Author: María Escalona

Categories
Arts

Poetic Disorder: reflections on Caribbean life

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz’s exhibition reflects on the complex reality of Puerto Rico and adjacent communities in the aftermath of natural disasters, political disruption, and poetic disorder

Along with the excitement that comes from starting a new academic year, students also have reason to be excited about the reopening of Montreal’s cultural spaces. Excited as I was, I went to visit the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery’s newest exhibition, Poetic Disorder, the same morning it opened.

Presented in the context of MOMENTA Biennale de l’image, and within the theme of sensing nature, the exhibition by Puerto Rican artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz takes over the entire gallery with four video projects. The exhibition is curated by Stefanie Hessler, in collaboration with Camille Georgeson-Usher, Maude Johnson, and Himali Singh Soin.

Each work, realized between 2014 and 2019, displays different facets, stories, and glimpses of life in the tropics through the sensitive, activistic lens of Santiago Muñoz. From specificity in daily life, like taking a nap in a hammock, to imaginative narratives blurring fiction and documentary, Poetic Disorder reveals the rich, wide existence and perspective of Caribbean life. The audience is challenged to see the world and these communities beyond colonialism and western thought.

Binaural is the first installation I encountered. In the dark, while my eyes adjusted, I was welcomed by a symphony of analogue projectors, emitting beams of light displaying silent videos on a loop onto four separate panels. These videos displayed a vertical horizon, a person resting on a hammock, a flickering light in a tunnel, and a view into the jungle.

When I reached the fourth video, I realized that Binaural extended to the next room on my right, featuring two more projectors. As I watched the last videos, I reflected on the artist’s intention to alter the perspective and the standpoint of the camera, noticing how this drew me in as both a spectator and as a Caribbean individual.

None of the videos last more than three minutes. Nor do they reveal much context. However, the collective narrative of the six-channel 16mm film installation says a lot. It made me think about the use of analogue processes as a vehicle to decolonize the foreign gaze, and reflect on Indigenous practices around sustainability, collaboration, land protection, resistance, and care.

I later learned that Santiago Muñoz shot these videos in Puerto Rico and the Solomon Islands, where she used the local flora to extract chemicals in order to develop the films. Amazed by this, I admired the work once more, reflecting on the power of nature and our responsibility to preserve it.

Walking to the left of the gallery, I encountered familiar imagery and sounds. I put on headphones for La Cabeza Mató a Todos, a seven-minute HD video, and heard the croaks of the coquí frog, a distinct and recognizable part of the Caribbean soundscape. The piece features a woman, played by artist and activist Mapenzi Chibale Nonó, and a cat (voiced by Nonó) engaging in what sounds like some sort of dialogue or spell-casting to end “the war machine.” This eerie scene is based on a local myth about a shooting star, alluding to ritualistic practices in co-existence with decolonial, feminist, and queer practices.

On the other side of the wall, I encountered Marché Salomon. This 16-minute HD video shows a dialogue between two young workers, Marcelin and Mardochelene, at a market in Port-au-Prince. A philosophical and mystical dialogue is surrounded by chopping sounds, hip hop, and “old technology” that is accompanied by dynamic camera work and the occasional voice interrupting the video with instructions to pay attention and “look.”

Finally, I went to the last room to watch Gosila. The piece is a “16mm film and HD video transferred to video and projected through a piece of lighthouse fresnel lens.” This creates a magical refraction of colours, distorting the image into a curved rectangle, and acts as a subtle nod to the devastation left by hurricanes Maria and Irma in 2017.

The following year was extremely difficult for Puerto Rico in every aspect, as it was left exposed politically, economically, and ecologically. By documenting the citizens and their small acts of care, reconstruction efforts, and the reclamation of their autonomy, the artist encourages us to think about the monsters we face both individually and as part of a community, and how to find light after the storm.

Before leaving the gallery, I was kindly greeted by the director of the gallery, Michèle Thériault, who conversed with me about Santiago Muñoz and her practice, sharing some afterthoughts about the curatorial experience.

