optica

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Exibitions 2026

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OPTICA Fonds (Concordia University Archives)

Guidebooks to help in consulting the archives

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Crédit photo : Andrea Calderón	Aïda Vosoughi From January 12th 2026 to November 2nd 2026 Aïda Vosoughi, lauréate de la résidence Intersections 2026 Aïda Vosoughi, laureate of the 2026 Intersections residency The Conseil des arts de Montréal, OPTICA, centre d’art contemporain and the École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM are pleased to announce that Iranian-born Canadian artist Aïda Vosoughi is the laureate of the 2026 Intersections residency. This residency offers professional support to the artist from the partners, in addition to a production grant and access to technical workshops and specialized resources at the École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM. At the end of the residency, the artist presents the results of his or her research in an exhibition at the OPTICA. Originally from Iran, Aïda Vosoughi has been based in Montreal since 2014. Her artistic practice consists of long-term projects at the intersection of contemporary art and the humanities. Inspired by literature, mythology, and the pictorial tradition of the region now recognized as the Middle East, Vosoughi has developed a metaphorical language that became central to her practice. The artist has been exploring the notion of landscape and its profound transformations from a historical perspective, linking it to issues such as economics and the environment, and adopting a decolonial approach. Her current research focuses on the border as an agent of landscape transformation, particularly through its dynamics linked to migratory movements and with a focus on its geopolitical dimension. As part of the Intersections residency, Aïda Vosoughi plans to adopt an experimental approach that is specific to the materiality of each project she undertakes. https://aidavosoughi.com/ The Intersections residency is a joint initiative of the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Centre d’art contemporain OPTICA, and the École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l'UQAM. It is intended for artists from a cultural community who have graduated with a master's degree from the École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM.
Bé van der Heide, Pisces Pedic Pleasure Palace, 1978. Exposition et performance. Avec l'aimable permission des Collections spéciales et archives de l'Université Concordia, le fonds La Centrale. \| Exhibition and performance. Image courtesy of Concordia University Special Collections and Archives, La Centrale Fonds.	Commissaire/Curator : Didier Morelli ; artistes : Elizabeth Chitty, Marie Décary, Johanna Householder, Kamissa Ma Koïta, Francine Larivée, Lise Nantel, Bé van der Heide From January 16th 2026 to June 13th 2026 *Street Actions : Women Performing in Montréal and Toronto, 1970-1980 [Actions de rue : femmes en performance à Montréal et à Toronto]* When artist Rita Letendre was interviewed on Radio-Canada about her practice as a muralist, having completed monumental works on buildings in California (Sun Rise, 1965) and Toronto (Sunrise, 1971), her street actions rather than the works themselves became the focus of the conversation: Letendre: For an outdoor mural, like the one I did in California in ’65 — that one, I did myself. It was twenty-one by twenty-four feet; I could control it. The other one was done by men who translated it, because it was sixty by sixty feet and two hundred feet above the ground…. Andréanne Lafond: Scaffolding for a woman, wow, you had to climb twenty-one feet; you did that yourself? Letendre, it seemed, was not expected to perform physical actions outside of the norms established by society. Street Actions: Women Performing in Montreal and Toronto (1970-1980) looks at how women in the 1970s laid claim to cities through a variety of performances and performatively informed gestures and actions. Resisting urban functionalism and the gender-based rationale of public and private spaces, they imagined alternate modes of embodiment in Montreal and Toronto. At both ends of the cultural spectrum, linguistically divided yet united by other causes, these artists shaped second-wave feminist discourse and activism or moved in parallel to it with their overt gestures. At the apex of the Canadian women’s movement, Street Actions explores how issues like representation, reproductive rights, gender-based violence, and environmentalism contributed to and was amplified by artists performatively inhabiting the margins of the city. In all the works on display—fragments of a pavilion built to expose women’s condition, movement-based performances, colourful banners carried in feminist street protests, or playful pillow-like feet appended to public art. Artists across disciplines generated a kinaesthetic vocabulary that diverged from social codes, established modes of artistic production, utilitarian models of urban thinking, and gendered spatial-identities. This exhibition features original artworks, documentation, and archives from seven artists, a fragment of a larger ongoing research project that includes many more. It also relies on supporting visual material from feminist organizations and the women’s movement as it was articulated through various pamphlets, journals, and the broader media ecosystem that captured women challenging societal norms with their bodies. In addition, it draws attention to how women were vilified by caricatures, newspapers, and other sources. Kamissa Ma Koïta’s contemporary restaging of an iconic image from the founding of La Centrale galerie