Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes and Bianca Baldi, whose work is presented at Diagonale. The workshop will be led by the MOMENTA team in collaboration with OPTICA jeunesse and will take place at OPTICA and Diagonale. Reservations for elementary-school groups: mediation@momentabiennale.com Reservations for CPE, Daycare and Preschool Groups: mediationoptica@gmail.com Free MOMENTA Podcast For MOMENTA’s very first podcast series, Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde will have a conversation with the artist Jamie Ross, the podcast’s director and host. The episode will be put online during the Biennale on MOMENTA’s website and on various podcasting platforms. MOMENTA Performance and Artist Talk Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde is giving a talk on her art practice at OPTICA on September 8 at 5:30 pm, followed by a performative activation titled Before all else at 6:30 pm as art of the opening of the Biennale du Pôle de Gaspé. Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde will also present the performance, titled Sturgeon Women Rising, on September 9,Â 5 pmÂ at the beach of l'Horloge, Old Port of Montréal,Â 1 Quai de l'Horloge street, Montréal, QC H2Y 2E2. MOMENTA Exhibition Tour A tour of the exhibition Visions on the Pond with the artist Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes and the curator Ji-Yoon-Han will take place at OPTICA on September 23 at 3:00 pm. About MOMENTA Biennale de l’image MOMENTA Biennale de l’image is a flagship Montréal event devoted to contemporary art. For more than 30 years, MOMENTA has been inviting artists and audiences from the world over to gather in the city’s museums, galleries, and artist-run centres. Its activities include exhibitions, public events, and educational workshops that introduce participants to artists, both local and international, whose works pique curiosity and stimulate reflection. PRESS RELEASE (pdf) PRESS REVIEW CERVETTO, Renata. « MASQUERADES. MOMENTA BIENNALE DE L’IMAGE, MONTREAL », Artishock, 30 octobre 2023. SIAG, Jean. « Momenta, Biennale de l’image Parcours d’introduction dans le Mile End», La Presse, 16 septembre 2023. MAVRIKAKIS, Nicolas. « D’où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? », Le Devoir, 9 septembre 2023. RCI. « MOMENTA Biennale de l’image veut 'rendre plus visibles les cultures autochtones'. La 18e édition du festival a lieu du 7 septembre au 22 octobre à Montréal », Radio Canada International, 8 septembre 2023. PAUL, Eléonore. « MOMENTA Biennale \|Â Les mascarades selon 5 artistes », ATUVU.CA, 5 septembre 2023. SAMARIO, Jessica. « MOMENTA Biennale de l’image présente 'Mascarades. L’attrait de la métamorphose', L’art de démystifier l’étrange, du 7 septembre au 22 octobre 2023», La bible urbaine, 7 septembre 2023. Équipe de Vie des arts. « Momenta dévoile sa programmation de 2023! », Vie des arts, 1 mai 2023. A master’s student in Intermedia at Concordia University, Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes explores the language of digital technologies, 3D animation, and installation to probe how forms of technological and biological life mimic each other. In her works, she invents digital ecologies within virtual worlds. Her exhibition at OPTICA will be conceived as an immersive environment populated with fantastic animals inspired by Costa Rican fauna. Ji-Yoon Han lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. In her often interdisciplinary curatorial projects, she seeks to reclaim the sensory and reflexive power of the visual arts in multilayered contexts that are themselves in transformation. Previously a curator at Fonderie Darling, she organized exhibitions of works by Cynthia Girard-Renard, Barbara Steinman, Javier GonzÃ¡lez Pesce, and Guillaume Adjutor Provost, as well as a performative cycle on listening and sound art practices. In 2022, she designed the group exhibition-residency Exercises in Reciprocity for the Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment and developed the multidisciplinary project Weaving the Line: Claudia Brutus and Stéphane Martelly. She has contributed to monographs on Geneviève Cadieux and Louise Robert and regularly writes about the work of Montreal-based artists. In her PhD dissertation, she investigated how images competed between 1929 and 1936, articulating photography, Surrealism, and the nascent cultures of the illustrated press and advertising. She currently is a research fellow for the Photography and Commission project at the Cabinet de la photographie, with the support of Les amis du Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde, Becoming Supernatural, 2021. Impression numérique, dimensions variables. \| Digital print, variable dimensions. Photo: Anne Crillio © Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde	MOMENTA Biennale de l'image; Commissaire \| Curator: Ji-Yoon Han From September 8th 2023 to October 21st 2023 MOMENTA x OPTICA \| Mascarades. L’attrait de la meÌtamorphose; Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde, Gemini: TEKENÃKHEN (jumeaux·elles) Friday, September 8, 2023 Opening: 5PM to 10pm Performance of Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde: 6:30pm OPTICA is proud to participate in the 18th edition of MOMENTA Biennale de l’image, Mascarades. Drawn to Metamorphosis, curated by Ji-Yoon Han.OPTICA will present individual exhibitions by the artists Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes and Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde. Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal — From September 8 to October 21, 2023, OPTICA will present solo exhibitions by the artists Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes and Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde, whose works activate processes of transformation, mimetics, and mutation through living beings. Individuals are constantly recorded, formatted, fixed as same and identical, so how do we (re)set in motion our understanding of identities and differences? This question offers avenues for exploration and paths for reflection around the Biennale’s theme and the works of its artists. Indigenous theatre and land-based dramaturgy are the foundation of Kanien'kehÃ¡:ka multidisciplinary artist Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde’s practice. Driven by a desire to heal intergenerational wounds suffered by First Peoples, Delaronde calls for, activates, and reactivates relationships among the body, cultural identities, the land, and the cosmos. In this way, she asserts the resurgence of traditional Haudenosaunee creative forces through plural, hybrid constellations that mobilize art, ritual, history, spirituality, collectivity, collaboration, and communities. Gemini: TEKENÃKHEN(twins) is a ceremony of returning to origins. It starts with the physical and repetitive act of chopping wood, followed by gestures that convey a splitting of the self and a fusion with ashes and smoke, then builds to a masked dance and concludes with the eating of a strawberry. In the exhibition, the performance—filmed in British Columbia, where Delaronde, who was born in Tiohtià:ke, lives and works—resonates with a site-specific installation on the floor presenting her natal chart. TEKENÃKHEN summons a twinship based on metamorphosis: identity moves from one place to another, one life to another, one relation to another. Thus begins the convergence between the body and the land, identities and the sky, in the image of the trajectory that Delaronde draws from her home on the Pacific coast to the shores of the St. Lawrence River, land of her ancestors. Exhibition presented by MOMENTA Biennale de l’image and produced in partnership with OPTICA. The performance Sturgeon Woman Rising is co-commissioned by MOMENTA Biennale de l’image and Bonavista Biennale with the support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. MOMENTA Creative La Biennale includes the MOMENTA Creative program, a series of educational activities, creative workshops, and guided tours. Each activity, organized in relation to the Biennale’s theme, is free of charge and offered to groups, families, and individuals. Designed with a concern for inclusion and representativeness, our program conveys our desire to provide innovative cultural mediation. The workshop Les êtres invisibles, designed for preschool and elementary-school groups, is centred around the art practices of Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes and Bianca Baldi, whose work is presented at Diagonale. The workshop will be led by the MOMENTA team in collaboration with OPTICA jeunesse and will take place at OPTICA and Diagonale. Reservations for elementary-school groups: mediation@momentabiennale.com Reservations for CPE, Daycare and Preschool Groups: mediationoptica@gmail.com Free MOMENTA Podcast For MOMENTA’s very first podcast series, Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde will have a conversation with the artist Jamie Ross, the podcast’s director and host. The episode will be put online during the Biennale on MOMENTA’s website and on various podcasting platforms. MOMENTA Performance and Artist Talk Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde is giving a talk on her art practice at OPTICA on September 8 at 5:30 pm, followed by a performative activation titled Before all else at 6:30 pm as art of the opening of the Biennale du Pôle de Gaspé. Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde will also present the performance, titled Sturgeon Women Rising, on September 9,Â 5 pmÂ at the beach of l'Horloge, Old Port of Montréal,Â 1 Quai de l'Horloge street, Montréal, QC H2Y 2E2. MOMENTA Exhibition Tour A tour of the exhibition Visions on the Pond with the artist Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes and the curator Ji-Yoon-Han will take place at OPTICA on September 23 at 3:00 pm. About MOMENTA Biennale de l’image MOMENTA Biennale de l’image is a flagship Montréal event devoted to contemporary art. For more than 30 years, MOMENTA has been inviting artists and audiences from the world over to gather in the city’s museums, galleries, and artist-run centres. Its activities include exhibitions, public events, and educational workshops that introduce participants to artists, both local and international, whose works pique curiosity and stimulate reflection. PRESS RELEASE (pdf) Indigenous theater and land-based dramaturgy are the foundation of Kanien'kehÃ¡:ka artist Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde’s practice. Building upon a multidisciplinary approach where she combines performance, theater, and dance with visual artworks in a wide range of mediums, including photography, screenprinting, beading, leather, and textiles, Delaronde activates, and reactivates relationships between the body, cultural identities, the land, and the cosmos. @embodiedearthhealing Ji-Yoon Han lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. In her often interdisciplinary curatorial projects, she seeks to reclaim the sensory and