Exhibitions / Expositions
Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience
McCord Museum, Montréal February 8 to May 5, 2019 Curated by Kent Monkman The 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation in 2017 was commemorated across the country with activities and events organized by the federal, provincial, and municipal governments, as well as by non-governmental and philanthropic organizations. While the official programming was intended to celebrate diversity, encourage inclusion, and “establish a spirit of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples,”[1] some events focused attention on the Canadian state’s treatment of Indigenous peoples, sparking conversations about the many issues Indigenous communities continue to face post-confederation. Emerging from a sesquicentennial project for the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience made its way to the McCord Museum in Montréal during a three-year national tour. Shame and Prejudice engaged in a re-telling of Canadian history through a solo exhibition self-curated by Cree artist Kent Monkman. The show used history painting, installation, sculpture, drawing, and historical objects to reimagine European and North American art historical canons, as well as Canadian history, with the active presence of Indigenous perspectives. full text Alexandra Nordstrom (RACAR 45.1 2020) |
Image Bank
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin June 22 to September 1, 2019 Co-curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen, Maxine Kopsa, and Scott Watson It has been nearly fifty years since Vancouver artists Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov, and Gary Lee-Nova founded Image Bank (1970). Lee-Nova left the group in 1972. Morris and Trasov continued Image Bank’s activities and also participated in the development of the Western Front, a Vancouver artist-run centre opened in 1973, as well as other projects such as the Hollywood Decca Dance (1974) and the Mr. Peanut Mayoralty Campaign (1974). Image Bank’s network emphasized fetish and queer aesthetics. Bankers (the eponymous term for Image Bank participants) organized Fluxus performance events, mailed correspondence between urban centres, and used photography and video to record the Vancouver community’s evolving response to the rise of conceptual art in Canada. In contradistinction to the more restricted analytic and formalist concerns of emergent conceptualism, Morris and Trasov imagined Image Bank as a peripheral space where marginalized artists could organize and exhibit work collectively. full text Brayden Nicholas Burrard (RACAR 44.2 2019) |
Balenciaga: Master of Couture
McCord Museum, Montréal June 15 to October 14, 2018 Organized by the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) of London. Curator: Cynthia Cooper, Head, Collections and Research, and Curator, Dress, Fashion and Textiles, McCord Museum. Narratives championing mid-century design giants as innovative geniuses vary little across the boundaries of genre. The mainstays in apparel design are described in much the same way as are architects, artists, and furniture designers: as individuals who single-handedly ushered in a new era of visual culture through their contribution in their field. Of course, prestigious fashion design houses benefit from the mythologization of their founders, who, often posthumously, are elevated to the status of cultural icons and household names. They are remembered as iconoclastic innovators of the intellectual and physical aspects of craft and skill. The two most recent fashion house retrospectives in Montreal, namely, that of Yves Saint Laurent in 2008 and of Jean Paul Gaultier in 2011, both presented at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, exalted the innovation and influence of the two successful designers with little reference to the labourers associated with the houses, thus saying little about the working conditions for or contributions made by the “petites mains” who are responsible for much of these designers’ material legacies. In this tradition, The McCord Museum’s Balenciaga: Master of Couture reveres the originality and craftsmanship of Cristóbal Balenciaga, especially as his clothing designs proliferated throughout Montreal and the globe in the mid-twentieth century. full text Stephanie Weber (RACAR 44.1 2019) |
Aki Odehi: cicatrices de la Terre-Mère
Centre d’exposition de Val-d’Or 22 juin au 26 août 2018 commissaire: Sonia Robertson Durant l’été 2018, l’exposition Aki Odehi: cicatrices de la Terre-Mère présentait au Centre d’exposition de Val-d’Or un projet de performances réalisé l’année précédente dans la région de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue sous la direction de l’artiste et commissaire innue Sonia Robertson, avec la collaboration du Centre d’amitié autochtone de Val-d’Or. L’exposition Aki Odehi, «lieux de cœur» en langue anicinabek, a été conçue en deux temps dès ses prémices. Robertson a d’abord organisé les performances, dans la ville de Val-d’Or et ses environs, en réunissant cinq artistes autochtones et allochtones: les artistes anicinabek Kevin Papatie et Karl Chevrier, l’artiste et poétesse crie Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau, et les Québécois d’euro-descendance Véronique Doucet et Jacques Baril. Puis, elle a mis en exposition, de manière engageante et réflexive, des traces des performances et des finalités de dialogue et de conciliation qui avaient guidé leur production. suite Julie Graff (RACAR 44.1 2019) |