Powerhouse, a seminal feminist artist-run-centre created in the mid 1970s, seeks to expand this archive and connect it to the present moment. Mostly white, the women placing themselves on public display in Street Actions do not reflect the important presence of Black, Indigenous, and non-white women organizers which helped shape protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Koïta, intentionally anachronistic and also working within these lineages, reminds us that artists continue to use the street as a political place to engage with issues of agency, rights, and representation, creating friction against the architecture of the cities that contain them. Didier Morelli would like to thank the artists who made Street Actions possible, as well as the many contributing institutions that lent works, documents, and other exhibition materials. This project has received support from the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQSC), Concordia University Press, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). Material support was also provided by the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery and the CCA. OPTICA would like to thank Rian Adamian, Gregory Prescott et Natacha Chamko from Atelier Clark for the creation of platforms in the exhibition. PRESS (pdf) PRESS REVIEWS MAVRIKAKIS, Nicolas. « Que découvrir dans les centres et galeries d’art cet hiver?», Le Devoir, January 10, 2026. Didier Morelli is a curator, performance and art historian, cultural critic and visual artist. His Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture (FRQSC) Postdoctoral Fellowship (2022-2025), which he held at Concordia University and the CCA, examines how second-wave feminist performances subverted urban functionalism by imagining alternate modes of embodiment in Montreal and Toronto during the 1970s. Previously the associate editor at Espace art actuel, his writing has also been published in Art Journal, CTR: Canadian Theatre Review, C Magazine, CBC Arts, Esse Arts + Opinions, RACAR, Spirale et TDR: The Drama Review. Morelli is the curator of the 2026 MANIF, the Quebec City Biennial, which is titled “Briser la glace / Splitting Ice.” Bé van der Heide was born in the Netherlands where she went to art school, attending a four-year course in painting. Moving to Canada in 1960, she executed a large mural in the Dutch pavilion at Expo 67 during the world exhibition in Montreal. Elizabeth Chitty made artwork from 1975 to 2021 in Toronto, Vancouver and the Niagara region at the intersection of performance, video, sound, photography, dance, and community-based strategies for the gallery, stage and public realm. Her primary material was movement—of digital images, sound and the human body. Her final work was Power, a 15-minute three-video-channel and four-audio-channel installation addressing ecological remediation and decolonization through the Niagara River, the Treaty of Niagara, and three women walking. Johanna Householder immigrated to Canada from the U.S. in 1975, and was one of many independent choreographers/dance artists who were nurtured at 15 Dance Lab in Toronto. As a member of the feminist performance ensemble, The Clichettes, she helped establish lip-sync as a viable medium for political critique. Her interest in how ideas shape bodies has led her often collaborative practice in performance art, video and choreography. A versatile artist with a degree in communications, Marie Décary has shaped a career that combines craftsmanship and textile arts—notably, in collaboration with Lise Nantel—, documentary film and experimental video, cultural journalism, and children’s books. Whether through writing, sewing, or filming, having her say remains important. She enjoys sharing ideas, images, and feminist-informed stories that bring about change. Lise Nantel draws on everyday material to integrate knowledge related to housework, horticulture, ethnology, and art in her work. Her practice is an act of resistance, deeply rooted in a desire to identify obstacles to creativity, taboos, and the search for a language that expresses both what has been denied in history and the numerous layers of memory. Her desire to diversify the fields of artistic intervention has inspired her to create and disseminate often ephemeral works: research and publications on popular art, production of visual elements for political events, creation of spaces for meditation, co-founding of Éditions du remue-ménage, and teaching, among others. Francine Larivée was born in Montréal, where she lives and works. A graduate of the École des beaux-arts de Montréal, she holds a bachelor’s degree in art history and a master’s degree in art studies from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Her sculptural practice has had a major impact on the arts in Québec, beginning with the installation La chambre nuptiale (1976), which challenged all the clichés about women’s identity. In the 1980s, in a spirit just as socially and politically engaged, she worked with “living” natural materials, notably installing Mousses en situation (1983) in the lobby of Place Ville Marie. Kamissa Ma Koïta is a Canadian-Malian visual artist and designer based in Montréal. Her transdisciplinary practice draws on West African archives, technologies, and knowledge, and unfolds through performance, image, poetry, and visual arts. She is particularly interested in vectors of social domination and historically marginalized groups, from a pan-African and decolonial perspective. She has presented her work at Dare-Dare (2018), Galerie de l’UQAM (2018) and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (2021). She also contributed to the co-creation and visual design of Survival Technologies, presented at the Festival TransAmériques in 2024.