reflexive power of the visual arts in multilayered contexts that are themselves in transformation. Previously a curator at Fonderie Darling, she organized exhibitions of works by Cynthia Girard-Renard, Barbara Steinman, Javier GonzÃ¡lez Pesce, and Guillaume Adjutor Provost, as well as a performative cycle on listening and sound art practices. In 2022, she designed the group exhibition-residency Exercises in Reciprocity for the Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment and developed the multidisciplinary project Weaving the Line: Claudia Brutus and Stéphane Martelly. She has contributed to monographs on Geneviève Cadieux and Louise Robert and regularly writes about the work of Montreal-based artists. In her PhD dissertation, she investigated how images competed between 1929 and 1936, articulating photography, Surrealism, and the nascent cultures of the illustrated press and advertising. She currently is a research fellow for the Photography and Commission project at the Cabinet de la photographie, with the support of Les amis du Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Visuel de l'activité d'aquarelle et d'impressions de végétaux, juin 2023.\| Visual of the watercolor and plant printing activity, June 2023. Photo credit: Anne St-Louis.	Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes, Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde From September 29th 2023 to September 29th 2023 Journées de la culture: Aquarelle et impressions de végétaux chez OPTICA! Schedule: Friday, September 29, 2023, from 1 pm to 4 pm No reservation required Free The OPTICA Educational Program invites the general public to come together for an afternoon around art works that the centre is presenting as part of MOMENTA Biennale de l’image. This is a beautiful occasion to experience and share a creative moment together! Have a cup of tea as you explore the two exhibition galleries during a guided tour. You can make contact with the digital and surrealist universe of Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes and the performances of Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde, two artists calling for reconciliation. Surreal shapes and varied, colourful motifs await! Afterward, you’ll have the opportunity to experiment with watercolour painting and a plant printing technique to produce a wholly unique work that recalls the themes and visuals of the artists’ work. Create interesting motifs using both natural and artificial plants—let yourself be freely inspired by nature and by elements on display in the galleries. Have fun! On your way to OPTICA, to ensure a variety of motifs, we encourage you to collect some leaves and other vegetation—while respecting nature, of course! Accessibility OPTICA pays particular attention to offering everyone an optimal and successful visit. If you have any questions about access to the premises or to services, please do not hesitate to contact us. An access ramp is located at the north entrance of 5455, avenue de Gaspé.
Maria Hoyos, Antimonumento, 2022. Crédit photo : Claudia Patricia Velasquez Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste. \| Courtesy of the artist.	Maria Hoyos From November 1st 2023 to April 1st 2024 Récipiendaire de la Résidence Intersections! The Conseil des arts de Montréal (CAM), contemporary art centre OPTICA, and UQAM’s École des arts visuels et médiatiques (ÉAVM) are very pleased to announce that Maria Hoyos is the recipient of the Research, Creation, and Production Intersections Residency, first edition 2023-2024. Maria Hoyos’ art practice broaches historical and cultural issues tied to her Columbian origins. The permanence of deep-rooted historical, cultural, social, and economic inequalities of the former colonies has led to unprecedented social and racial compartmentalization. This colonial past has kept certain groups in a state of servitude, inferiority, even subservience, wrapped in the guise of workforce exploitation and operating within a normative social hierarchy. Marked by the sugar production she experienced in her youth, Hoyos seeks to reveal the colonial unconscious that permeates the everyday relations that feed power relationships and abuse in our societies. Her research is in line with a reflection on art and identity. Her installations are composed of drawings, photographs, videos, animations made of sugar, assemblages of objects, and rituals that take root in the space and through which the artist consecrates the presentational locale. “Art is my way of acting on the present, my way of analyzing, understanding and sharing history.â€ The Research, Creation, and Production Intersections Residency rewards emerging artists with a first or second generation immigration background, who are members of an ethnic or visible minority and are recent graduates of the Master’s program at ÉAVM. For more information on the Research, Creation, and Production Intersections Residency, please visit: the website. This residency is offered thanks to a partnership between the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the École des arts visuels et médiatiques of UQAM and OPTICA. USEFUL LINKS Site web de Maria Hoyos Study at l'ÉAVM Conseil des arts de Montréal OPTICA, centre d'art contemporain For more information on the vocabulary used, please visit: consulter le Glossaire du Conseil des arts de MontreÌal Columbian artist Maria Hoyos lives in Abya-Yala and also on the unceded territory of the TiohtiÃ¡: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.