After our conversation, I left the space with a lot to think and write about, confronting emotions of nostalgia and estrangement, with the motivation that, despite chaos, we shall find poetry in our everyday disorder.

Poetic Disorder is on display at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, located at 1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W. on the ground floor of the J.W. McConnell Building until Oct. 16. 

 

Photo courtesy of María Escalona

Categories
Arts

Art Mûr’s latest exhibitions explored the multifaceted world of sculpture

During the pandemic, we can still partake in the joys of art in-person

I entered Art Mûr searching for a break away from my two-dimensional companion for the past several  months — my screen — and let myself be immersed into the three-dimensional art of four artists. David Umemoto, Emily Jan and duo Hélène et son mari were my new companions for the next hour and a half as I wandered and wondered about their respective exhibitions and their sculptures, sculptures and sculptures.

David Umemoto’s Infrastructures are roofless edifications completely and complicatedly made in cement with dozens of stairs leading nowhere, or to the edge of somewhere. With structures complete with windows, arches and skylights facing the openness of the gallery, they all have an almost perfectly smooth finish of raw cement, that paradoxically feels as if decades of inhabitation by Escher-esque civilizations have passed. Maurits Cornelis Escher was a Dutch draftsman and graphic artist who is well-known for his mathematically inspired drawings and paradox spaces. His work has inspired the work of many artists and filmmakers, including Inception (2010). I could pin down many inspirations that come to my mind when I see Umemoto’s art pieces, but I cannot stop thinking about Ascending and Descending or Relativity, some of the lithographs where Escher reimagines architecture and reality. Each and every plinth is unique and infinite, demanding every window, door, corridor and corner to be inspected.

In my trance, the administrative director of the gallery Noémie Chevalier warmly welcomed me on a tour of the exhibitions. Leading me through Umemoto’s microcosmos, Chevalier told me about the artist’s architectural background. Umemoto, originally from Hamilton, Ontario, has a vivid interest in the passage of time, nature and human impact. This is concretely expressed in a collection of short videoclips of his sculptures being exposed to the elements, which played in a loop projected in the middle of the room.

I felt an immediate change of ambiance, from cold cement to warm jungle once we left Umemoto’s exhibition and entered Emily Jan’s The World is Bound by Secret Knots in the next room. Set at the back of Art Mûr’s ground floor, the dark green room was inhabited by magical creatures living luxuriously on vintage furniture. These hybrid mises-en-scène allowed me to slow down and better observe how they were made. As I got closer to the sculptures, made by the Californian artist who graduated from Concordia in 2014, I saw the creative use of unusual materials and textures to evoke issues of ecology and the human psyche. Jan’s creatures are sculpted using a mixture of wet felting and needle felting techniques that are evidently reminiscent of traditional methods of taxidermy. Chevalier and I stood between a snake made of stuffed fabric tangled to a branch that was emerging from an old table with a built-in sewing machine and a pair of majestic tropical birds, complete with floral feathers and a wooden shelf for a nest.

To the south of the equator’s ambiance, my guide and I climbed to the second floor to see the third and final exhibition from Quebecoise duo Hélène et son mari. Gradually, my eyes adjusted to the pastel colors predominating the space that Hélène Chouinard and Jean-Robert Drouillard jointly created. A character covered in a blanket welcomed us to Les couleurs de la terre, where many pieces of colorful ceramic emerged from faces and bodies made of wood. Each of the other human-like sculptures had their own personality and nuance. They all faced the back wall filled with dozens and dozens of ceramic bottles, handmade by Chouinard using an experimental colouring technique that incorporates the pigment directly with the clay. Closest to the stocked shelf were sculptures of twin boys, both named Leo, sculpted out of wood by Drouillard, and appeared to be painted with Chouinard’s colour palette. Chevalier led me around the floor, as she expressed her excitement for hosting the first exhibition where the name and work of Chouinard is highlighted, after years of collaborating in her husband’s shows.

As I analyzed the concentrated gaze of the sculptures towards the main piece, the thousand bottles, I rejoiced in the fact that I was finally not looking at art through a screen (although I do appreciate every opportunity to engage with art, of course). 

