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OPTICA Fonds (Concordia University Archives)

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Alvaro Marinho, GRU-YUL#5, 2024, acrylique sur papier Bond, 45,72 X 60,96 cm. Avec l'aimable permission de l'artiste. \| acrylic on Bond paper, 45,72 X 60,96 cm. Courtesy of the artist.	Alvaro Marinho From January 15th 2025 to November 1st 2025 Alvaro Marinho, Récipidendaire de la résidence Intersections à OPTICA 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 Alvaro Marinho is the recipient of the Research, Creation, and Production Intersections Residency 2025. A Brazilian-born designer, visual artist and video maker, Alvaro Marinho completed his Master's degree at l'École des arts visuels et médiatiques at UQAM in 2023. His interests include the appropriation and diversion of images in printmaking, through the hybridization of silkscreen, stencil painting and stamping techniques.
Thomas Kneubühler, Rezovo, impression chromogène, 2025. Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste. \| Rezovo, chromogenic print, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.	Thomas Kneubühler From January 17th 2025 to March 29th 2025 The Dividing Line “If we make mistakes with our border controls, it will hurt Bulgaria” reads the sign next to a painted border guard, armed with an AK 47 and a dog, looking off into the distance as the white plaster crumbles around him, revealing a ruddy brick wall beneath. In Thomas Kneubühler’s new exhibition The Dividing Line, this messiness of the Bulgarian borderscape comes into sharp relief. The past and present comingle. Walking through the gallery space, cut apart by a 30 foot long cold steel fence, we see crumbling Soviet walls juxtaposed with modern surveillance technologies. These contradictions between history and memory, innovation and contestation are common across the world’s borders, ever more so as border control is increasingly mechanized and automated. I have spent the last 6 years trying to understand this precise interplay between old and new, resulting in a book called The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence(1). Drones, robo-dogs, and artificial intelligence now bolster the already violent border regimes that separate families, push people into life threatening terrain, and even result in loss of life. Indeed, 2024 was the deadliest year on record for people on the move seeking safety. What will 2025 bring? Writer Harsha Walia reminds us that in this time of great division, “it is very important to hold the states accountable, instead of narratives where migrants are blamed for their own deaths: ‘They knew it was going to be dangerous, why did they move?’”(2). Dangerous routes and growing surveillance dragnets are not a deterrent when the alternative is watching your family starve. Yet in this time of dehumanization and political wrangling, Canada proudly announces that it will be spending $1.3 billion dollars to appease the incoming Trump administration and avoid a threatened 25% tariff(3). How do we find our way past these politics of difference, a way back to one another? Art can help us unearth power hidden structures. What choices are made at the border? Who is allowed in and why? And what logics animate the turn to more and more technology – technology that excludes, hurts, and even kills? One way to fight against dehumanizing narratives is to commit to not being afraid to make our interventions in the world personal. Because indeed, personal connections bind us to our work and to one another– whether it is a Bulgarian partner (like in Kneubühler’s case), a memory from childhood, or even some connection too ephemeral to grasp right now that will hit us like a brick wall when we least expect it. The choices to use a particular word, or to press the shutter at a precise moment to capture an image are always personal - and always political. Socially engaged art! Because as much as our perennially online world would have us believe, we do not exist in isolation. Instead, we reflect and refract what came before within our new techno-realities, a dizzying confluence which can be both dystopic but also transgressive and even hopeful, if we allow it to be. Author: Petra Molnar 1. Petra Molnar, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, (The New Press, 2024) 2. Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, Haymarket, 2021. 3. Catharine Tunney, Ottawa proposes 24/7 surveillance of Canada-U.S. border, new ‘strike force’ to stave off tariff threat, CBC News, December 17, 2024. PRESS RELEASE (pdf) PRESS REVIEWS Kira Storch, "Unseen barriers, exploring borders and migration through art", The Concordian, February 11th, 2025. Born in Solothurn, Switzerland, Thomas Kneubühler graduated with an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal in 2003. Since then, Kneubühler has pursued a research-based art practice including fieldwork in remote locations and on sites where access is restricted. Addressing questions of power, the exploitation of natural resources, or the effects of new technology on society, his work has been presented widely, among others at the Centre culturel canadien, Paris, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Videonale.15 at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, and at Les Rencontres International in Paris and Berlin. He received the Swiss Art Award in 2012, and was a research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2018. Petra Molnar is a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in border technologies. She co-runs the Refugee Law Lab at York University and is a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She is the author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, which was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Awards in Nonfiction.