	From November 1st 2023 to June 1st 2024 Programme éducatif public \| Hiver - Printemps 2023-24 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 2023-2024 ANNUAL PROGRAM IN PDF FORMAT
Leyla Majeri, matériel provenant d'archives personnelles et familiales, circa années 70. Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste. \| material from personal and family archives, circa 1970s. Courtesy of the artist.	Leyla Majeri From November 11th 2023 to December 16th 2023 *Anticipating Hypersea* Saturday, December 16, 2023, from 3pm to 4pm In Conversation Leyla Majeri with Julia Eilers Smith at OPTICA Opening, November 11th, 2023: 3 - 5PM Leyla Majeri presents the culmination of the research she conducted, from September 2022 to April 2023, as part of the Intersections Residency, established by an agreement between the École des arts visuels et médiatiques at Université du Québec à Montréal, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, and OPTICA. The artist’s installational and sculptural practice also touches experimental animated film. At OPTICA, Majeri is proposing an environment that brings together three bodies of work that showcase her research on the deconstruction and decolonization of prevailing ideas, borrowing themes associated with a kind of fictional ethnography and speculative biology. At the heart of her practice, she considers gardening a way “of apprehending the art object other than through a single perspective.â€ The intermixing of disciplines allows her to engage various fields and their know-how in order to re-imagine the norms of the art world and ways of apprehending that which makes up the world. She puts forward an “approach based on an exploratory (and existential) process in which language, gestures, matter, and place are interrogated and renegotiated.â€ Plants and living things are the artist’s raw material. The exhibited hybrid assemblages are composed of gourds and ceramics. While some varieties of gourds, also called calabashes, are edible, most are not. They are generally cultivated not as food, but to serve as a recipient, an ornament, or a sound box. Their dissemination is the outcome of human migratory activity and natural elements, mainly water. Majeri alters their shape as they grow using ceramic structures to enclose the plant. These heterogeneous assemblages convey ideas revolving around receptacles, coevolution, and mutation. In the process, Majeri drew inspiration, in particular, from the concept of evolution in Elizabeth Fisher’s Woman’s Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society (1979), which advances the idea that the first cultural device was likely a recipient for carrying gathered products, among other things. This notion of a bag was taken up by novelist and poet Ursula K. Le Guin, known for a literary production on the frontier between realism and fantasy. In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986), Le Guin presents a history of technology centred on the collective sustenance of life. Majeri also took an interest in the writings of evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, once considered radical by her peers for showing how cooperation is a primary force in the evolution of life. Her ideas revolved around the symbiosis of a multitude of organisms, contradicting Darwinian notions and celebrating plurality rather than the individual. A series of phytograms, a technique of printing on photosensitive paper produced from the chemistry of plants, represents organic and fantastical forms composed of fabric, magazine photos, vegetables, and seeds. These phytograms are produced without a camera, using sunlight for exposure. On contact with the emulsion, the plants release their own phenols, which act as a developer. In the gallery, a 45-rpm vinyl record engraved using an artisanal process, disseminates sound excerpts from a script performed by children. It all takes the form of a non-linear and theatrical composition. Majeri maintains that, “using plants, sculpture, images, and documentary objets, these new installations will continue [to raise] and to re-articulate interrogations related to forms of knowledge: what they arbitrarily make visible or invisible, what they create as the imagination of the living.â€ Author: Esther Bourdages The artist wishes to thank Véronique Proulx, Alexis Lepage, Mathieu Jacques, Janie Julien-Fort and Jean Talbot for their generosity, Victor and Suzanne Pinksen, Emmanuelle Jacques, le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, OPTICA et la résidence Intersections. A huge thanks to Mylène Dupont, Stéphane Beaulieu and Édouard Larocque. PRESS RELEASE (pdf) Holding a master’s degree in Visual and Media Arts from UQAM, Leyla Majeri’s practice focuses on sculptural installation and experimental animated film. Her works draw on fictional approaches to ethnography, speculative biology, and marginalized forms of knowledge to envision ways of ‘making’ that are rooted in the idea of engagement, both as an artistic process and a mode of resistance. Her work incorporates sound collages, text, found objects, and plants that she cultivates on agricultural