Jeune adulte réutilisant du tissu. Image libre de droits. \| Young adult reusing fabric material. Copyright-free image.	Atelier de médiation à OPTICA From January 16th 2026 to June 13th 2026 OPTICA invite le public à réactiver les mémoires féministes dans l’espace public As part of the exhibition Street Actions: Women in Performance in Montréal and Toronto (1970-1980), presented from January 16 to June 13, 2026, OPTICA's educational program is organizing two participatory workshops open to the general public that extend the questions raised by feminist performances of the 1970s: how do bodies inhabit public space? How can collective creation become an act of resistance? The workshop Nos corps, nos rues: mémoires féministes de Montréal [Our Bodies, Our Streets: Feminist Memories of Montréal] invites participants to reactivate their memories. Through a guided tour of the exhibition followed by a circle of testimonials, participants will collectively create a textile banner inspired by the works of Marie Décary and Lise Nantel. This workshop transforms oral memory into a living, material archive. This event continues OPTICA's commitment to making contemporary art accessible and participatory by inviting audiences to become co-creators of meaning. FREE Booking Lucile Beaudouin: mediationoptica @ gmail.com or 514-874-1666. Accessibility OPTICA pays particular attention to providing everyone an optimal and successful visit. With a constant desire to improve matters of inclusion and accessibility, the Centre steers its efforts toward responding in the best possible way to the challenges posed by contemporary issues. OPTICA is committed to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment. 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.
Crédit photo : kimura byol lemoine	Nuit Blanche 2026 à Montréal_28 fév_19h-23h From February 28th 2026 to February 28th 2026 *Ateliers Le corps-monument : danser pour se réchauffer* avec Helena Martin Franco Reservations requiry throught this email : mediationoptica @ gmail.com On the occasion of the Nuit Blanche 2026, OPTICA is delighted to open its doors to the general public and offer an evening of artistic discovery and creativity in a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere. The center welcomes multidisciplinary artist Helena Martin Franco** to lead workshops. Through movement games and simple gestures, participants will explore the political dimension of the body in urban space, then translate their reflections into visual creations (drawing, collage, models). Three workshops will be offered at the following times: 7 p.m., 8 p.m., and 9 p.m. The exhibition Street Actions : Women Performing in Montréal and Toronto, 1970-1980 will be open to the public! Helena Martin Franco was born in Cartagena. She lives and works in Tio'tia: ke-Mooniyang-Montréal since 1998. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the blending of different artistic processes and the hybridization between traditional and new technologies. Helena creates autofictions in which she explores the permeability and boundaries between cultural, national, and gender identities. Her artistic practice invites dialogue about gender-based violence, immigration and artistic censorship. From a feminist perspective, she builds relationships between collectives and cultural organizations to promote encounters and exchanges of artistic practices, particularly between Canada and Colombia. She is a member of several feminist contemporary art collectives, including L’Araignée (founder, collective of diffusion of contemporary art), La Redhada (network of women artists from the Colombian Caribbean), CAVCA (Community of Visual Artists of Cartagena and Bolivar) and Las meninas emputás! (Feminist collective, anti-colonial activist from Cartagena). Winner of the Powerhouse Prize in 2018, she holds an MA in visual and media arts from UQAM. Her projects have been presented in the Dominican Republic, Spain, New Zealand, Colombia, Argentina, Cuba, and Canada, among others.