Exhibitions, Manifestos, and the Seventieth Anniversary of Refus global
August 8, 2018, was the 70th anniversary of the publication of Refus global, the manifesto of a multi-disciplinary group of Montreal artists called the Automatists, widely recognized as important avant-garde figures in the history of Canadian modernism. The story of the manifesto and its reception is quite well known: immediate official and public reaction was strongly negative because the manifesto was seen as dangerously anti-clerical.[i] Gradually, however, Refus global and the activities of the group came to be recognized as constituting a crucial moment in the cultural history of the province. In 1959 and 1960, the periodical Situations began the process of redemption by publishing a special number entitled "Refus global: dix ans après," followed by a posthumous celebration of the mentor of the group, visual artist Paul-Émile Borduas. Ten years later, in August, 1969, La barre du jour published an important special number entitled Les automatistes, with texts by and on the movement, the manifesto itself, and some of the signatories. No doubt stimulated by these anniversary celebrations, an exhibition entitled "Borduas et les automatistes, Montréal 1942-1955," opened in October, 1971, at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais in Paris and moved to the Musée d'art contemporain in Montreal in January of 1972. Following these first signs of broad, even international recognition, every ten years for almost half a century we have come to expect various kinds of celebrations—exhibitions, publications, films, performances—commemorating Refus global and its adherents to the extent that some commentators have complained of "occultation." full text Ray Ellenwood (RACAR 44.1 2019) |
Canadian and Indigenous Art: From Time Immemorial to 1967
Canadian and Indigenous Art: 1968 to Present National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa June 15, 2017 – ongoing Curated by Senior Curator of Canadian Art, Katerina Atanassova; Associate Curator of Indigenous Art, Christine Lalonde; Canadian Photography Institute Associate Curator of Photographs, Andrea Kunard; Associate Curator of Early Canadian Art, René Villeneuve; and Associate Curator of Canadian Art, Adam Welch, with the support of Curatorial Assistant of Canadian Art, Danuta Sierhuis and Curatorial Assistant in Indigenous Art, Heather Campbell. I have been visiting the National Gallery of Canada since my school days, when the collection was lodged in a nondescript office building on Elgin Street in a dire space that seemed to reflect the little regard that most people had for the collection, heavily weighted as it was toward European art and dreary Canadian landscapes. The NGC moved in 1988 into an impressive glass and granite building opposite the Parliament Buildings and just down the river from the three islands called Asinabka (Victoria, Chaudière, and Albert Islands) – historically a site for trading as well as spiritual and cultural exchange for people of Anishinaabe, Algonquin and Haudenosaunee nations. I wonder what dialogues could occur between the triangulated locations, and how the contiguity of history and of nation-to-nation relationships could have been and can still be played out across the landscape and within the buildings. full text Lori Beavis (RACAR 43.2 2018, web exclusive) |
Bodies in Translation: Age and Creativity
Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery September 9, 2017- November 12, 2017 Co-curated by Eliza Chandler, Lindsay Fisher, and Ingrid Jenkner According to Carmen Papalia, a blind social practice artist, “it's about time that patrons of the museum get an experience, besides a detached and alienating one, in return for their patronage” (Papalia). The exhibition Bodies in Translation: Age and Creativity, held at the Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) Art Gallery from September 9th to November 12th, 2017, provided the kind of experience Papalia calls for. Bodies in Translation was a collaborative effort of the MSVU Art Gallery, the SSHRC-funded project “Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life,” and the Nova Scotia Centre on Aging at MSVU. In both its artistic content and curatorial strategy, it proposed an alternative approach to the deferential and limiting ways visual art is typically selected for and displayed in galleries. full text Jolee Smith (RACAR 43.2 2018, web exclusive) |
![]() Esmaa Mohamoud, Untitled (No Fields), 2018, ink-jet print. Courtesy of Georgia Scherman Projects and the artist. Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art, May 12 to September 16, 2018, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Curators: Dr. Silvia Forni, Curator of African Arts and Culture, ROM; Dr. Julie Crooks, Assistant
Curator, Art Gallery of Ontario; and Dominique Fontaine, Independent Curator.
