Concordia alumnus tests assumptions about art in Impressions residency
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) boasts a varied collection, with pieces originating from around the world. Comprised of paintings, reliefs, sculptures and everything in between, the MMFA features a vast treasure trove of artistically and culturally-significant artefacts.
Like most museums, the MMFA’s collection makes assumptions about what art is and isn’t based on Western perspectives and definitions of “good” art. These assumptions are exactly what Ari Bayuaji—the MMFA’s new Impressions artist in residence—wants to challenge.
“We live in a very interesting and dynamic time at the moment,” said Bayuaji. “Art has been a great archive that reflects different times and changes in the history of human beings. [Challenging assumptions in art] is very important because our world is always changing.”
Bayuaji was a product and interior designer in Bali, Indonesia, before he came to Montreal to pursue a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at Concordia in 2005. He said he is interested in the relationship between art and design, and uses ready-made objects—manufactured items modified by the artist—to question assumptions about art.
His works, featuring painted pieces of driftwood, painted stone statues and countless painted wooden pieces dangling from hidden wire, aim to blur the line between noble, fine arts and everyday objects. He said he wants to accomplish the same thing at the MMFA.
While a student at Concordia, Bayuaji frequently made use of ready-made objects for his assignments.
“I found that blank paper or plain white canvas was too boring to work on. When I moved from Indonesia to Canada in 2005, I brought with me many of old objects I collected when I was younger,” Bayuaji said. “For my studio classes, I could paint or draw over solid teak wood panels, old photographic works I did years before, and make sculptures by cutting and pasting them together. As an art student, it was a good way for me to deal with my expenses and also to be different compared to other fellow students.”
The MMFA’s Impressions residency, supported by the Conseil des arts de Montréal, is an opportunity to showcase emerging artists from a cultural community, visible minority or aboriginal community. The goal of this residency is for an artist to produce a work inspired by the MMFA’s vast collection of 42,000 items—of which only 4,500 are on display. Bayuaji will be given six weeks to research and study the museum’s collection—the largest in Canada—and produce an original perspective piece to be displayed in an exhibition in the mezzanine of the Maison du Conseil des arts de Montréal.
“I would like to create some artworks using old objects that either might never have been found by Western museum curators, or might not be of significant importance or uniqueness to warrant a place at the museum,” said Bayuaji, who said he believes that design and art work together, rather than apart.
“I think that design should be very basic knowledge in the study of art history. When we think about the ancient Greeks and Romans, artefacts from that period were something that shaped their culture and traditions,” said Bayuaji. “The ancient Greek art at that time was mostly created or designed for daily life or religious purposes. I don’t think we can separate art from design.”
Through his work, Bayuaji hopes to challenge the Western lens through which we often look at art and by which collections such as that of the MMFA are typically organized.
A quick look at what’s happening in the city this semester
Winter might have its cold, cold claws firmly clamped down on the city, but that doesn’t mean Montreal’s vibrant arts and culture scene is any less interesting. With winter festivals and activities taking place both inside and outdoors, there’s something to satisfy everyone’s tastes and preferences. Here’s a quick look at some of the things you can look forward to this semester.
Montreal en lumière
Back for its 18th year, the Montréal en lumière festival will once again offer a unique program, consisting of outdoor activities, performing arts and gastronomic discoveries. The festival runs from Feb. 18 to March 11, and is one of the largest winter festivals in the world. You won’t want to miss the festival’s biggest event: Nuit blanche on March 4. With more than 200 activities spread out over 100 sites, this Montreal staple will be sure to warm up even the coldest of nights with its eclectic mix of musical and artistic performances. Mother Mother, Regina Spektor and Matt Holubowski are some of the artists set to perform. Not to mention, the metro is open all night, so you can enjoy all manner of activities until the break of dawn.
The FOFA Gallery
As Concordia students, we are lucky to have our very own in-house exhibition space. The Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery, located in the EV building, routinely displays pieces from Concordia students and faculty. Admission is free. The gallery has an interesting line-up of exhibitions for the winter semester, starting with Making Spaces, the annual undergraduate student exhibition running from Jan. 16 to Feb. 17. The exhibition, featuring works by Faculty of Fine Arts students, will include performances from Concordia’s department of contemporary dance.
Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery
Sovereign Acts II, an examination of indigenous cultural dances, will be presented at the gallery from Jan. 21 to April 1. This work delves into the way indigenous dances and practices were performed for international and colonial audiences. It looks at how these performers were faced with the conundrum of maintaining their traditional cultural practices, while also using them as performances intended to please the colonial gaze.