land where she has created a food garden and medicinal plants. During her Chantier residency at L’imprimerie in 2022, she created a garden of plants used for image-development as a starting point for a collective reflection on alternative and decolonialized image-making skills and approaches. With Harness the Sun (Arprim, Montreal, 2016), she initiates a dialogue between her art and her gardening practices, which she ties to ecologies between materials, the imagination, and the political. She furthers this exploration in Don’t Blame Us If We Get Playful (Galerie de l’UQAM, 2018) and Garden Archive – There’s a wasp who penetrates the ladybug (CIRCA, Montreal, 2019), where she combines different languages and territories of practice, materialities, life forms, and biotopes. In addition to these projects, her work has been shown at the Skol Centre in 2023 and will soon be exhibited at l’Écart (Rouyn-Noranda) in 2024. Leyla Majeri is a recipient of project grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec, and a research residency at Centre Est-Nord-Est (Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, 2017). Leyla Majeri lives in Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyaang / Montreal where she was born. Esther Bourdages works in the fields of visual arts and technological arts as an author, curator and independent scholar. Her curatorial research explores art forms such as in situ art, installation and sculpture. A particularly important aspect of her curatorial practice is sound, which she strives to treat as a medium that is sometimes independent, sometimes complementary. She hold the position of Director Assistant, Communications and Archives Coordinator at OPTICA.
Barbara Claus, un pour chacun, à moins que..., Shanghai 2018, crédit photo : Barbara Claus.	Barbara Claus From November 11th 2023 to December 16th 2023 *un pour tout le monde, à moins que...* Finissage on Decembrer 16, 2023, 4:30pm. Blowing on the rice. Barbara Claus invites you to blow on the rice. Opening, November 11th, 2023: 3 - 5 PM. Rice∞ ? Rice has long been considered an abounding commodity. Wrongly so. But has the lesson been heard yet? Thousands of years before our time, it was this grain that legendary Indian sage Sissa called upon when his king wished to thank him for having invented chess. Sissa subjected him to a true paradox by inviting him to place one grain of rice in the first square of his chessboard, and then to do the same on the next squares in an exponentially doubling sequence, through all the squares of the board. The second square thus held two grains, the third four, the fourth eight, and so on. At first, King Balhait found the reward to be rather modest, but once the deal accepted, he had to quickly renege. At the end of the process, that is, having reached the 64th square, the board would theoretically have held 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains—a lot more than what the kingdom would ever produce. Today we find ourselves collectively in king Balhait’s situation. As the world population increases, and our grand business narratives sing the ideal enrichment of boundless production, everything is done to over-cultivate rice as an inexhaustible treasure. For added efficiency, we limit the number of marketable species. But this loss in diversity doesn’t lead to unlimited production. The newspaper Le Monde recently titled an article: “World prices of rice up nearly 10% in a month, after India’s ban on exports.â€ The country decided to preserve several kinds of rice to ensure its population’s food security. They had to be protected from the inflationist logic of the markets. So it occurred elsewhere. Speculation on financial markets has thus seen a rebound, benefiting financial players betting on sensitive securities as pretexts for a great and, for them, abstract game. Georg Simmel set it down as early as 1900: “price fluctuations correspond only rarely to real changes in the quality that the stock represents.â€ The great business narrative lets simpletons believe that exponential production follows from the equivalent movement of phynance. As if tacking on more zeros to monetary production would conjure the real and equate to something other than “to nothing, practically, as poet Stéphane Mallarmé had caustically put it. For the initiates, however, speculating is not gambling on the production of wealth that one believes in; it is more like taking part in a game of musical chairs: knowingly buying securities that are overpaid in relation to tangible assets, but believing yourself capable of reselling them to a third party who, similarly, will participate in the very same merry-go-round. Everyone will pass off the fetishized ticket hoping not to be the one left holding the bag when the system collapses, the overvaluation of the securities being plain to everybody. Indeed, we can plausibly get away with it when our algorithms, launched into the fray, trade assets by the billions in nanoseconds. Amartya Sen advocated an ethical relationship in business, postulating that all players have an interest in the collective observance of the rules of the game to make a free market work. The premise: if we give the majority of a poor country’s citizens the financial means to purchase grain, a merchant would be inclined to produce it to sell them his goods. Naively, the business ethicist presumes that the said merchant, facing a population in a precarious situation, would not dare unfairly raise prices in order “to profit from [...] the exceptional windfall.