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From Africa to the Americas: Face to Face, Picasso Past and Present
Curator for the Montreal adaptation: Nathalie Bondil, Director General and Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; assisted by Erell Hubert, Curator of Pre-Columbian Art, MMFA Organized by the Musée de quai Branly—Jacques Chirac, in collaboration with the Musée national Picasso-Paris, and adapted by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art Curators: Sylvia Forni, Julie Crooks, and Dominique Fontaine; assisted by Geneviève Goyer-Ouimette, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Curator of Quebec and Canadian Contemporary Art (from 1945 to Today), MMFA Organized by the Royal Ontario Museum and adapted by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal May 12, 2018 to September 16, 2018 In the early weeks of May, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) welcomed its patrons and a series of special guests from various Black Canadian communities to the opening reception of two exhibitions: From Africa to the Americas: Face to Face, Picasso Past and Present and Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art. These exhibitions were presented side by side in a continuous layout. The Picasso exhibition presented an overview of Western attitudes regarding art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, and purported to tell “the story of ‘the museum of the Other,’ from the legacy of a colonial world to its current redefinition as a globalized one.” The exhibition also featured several contemporary African diasporic artists, thus placing them in direct conversation with the colonial histories broached. Here We Are Here, on the other hand, called into question established perspectives on Blackness in Canada through the work of eight contemporary artists—Sandra Brewster, Michèle Pearson Clarke, Charmaine Lurch, Esmaa Mohamoud, Bushra Junaid, Gordon Shadrach, Sylvia D. Hamilton, and Chantal D. Gibson—who “blur the longstanding perception that Black bodies belong on the edge of Canadian history.” full text Joana Joachim (RACAR 43.2 2018) |
Transmettre une philosophie de la tolérance : la collection Hoffmann et l’enseignement de Raymond Klibansky à l’Institut d’études médiévales
Carrefour des arts et des sciences, Université de Montréal 20 mars au 15 juin 2018 Commissaire : Philippe Despoix. L’exposition Transmettre une philosophie de la tolérance a pour origine une découverte exceptionnelle faite récemment par le professeur Philippe Despoix, spécialiste de la pensée germanique du XXe siècle au Département de littératures et de langues du monde de l’Université de Montréal (UdeM). Il s’agit d’un rare tiré à part d’un article d’Aby Warburg de 1922, Italienische Kunst und internazionale Astrologie im Palazzo Schifanoia zu Ferrara [Art italien et astrologie internationale au palais Schifanoia à Ferrare], trouvé dans les rayons en libre accès de la Bibliothèque des lettres et sciences humaines de l’Université de Montréal (BLSH) – un exemplaire offert en 1925 par Warburg lui-même au philologue et philosophe allemand Ernst Hoffmann, professeur à l’Université de Heidelberg. full text Diogo Rodrigues de Barros (RACAR 43.2 2018) |
![]() Alongside Douglas Cardinal, the sixteen other architects showcased in UNCEDED: Tamarah Begay (Navajo), Harriet Burdett-Moulton (Métis), Jake Chakasim (Cree), Chris Cornelius (Oneida), Wanda Dalla Costa (Cree), Tammy Eagle Bull (Lakota), Ryan Gorrie (Anishinaabe), Daniel Glenn (Crow), Ray Gosselin (Dakota, Métis, and German), Matthew Hickey (Mohawk), Brian Porter (Oneida), Ouri Scott (Dene), Eladia Smoke (Anishinaabe), Patrick Stewart (Nisga’a), David Thomas (Anishinaabe), and Alfred Waugh (Dene).