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
If the winter blues have got you down, then the next exhibition opening at the MMFA will cheer you up. Chagall: Colour and Music will be on display from Jan. 28 to June 11. Four hundred of Marc Chagall’s paintings, stained glass works, illustrations, photographs and maquettes will be on display. The exhibition will not only show the Russian-French artist’s legacy, but will also examine the role music played in Chagall’s art, acting as his inspiration and muse for his modernist works.
Eagle Flight, created by Montreal video game company Ubisoft, lets participants soar over Paris
Five new VR works at the Phi Centre offer viewers a window into another world
Virtual reality takes on a whole new dimension at the Phi Centre’s Virtual Reality Garden. From now until March 2017, five works bring a whole new perspective to virtual reality by exploring a new way of storytelling: animation.
The Phi Centre, which has presented several award-winning immersive works in its Virtual Reality (VR) Garden, presents another round of short films and immersive works to captivate audiences and pull them into the story.
While past virtual reality works at the Phi Centre mainly featured actual filmed footage taken with 360-degree cameras, the works currently on display were built from the ground up, featuring animated works and fully composed soundtracks and scores.
One of the most captivating of these works is Eagle Flight, a video game demo created by the Montreal-based video game company Ubisoft. In the game, you are an eagle soaring high above Paris, completing basic quests, such as catching fish and fending off vultures from your nest. While wearing the headset, you can use your body’s movements as well as commands on an Xbox controller to navigate and control your flight path. The eagle will bank either left or right depending on how you tilt your body.
As if the wonder of flight weren’t enough, the graphics and layout of the game are also well thought out, making it interesting to navigate around the city. The version of Paris in the game is not the one we are familiar with. This Paris is one reclaimed by nature, with trees, moss and animals having retaken the city.
The game is fun, and you really do feel as if you are soaring through clear skies. However, for those who easily succumb to motion sickness, be warned. Playing the game can make you feel ill, with the motion and movement. Still, it is worth trying the demo, which can be stopped at any time.
While Eagle Flight is the most interactive of the works presented in the VR Garden, the other four are much more story-oriented.
Henry, an animated short created by Oculus Story Studio, tells the tale of Henry the Hedgehog. Henry likes to give hugs, but because of his spikes, everyone he tries to become friends with runs away. On his birthday, he makes a wish to have at least one friend. The aftermath of his wish will make you feel everything from sadness to joy.
In The Rose and I by Penrose Studios, the viewer is transported to another solar system, where are suspended around you and zoom by. On one particular planet, the sole inhabitant discovers a lonely, sick rose. The short film tells the story of what happens after this rose is discovered and is inspired by The Little Prince.
Inspired by The Iron Giant (1999) and produced by Oculus Story Studio, Lostuses the VR medium exceptionally well by situating the viewer in the middle of a forest at night, surrounded by towering trees. This short uses sound in an interesting way to guide the viewer into looking in a specific direction. Somewhere in the dense undergrowth, a large creature roams in the bushes. The film allows the viewer’s attention to wander and observe their surroundings for a short amount of time before using sound to direct the viewer’s attention to the creature—a giant mechanic hand scuttling around.
Minotaur can best be described as an experimental work. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada, Minotaur is a visual and auditory journey through seven stages, including birth, childhood and death/rebirth. Don’t expect anything ordinary. This is the kind of work where each viewer takes away their own meaning from the film. The beautiful score will guide you through the story, easing you from one stage to the next.
Admission to the Phi Centre’s VR Garden is free, and the exhibits are open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. For those who wear glasses, perhaps opt for contact lenses for the day. If contact lenses aren’t your thing, make sure to adjust the headset so you can wear it comfortably, as being able to see the image properly does make a difference as to the experience of the piece.
Handsome Devils, the festival's opening film, is a coming of age story set in Ireland.
Image+nation film festival comes to Montreal
From Nov. 24 to Dec. 4, the image+nation film festival will present a diverse array of LGBTQ+ films hailing from all corners of the world.
“I think it’s an important opportunity to see great independent film, and it’s also an opportunity to see yourself reflected on the screen if you happen to be a queer person,” said Katharine Setzer, the programming director for the festival.
Image+nation, which is in its 29th year, is the oldest queer film festival in Canada. It will present films from a variety of genres and formats, including powerful documentaries, beautiful shorts and award-winning features. There are over 30 films to choose from.