There’s something about the tactile world of sculpture that is so fulfilling to experience in person, rather than online. The three exhibitions closed on Saturday, Oct. 24, but remain accessible in a series of videos on Art Mûr’s YouTube channel to reach the extended virtual public.

 

Photos by Christine Beaudoin.

Categories
Arts

Cercanía: All the different ways to bring people together

Rafael Lozano Hemmer’s newest exhibition is all about human connection

I entered Arsenal Contemporary Art on a sunny September day looking for a refreshing escape from reality during this pandemic, and that is exactly what I got.

Arsenal’s imposing building swallows you whole and spits you out after giving you a new experience. At least, that has happened to me every time I’ve visited, and this time was no exception.

When I entered the gallery space, there was no room for small thoughts, small artwork,  or small expectations. It was the perfect setup for an exhibition of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s work.

Blinded by the sunlight that illuminates the main hall of the gallery, my transition to the temporary exhibition was abrupt and numbing, in a good way. The entire right wing of the giant building is dark and furnished with Lozano-Hemmer’s artifacts, inventions, creations, innovations, tricks and treats to the senses. In other words: Art (with a capital ‘A’).

I made sure to take a picture next to the title of the exhibition: Cercanía. Through this souvenir, I can later savour the delicacy of that specific word in Spanish. The word literally translates to ‘proximity’ or ‘closeness’ but cercanía is much more than that, and denotes a sense of human connection beyond physical presence that is untranslatable. It is intimacy, vulnerability and honesty. And that is what the exhibition is all about.

Cercanía has been very judiciously adapted and created around COVID-19 protocols. Even though every piece is meant to be experienced while adhering to the two-metre social distancing rule, I felt connected to everyone that has passed through it and those who will pass later.

I walked to the main room where different rays, projections, screens, and spotlights created light and played with the senses. One of them had sensors that followed and projected my steps and shadows, combining them with those of other visitors. Another took a picture of my face and overlapped it with the faces of others creating new identities, connections and funny faces.

Another one captured my heartbeat through a camera — I didn’t even need to touch a thing — and placed me in a virtual space where I could communicate with other heartbeats around the world.

The piece in the corner translated data from people murdered by guns in North America into an inverted noose that vibrated every ten seconds. I wished it wouldn’t move at all.

The installation in the other room ephemerally recreated my portrait on water mist in the most magical way. I did it at least five times until I noticed people waiting in line behind me. My misty portrait stayed for others to see, so, actually, it is not that ephemeral.

The big work blinded me, in a way that was different from how the sun does. There were movement sensors that detected me approaching the two giant screens filled with random letters. As soon as I walked, they followed me. I lay on the ground facing this “tableau vivant” and let letters arrange, move and fill the space before me, under me, next to me and above me, until I saw sentences form and disappear in the same way they had come. I stayed until I got dizzy.

My favourite piece, Field Atmosphonia,  welcomed me to lay on the ground again and look up at over 2000 speakers (2304 to be exact) suspended from the high ceilings of the Arsenal. I didn’t care that the ground was cold because I heard the ensemble of arranged individual sounds coming from each one and it was mesmerizing. The experience was visual, audible, presential, intuitive, interactive, confronting and vulnerable. I wouldn’t expect less from Lozano-Hemmer.

I left the space while the speakers behind me resonated with the sounds of waterfalls, birds, children laughing and a breeze rustling through trees. As I walked away and increased the distance between me and Cercanía, I thought about the ways in which we can be close while being apart.

Due to government safety measures, Cercanía has been suspended until further notice. Learn more about Cercanía and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s work at https://cercania.ca/

 

Photos courtesy of Jean-Charles Labarre.

Categories
Arts

Bidgala: breaking the rules of the art market

Building a community for artists and entrepreneurs

“Community, empowerment and innovation,” I say to myself three times for luck after I end my interview with Sam Tenenbaum and William Lande. I repeat it as a mantra because after our talk I, as an artist, feel excited and hopeful for the future of the art world that they have helped create. Its name is Bidgala.