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UNCEDED: Voices of the Land
2018 Venice Architecture Biennale May 26–November 25, 2018 Lead Architect: Douglas Cardinal Curators: David Fortin and Gerald McMaster Indigenous Architecture is Not Object Orientated. 2018 is a historical year for Canada in Venice. The renovations to the Canadian Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale are completed, and the pavilion was ceremonially reopened to the public at the launch of the Biennale. After almost sixty years, the pavilion required restoration. Since it was unavailable during the time needed to prepare this year’s entry to the Architecture Biennale, the Canadian exhibition is installed at the Arsenale. More importantly, the 2018 Canadian entry stands out as it is the first time Canada has selected Indigenous architects to represent it... full text Jason Baerg (RACAR 43.2 2018) |
Decolonial Gestures or Doing it Wrong? Refaire le chemin. (vue de l'exposition)
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Decolonial Gestures or Doing it Wrong? Refaire le chemin.
Musée McCord 18 février au 29 mai 2016 Artist en résidence : Nadia Myre Dans Decolonial Gestures or Doing it Wrong? Refaire le chemin., Nadia Myre signe une exposition où la responsabilité inhérente au geste créateur, tant colonial qu’autochtone, est examinée à travers une approche matérialiste de l’histoire. L’artiste algonquine membre de la nation Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg a été invitée à réactualiser sous un angle décolonial les objets de la collection autochtone du Musée McCord, composée de plus de 14 500 artéfacts, dans le cadre du programme d’artiste en résidence de l’institution. suite Alexia Pinto Ferretti (RACAR 42.2 2017) |
Meryl McMaster, Aphoristic Currents, 2013, digital C-Print. Courtesy of the artist and Katzman Contemporary.
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The Fifth World
Mendel Art Gallery April 3–June 7, 2015 Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery January 22–March 20, 2016 Curator: Wanda Nanibush According to Indigenous scholars Jarrett Martineau and Eric Ritskes, Indigenous art defies colonial erasure and “marks the space of a returned and enduring presence, weaving past and future Indigenous worlds into new currents of present struggle.” Amid today’s political chaos and rising environmental degeneration, it is clear that our relationships and responsibilities to each other, the earth, and the future need to be re-considered. full text Ellyn Walker (RACAR 42.2 2017) |
Installation shot, Canadian and Indigenous Art: From Time Immemorial to 1967, 2017, National Gallery of Canada. Photo: Christina Williamson.
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Inuit Art in Canadian and Indigenous Art: From Time Immemorial to 1967
National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa) Permanent exhibition As part of the Canada 150 celebrations taking place across the country, several national museums in Ottawa have overhauled their permanent exhibitions. For its part, the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) has rehung the Canadian Galleries, now known as the Canadian and Indigenous Galleries, as part of a show of support for the reconciliation movement sparked by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). full text Christina Williamson (RACAR 42.2 2017) |
Exercices de lecture / Reading Exercises (vue d’exposition), 2015. Avec la permission de la Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen. Photo: Paul Litherland.
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Exercices de lecture
Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen, Université Concordia (Montréal) 18 novembre 2015 au 23 janvier 2016 Commissaire : Katrie Chagnon À l’automne 2015, la commissaire Katrie Chagnon présentait à la Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen de l’Université Concordia Exercices de lecture, une exposition collective portant à réfléchir sur la place que prend la lecture dans le monde actuel. Au moment où, sous le couvert d’une « révolution numérique », plusieurs prétendent assister à une transformation radicale du mode d’accès traditionnel au savoir, les douze œuvres présentées réinvestissent plutôt cette pratique en la donnant à voir dans ses implications, son fonctionnement, son sens. Elles mobilisent les médiums des arts visuels afin de mettre en évidence les enjeux contemporains de la lecture. suite Benoit Jodoin (RACAR 41.2 2016) |
Biennale de Venise
56e Exposition internationale d’art : All the World’s Futures 5 mai au 22 novembre 2015 La Biennale de Venise, la plus ancienne des biennales d’art contemporain, célébrait en 2015 son 120e anniversaire. Pour cette 56e édition, l’Exposition internationale d’art, intitulée All the World’s Futures, a été dirigée et commissariée par Okwui Enwezor, assisté pour l’occasion de Markus Müller et Tim Roering ainsi que de l’organisatrice artistique et de la directrice de publication Luz Gyalui. L’impressionnante organisation livre un évènement tentaculaire puisant à même la création artistique contemporaine mondiale. suite Geneviève Chevalier (RACAR 41.1 2016) |