“There’s a power in coming to a festival,” said Setzer. “It is a genre festival—it is a queer festival. There’s a power of being with your people, sitting and congregating in the dark and watching images of yourself on the screen.”
This year, the festival will have a focus on Irish and American cinema, two countries that legalized same-sex marriage in the last year. Handsome Devil, the opening film of the festival, which will screen on Nov. 24 at 7:30 p.m. is part of this Irish focus. Directed by John Butler, the film is a coming-of-age story about Ned, a young outcast in a rugby-crazed, all-boys boarding school who sets out on a mission to finally have his voice heard.
According to Setzer, queer cinema has evolved over time. Although there’s still a place for coming-of-age and coming-out stories, the focus has shifted to representations of queerness that go beyond this, looking instead at the experience of living as a queer person in the world.
Golden Boys, an Israeli film directed by Revital Gal, takes a look at the ageing gay community in Tel Aviv and explores the challenges these men faced coming to terms with their own sexuality in a country which hasn’t always been open or tolerant. Golden Boys will screen on Dec. 3 at 3:15 p.m.
Although the festival includes films from around the world, it still has a local focus. Long-time festival staple Queerment Quebec gives an opportunity to see short films produced by Montreal filmmakers. These shorts will be presented on Monday, Nov. 28 at 7 p.m. at the Phi Centre and include bustling local talent.
Films from this year’s festival will be screened at a number of different venues, including Cinéma Imperial, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Concordia’s JA de Sève cinema and Cinémathèque québécoise.
Tickets can be purchased both at the door and online. Regular passes are $12.75 per film or $9.50 for students. For information on the festival or to buy tickets for screenings, visit www.image-nation.org.
A hunt for missing magical creatures soon becomes much more complicated when dark forces appear.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them brings a whole new wizarding world to the big screen
Demiguises, erumpents and nifflers are just some of the fantastic creatures that have slipped out of Newt Scamander’s (Eddie Redmayne) magical suitcase, causing havoc in 1926 New York City in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
The film, adapted from J.K. Rowling’s book of the same title, is directed by David Yates and stars Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Colin Farrell and Dan Fogler. Written by Rowling, it has the same familiar feel the Harry Potter series offered. This familiarity makes it easier for the audience to relate to the film, although this era of the wizarding world is much darker.
Newt Scamander is a magizoologist studying all manner of magical beasts and creatures, cataloguing them for a book he’s writing. After disembarking in New York City, a mix-up between suitcases leads to a few of his creatures roaming free in a city rocked by anti-wizard sentiment. Newt, no-maj (American term for muggle) Jacob Kowalski (Fogler) and disgraced auror Tina (Waterston) team up and attempt to round up the magical creatures. Although they aren’t dangerous per se, these creatures can be annoying. One of Newt’s nifflers, a mole-sized creature attracted to objects that shine and sparkle such as coins and gems, gets into trouble ransacking a jewelry store and storing its contents in its marsupial-like pouch.
Things get more complicated when Newt discovers an obscurus is on the loose. This dark magical entity, taking the shape of a roiling black cloud, is a creation that comes about when a magical child tries to suppress their powers for fear of discovery by the non-magical community. While Newt wishes to find the child to save them from themself, other forces wish to use the obscurus for their own agendas.
The world we are introduced to in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a fractured one. The beginning sequence emphasizes this: headline after headline warning of humans suspicious of magical activity, calling for a second Salem witch-hunt in Manhattan. At the same time, there is fear of a magical war being sparked by Grindelwald, a powerful wizard tired of hiding from no-majs. Divisions exist between no-majs and wizards and between wizards themselves. Newt’s journey to document magical creatures brings him to the epicenter of these tensions, and he becomes entangled in an effort to prevent an all-out war.
Rowling’s incredible imagination is once again brought to life on the big screen. The creatures she’s whipped up are funny and troublesome, dangerous and sneaky. For a film that needed to introduce a whole other subsection of a hidden world, the pace is quite good, albeit a little information-heavy at times. It might have been worthwhile to take some more time to develop Newt’s character, especially seeing as how Fantastic Beasts is set to be a five-part series. Newt is a funny character who has trouble interacting with humans. Instead, he finds refuge in his suitcase, which contains a whole ecosystem of creatures, beasts and magical things.
Doctor Strange uses his time- and space-bending abilities to save the world from destruction.
Doctor Strange brings another superpower to the Marvel cinematic universe: Magic
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) includes people gifted with incredible genius, raw power, cunning intelligence and the strength of gods. Now, it’s adding magic to the mix.