You may be wondering, what is Bidgala? Co-founder Tenenbaum explains it as “An online community and marketplace that empowers artists to take charge of their careers and their artwork.” What better way to describe the project than that?

Now, you may wonder where my new mantra appeared. “Community, empowerment and innovation,” the founders replied when asked what three words describe Bidgala. All of this came from the idea of bringing innovation to an (already) powerful community of artists missing a better platform to rise.

This story starts with entrepreneurs and ends with entrepreneurs supporting other entrepreneurs. Long-time friends Tenenbaum and Lande not only grew up together and with the same entrepreneurial vein in them, but also weren’t interested in 9-to-5 office jobs, like many artists feel.

They went from making profit reselling shoes, school supplies and anything they could find, as teenagers, to being students at John Molson School of Business, as young adults. They are currently finishing their undergraduate degrees, while simultaneously founding the very first business of its kind that doesn’t need another platform to stand on its own. It will certainly break all the rules of what we know of the art industry.

What do I mean by that? If artists use many platforms to sell their art already and that the “rules” are constantly changing, what new does Bidgala bring to the table, you may ask? I may respond simply by saying there was never a place where an emerging artist could be representing themselves, creating connections and a clientele, exchanging with other artists, building their brand, fulfilling their own criteria and no one else’s, and making money all in the same website. Now there is.

The project, born from this friendship, started at the beginning of 2020 as they “saw all of these artists doing what they love to do but [not] generating any income with it,” said Lande. They realized that most of their artist friends were struggling to enter the art market and sell their work because the industry is very limiting and lacks the opinions of the artist themselves. Tenenbaum and Lande decided to change that by asking them about it.

They have conducted interviews and focus groups, and research on the different social media platforms that artists currently use to promote their work in order to identify the specific needs of artists. They assert that they will continue to do so to constantly improve the experience where the focal point is the artist’s agency.

Before Bidgala, artists wanting to sell artworks outside of their immediate circle often needed an intermediary that would link the buyer to them, like galleries do. This has been changing for a few decades as a result of artists’ centers, collectives and community-based exhibitions, as well as the arrival of social media and online marketplaces like Etsy, Instagram and Facebook. Tenenbaum and Lande thought of Bidgala as an original and independent platform that creates direct communications between the artist and the buyer with all the features of a social network. Those who create can now sell their artwork from the comfort of their homes while interacting with the community.

Bidgala will officially launch for sales at the end of October but is already available for artists to create their profiles. Artists have complete control of their uploaded artworks as they decide the prices, the descriptions and the handling of the pieces, as well as the general image of their brand. The site is designed to be easy to use for both sellers and buyers, and will include features of commenting, liking, sharing, bidding, and even live chatting with agents and curators about the artworks.

The commission of 30 per cent in each sale presents a competitive and fair option, not only to artists who are often imposed a 50 per cent commission in many galleries, but also to the creators and members behind the platform.

Bidgala aims to be a safe, accessible space that welcomes every individual that wishes to interact within the community, without any restrictions or criteria. There will be a section of the website where the users can exchange, interact and learn from each other about art and all its branches, as well as special features for different communities like LGTBQ+ people, Indigenous folks, and more.

Bidgala has also been selected to be part of District 3, a program that supports and empowers initiatives that create social impact because they consider it important to contribute to causes like Black Lives Matter through events, donations and fair opportunities in the industry, as a way of giving to the community they want to help build. Pre-quarantine, the launching of the website was planned to be an event with the goal of raising funds for different groups involved in the Black Lives Matter movement. Even though the physical event was cancelled, Bidgala still plans to donate part of its commission towards this cause.

“Artists need a community now more than ever, especially with COVID,” said Lande. “Artists are one of the most powerful communities in the world and when something resonates with them, they share it,” he told me, explaining why the community aspect of Bidgala is crucial in this new system. “We wanted to give artists the tools and support that they need to follow their dreams.”

When you say “Bidgala,” that is what the future of art sounds like. Now repeat with me: community, empowerment and innovation.

Bidgala is set to launch at the end of October. Visit thebidgala.com for more information.

 

Graphic by Lily Cowper.