â€ Yet that is what happens, systematically, every day. We are collectively playing this sordid game, the stock marketeers being cold beneficiaries of this planned system and small savers the captive providers of financial capital. We ignore it, or we pretend to. Artist Barbara Claus reproduces a vast global chessboard on which one might hope that each square capable of accommodating a grain of rice would multiply it by the trillions, as Jesus did the loaves and fishes. But, like king Balhait, we get burned at this game. We starve. Is it only then that we realize? Author: Alain Deneault PRESS RELEASE (pdf) Translator: Ron Ross COMMUNIQUÉ DE PRESSE (pdf) Bibliography Jean-Pierre Boris, Main basse sur le riz (Paris: Fayard et Arte Éditions, 2010). Stéphane Mallarmé, “Or,â€ in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, coll. “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,â€ 1945). Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Manuel du spéculateur à la bourse, Une anthologie (le Kremlin-Bicêtre: Éditions ère, 2009 [1856]). Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, Third enlarged edition, translated by Tom Bottomore and David Frisby (London & New York: Routledge, 1978, 1990, 2004 [1900]), 327. Amartya Sen, “Does Business Ethics Make Economic Sense?,â€ Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 1, (1993, 45-54), 49. Articles “Les prix mondiaux du riz ont augmenté de près de 10 % en un mois, à la suite des interdictions d’exportation de l’Inde,â€ Le Monde and Agence France-Presse (AFP) (september 8, 2023). (Our translation) "La spéculation alimentaire ou le dangereux pari sur la faim," Oxfam France (May 31, 2023). Barbara Claus would like to thank OPTICA, its team and Alain Deneault. Barbara Claus is an artist, today she breathes, one day her breath will stop. Alain Deneault is a professor of philosophy at Université de Moncton’s Shippagan campus (Accadian Peninsula). His essays are concerned with managerial ideology, the sovereignty of private powers, and the history of the polysemic notion of economy. At Lux Éditeur, he has published Bande de colons, Gouvernance, Politiques de l’extrême centre, Mœurs: De la gauche cannibale à la droite vandale, and La Médiocratie, as well as a series of titles on the concept of economy (L'Économie de la nature, L'Économie de la foi, L'Économie esthétique, and L'Économie psychique). He has also published several essays on multinational corporations (including De Quoi Total est-elle la somme? , and Noir Canada) and on tax havens (Une escroquerie légalisée, and Paradis fiscaux: la filière canadienne) at Écosociété and Rue de l’échiquier.
	Leyla Majeri From November 13th 2023 to December 15th 2023 Des activités pour tous les âges en lien avec l’exposition de Leyla Majeri! Activities for all ages around the Leyla Majeri exhibition! For the high schoolers Students of Robert-Gravel high school have come to the centre for an interactive tour of the exhibition and to participate in a creative workshop. Accompanied by their teacher, an accompanying parent, and OPTICA’s mediator, the youths spent almost an hour amid the art works, which they observed, decoded, interrogated. They also discussed and shared their knowledge and points of view on such subjects as questioning received ideas, imagination, and the symbiosis and cross-fertilization of living beings. In order to explore plant material—ubiquitous in the exhibition—from a different perspective, they then set out to create a work using plant-based paint. In small groups, they first explored techniques for making this paint from vegetables and spices and then, from this material, created a completely natural watercolour, which became a memento of the experience. For the little ones from daycare and child-care centres Since November 13, the centre’s educational program has offered a new Contemporary Lab for children aged 3 to 6. In groups, while they are observing the artist’s work, and led by centre’s mediator, the young children discuss the idea of gardening and the relationships between humans and plants. Attention is directed toward photographs developed with plants and sunlight and assembled to create characters. In a collage workshop, the children are then invited to create their own character using various simple and recycled materials, echoing the garden theme. The program presents an opportunity to pursue these reflections while experimenting a new way of having fun while creating art! 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 the 2023-2024 Annual Program in Pdf Format 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. This year, the head of the educational program received 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.