Milutin Gubash, Menta Forte, image tirée de la vidéo, 2024. Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste.\| image taken from video, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.	Milutin Gubash From January 17th 2025 to March 29th 2025 *Theodysseylysystratagilgameshwaspsbookofthedeadgoldenassgolemmarquiseofo* The artist Milutin Gubash and his practice have always been shaped by a family history marked by uprooting: in the early 1970s, the Gubash family fled the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for Canada. While Milutin Gubash still seeks to create a link with his homeland, his work also reflects on perceptions of cultural, political and social identity. His multifaceted practice offers a critique of political and economic systems that generate injustice and humiliation, within a comprehensive logic of the ancient and modern world. Theodysseylysystratagilgameshwaspsbookofthedeadgoldenassgolemmarquiseofo exploits the mediums of video and sculpture to evoke the idea of a journey punctuated by struggles, sometimes marked by success and sometimes by failure, in the quest to make sense. From an encounter with Gramsci... In a video work, two migrants of different origins wander through the winding streets of the Eternal City, ending up in Rome's Non-Catholic Cemetery. The first visits the tomb of the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci and leaves a mint; the second then goes and eats the candy. Who or what needs “freshening up”? Among Gramsci's better-known theories, cultural hegemony describes the maintenance of power and wealth by the state and the dominant capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – through the imposition of an ideology dictating the social norm. In the same way that mint invades fertile ground, dominant ideology infiltrates the minds of the masses, both having harmful repercussions on diversity. Gramsci's writings are currently being reinvested as the theoretical framework for a reflection on (im)migration, which considers the ways in which migrants can question the hegemonic order and contribute alternative visions for a refreshed society. Alliance and solidarity, theorized by the philosopher in the perspective of the southern question, hold transformative potential in this respect. ...to shame as transformative solidarity A sculptural element made of pots and pipes accompanies the video work. The nature of the objects chosen by the artist in no way evokes the fortunes of the bourgeoisie, who, in addition to controlling the means of coercion, owns the capital and means of production, but rather the condition of the working class it exploits. From time to time, the sculptural element shakes a little, “mints” a chocolate loonie and throws it at a prostrate figure's behind. Why this humiliation? Too often considered solely for its negative effects, humiliation can foster an awareness of behaviors that perpetuate the relations of power and domination underlying capitalism. This awareness can be the tipping point between a false alliance, which reinforces the hegemonic structure, and the development of genuine transformative solidarity, which questions it. While a new space of solidarity may open up, the responsibility for progressive change lies with the most vulnerable, whether (im)migrants or artists. So how to create a rupture? Theodysseylysystratagilgameshwaspsbookofthedeadgoldenassgolemmarquiseofo can at once be the promise of a better future, or, as its title suggests in the form of a juxtaposition of ancient and contemporary stories, the warning of a future reconducting the errors of the past. Author: Jessica Minier PRESS RELEASE (pdf) Canadian. Born in Novi Sad, Serbia. Lives and works in Montréal, Canada. It is impossible identify Milutin Gubash’s work with a specific medium as his highly multidisciplinary practice plays with narrative codes of video, sculpture, photography and performance. Gubash does not hesitate to alter a fact in order to make the underlying reality of his subjects and themes more credible, understandable. The artist exacerbates the issues of memory by deploying a set of family stories that constantly intertwines facts and fiction, past and present, idealization and historical acuity, building over time a real, serious and amazing saga. Having immigrated to Canada as a young child, Gubash has continued to build a relationship with his native country, expanding stories of his family’s life in Yugoslavia, with intensive research, and his own imaginings to fill in the gaps. With humour and intelligence, the artist addresses ideas of authenticity and perceptions of cultural, political and social identities. He highlights the contradictions of our capacity to construct a sense of identity whether it is through his large scale black and white photographs of Monuments to Communists, his “lamps-sculptures” created in collaboration with his family still in Serbia, or through the episodes of the DIY sitcom soap-opera reality show Born Rich Getting Poorer, which predicted by a couple of years our current culture of continuously updated autobiographical constructions. Laureate of the Prix Louis-Comtois for the City of Montreal in 2019, and recipient of numerous grants, awards, and international residencies, Milutin Gubash’s work has been widely exhibited throughout Canada, United States and Europe since 2000. A Canada-wide series of unique exhibitions in six prominent institutions was held between 2011-2013, surveying various aspects of the first ten years of practice. Jessica Minier is coordinator of the Galerie UQO and a lecturer in museology at the Université du Québec en Outaouais. She is also pursuing her doctoral studies, which focus on collaborative collecting practices in art museums that challenge proprietary logic.
Milutin Gubash, Menta Forte, image tirée de la vidéo, 2024. Avec l’aimable permission de l’artiste. \| image taken from video, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. Crédit photo : Paul Litherland	Milutin Gubash, Thomas Kneubühler From February 8th 2025 to February 8th 2025 Visite commentée des expositions avec Milutin Gubash et Thomas Kneubühler Samedi 8 février, de 15 à 17 heures OPTICA organizes guided tours of the current exhibitions with the artists in order to explore aspects of the programming in greater depth. This convivial context encourages exchange and discussion with the artists. Saturday February 8, 3 - 5 pm Meet the artist & Guided Tour Schedule 3 pm: Visit the exhibitions & Meet the artist 3:30 pm: Tour through the two exhibition with Milutin Gubash & Thomas Kneubühler 4:30 pm: Apéro with bulgarian and italian treats
	From March 1st 2025 to March 1st 2025 Nuit Blanche 2025 \| atelier, expositions Nuit Blanche à Montréal 2025 7PM - 11PM Objects Transformed: Making Lamps with Milutin Gubash Workshops at OPTICA FULLY BOOKED ! On the occasion of the Nuit Blanche 2025, OPTICA is delight to to open its doors to the general public and to offer a night of artistic and creative discovery in a warm, relaxed setting. With family, friends, or on your own, come meet Milutin Gubash and get to know his practice in the framework of a lamp-making workshop. Please note that the three workshops are fully booked. However, we invite you to visit our current exhibitions: Thomas Kneubühler, The Dividing Line et Milutin Gubash,Theodysseylysystratagilgameshwaspsbookofthedeadgoldenassgolemmarquiseofo To keep in touch with the center's mediation activities, follow the educational program on Instagram. Consult the 2024-2025 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. 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.
	Leisure (Meredith Carruthers et Susannah Wesley) From April 12th 2025 to June 14th 2025 Chrysalis and Butterfly Leisure is a collaborative art practice founded in 2004 between Montreal-based artists Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley (1976). Their research-based practice explores subjects such as feminist cultural history, working in friendship, and children's right to creativity—particularly as an antidote to climate anxiety.