Categories
Arts

ARTCH: Art “squared”

Nineteen emerging artists presented their art at the third annual edition of ARTCH

Beneath the trees, between the concrete buildings and within the vibrant life of Montreal’s downtown, at Dorchester Square, lay art. And not the art that we may encounter every day like the sunset behind Saint-Joseph Oratory or the colourful Jacques Cartier Bridge, but rather art through the eyes of artists who explore it to its full potential and are present to guide us through it.

Displayed from Sept. 9 to 13, in Montreal’s core, the initiative ARTCH was home to 19 emerging artists. Selected via an open call, they have received training in entrepreneurship and the art market to expand their artistic practice as well as feature their talent to the grand public. They came from different backgrounds, work in many mediums and approach art from every possible angle.

The one thing they share is the determination and passion to see art living within our homes, parks, streets, walls, buildings, statues, cars, chairs, maps, and even bodies.

For passersby and the artists themselves, the presence of the body is a key element of ARTCH, whether it is by the spectator having an artistic encounter that stimulates their day, by the virtual spectator at home whose body is absent but present, or by the artists’ body which performs and displays their art for every curious, non-curious, connoisseur, non-connoisseur, friend or stranger that wants to enjoy, experience or even respectfully critique the work outside the sometimes-intimidating four white walls of a gallery.

Each artist has been given a space to showcase their work and they are all accessible to the public. Fifteen artists have been given a booth to showcase and sell their pieces, while four performers are given a designated spot on the grass or next to the sculpture in the centre for in situ artworks.

In this special edition, ARTCH has adapted and extended the physical exhibition to one that can also be experienced from our homes. Digital spaces like Instagram, Facebook and Zoom are now host to new and innovative art through live tours of the show, conferences, showrooms and more.

For Max Keene, one of the featured artists and a student at Concordia, this opportunity represents a more welcoming space where new conversations behind face masks, perspectives and opinions may rise from a different range of spectators that wouldn’t otherwise be possible in a gallery space or in a studio.

“We live in an interesting time,” said Keene. He went on to explain that art nowadays searches for more connection: with the audience, with the materials and even with other disciplines. The sculptural and photographic works presented in Kenne’s booth of humoristic and metaphorical mises-en-scène are one of many examples of the interdisciplinarity featured in this year’s edition of ARTCH.

Dexter Barker-Glenn, another featured artist and an undergraduate Concordia student, creates sculptural paintings using one of the most known supports for the human body, the chair, to reflect on the “human touches,” as he described. The artist finds that those traces we leave in our material possessions, our everyday objects, are reminiscent of the emotional, physical and mental connections we establish, consciously or not, and are a great source of inspiration. Barker-Glenn’s artistic practice goes beyond the disciplines of painting and sculpture to create a hybrid of the two that can transform any given space by playing with the placement of the pieces. For example, by placing art on the ceiling.

Nearby, Andrée-Anne Mercier continued the exploration of space and mediums with an ensemble of paintings, depictions of architectural landscapes of places in Japan, Hawaii and Montreal. Mercier considers the activity of walking and photographing very inspirational for her practice, as well as the Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi that embraces and rejoices in three values: imperfection, incompletion and impermanence. She reflects on these values for her aesthetics, her ideas and even her installations, which are very playful and question the role of space, limits and materials.

Similarly, on the other side of Dorchester Square, Ahreum Lee’s works also reflect on spaces, documentation and limits. Lee recently immigrated to Canada from South Korea and is now completing an MFA at Concordia. In addition to carrying a lot of meaning around her life both here and there, the work Lee presented at ARTCH explored the theme of impermanence; the main piece of the module is a big altered map of the world that combines and rethinks a kid’s game with the geopolitical aspect of maps.

And these were just four artists in the complex equation of this year’s edition of  ARTCH. The disciplines were many, the spectators were multiplied (physically and virtually), the masks were a plus, the potential was exponential, the square was full of art and the art was “squared.”

To learn more about the artists and ARTCH, visit their website at http://artch.org/

 

Photos by Kit Mergaert.

Exit mobile version