Directed by Scott Derrickson and starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rachel McAdams, Doctor Strange is an interesting and worthy addition to the Marvel franchise. It has the same core formula (reluctant hero, powerful item, final showdown) that Marvel has perfected, yet it also brings something new to the genre.
Dr. Stephen Strange (Cumberbatch) is a brilliant neurosurgeon whose intellect is surpassed only by his ego. His world collapses after his hands are shattered in a terrible car accident, in which his vehicle goes careening off the road one rainy night. Broken both inside and out, Strange goes to great lengths to repair his hands—the tools that allow him to perform his life-saving miracles. When Western medicine fails him, a desperate Strange travels to Nepal to dabble in the mystic arts as a last resort. There, he meets the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton).
In a psychedelic montage that must have been inspired by some drug-induced trip, Strange gets a glimpse of this new world of mysticism: rushing lights, hands growing on fingers, mirror dimensions and endless universes. From there, Doctor Strange begins his tutelage in the arts of mysticism, where he learns to manipulate time, matter and space.
The cinematography of the film is incredible, featuring beautifully composed shots and incredible montages of a city folding and bending in on itself. The depictions of magic and spells are interesting and creative.
Aficionados of the superhero genre will find a breath of fresh air with this atypical Marvel film. We might not have needed another superhero origin story, but we got one anyway and it is an interesting direction to take the MCU in.
Unlike other Marvel movies, Doctor Strange doesn’t rely as much on explosions and grand finale battles. Rather, the fights occur in different dimensions where gravity is subjective and, in order to vanquish your opponent, you must bend space and time at your will. Think Inception meets The Avengers.
What’s interesting about Strange’s character is that he went searching for this power. Unlike Spider-Man, who was bitten, or Bruce Banner, who accidentally radiated himself, Strange goes out of his way to learn the mystic arts—but not under the guise of being a hero. His intentions, like his character, are self-centered. He wishes to heal his hands and become the surgeon he’s always been. Having worked on the cutting edge of science and medicine, he transitions to the harder-to-grasp mystical arts, something none of his PhDs will help him understand.
Doctor Strange is yet another piece of the Marvel puzzle, and it will be interesting to see how they all fit together.
DNA/The Future Life of Objects will be on display at the FOFA Gallery until Dec. 9. Photo courtesy of the FOFA Gallery
New exhibition at the FOFA Gallery takes a look at objects and how our relationship with them might change in the future
The Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery, located in the EV building, has been transformed into a ‘biological’ laboratory for its new exhibit.
DNA/ The Future Life of Objects is the culmination of three years of research from students and professors from Concordia and l’Université de Montreal. The project imagines a future in which artificial objects could possibly be encrypted with a genetic code—just like humans, plants and animals. It is a research-creation project led by Martin Racine, an associate professor and graduate program director in the department of design and computation arts at Concordia.
According to Racine, DNA/The Future Life of Objects is a reflection on the world of material and artificial objects. He is interested in the environmental impact of design, the relationship that people have with the things that surround them and how, as a consumerist society, these objects are treated.
DNA/The Future Life of Objects includes a manifesto, containing six points that objects should follow in the future. According to this manifesto, in the future, objects will reveal their anatomy, declare their impacts, tell their stories, express their emotions, care for their descendants and communicate with each other.
“A manifesto is always a way to create some change. So it’s a way to raise awareness, and then it’s an effort to change society in a way,” said Racine. “That’s why the manifesto has both a provocative aspect, but also tries to sensitize the public with their relation with objects.”
This manifesto acts as a starting point for the rest of the exhibition. Eight modules are on display in the main space of the FOFA Gallery, with six of them directly relating to one of the principles suggested in the manifesto.
Each containing different kinds of objects, such as flashlights and toasters,, these modules evoke the feeling of being in a natural history museum and watching specimens on display. Each has interactive elements, such as an X-ray machine with a knob that can be turned to ‘see’ the inside mechanisms of a flashlight.
This interactive element is a particularly strong part of the exhibition, as the audience becomes a participant as opposed to remaining a passive viewer.
“I think the expo becomes much more interesting when the visitor is called to touch, to feel, to hear, to manipulate—it makes the experience of the visitor much more compelling. So that was really the objective here,” said Racine.
In addition to the modules in the main gallery space, the exhibition also includes a video depicting an analysis of the material make-up of objects about to be thrown away, and how they could instead be recycled. Parts of the exhibition are on display in the York Corridor vitrines as well. Everyday, mundane objects, such as rulers and phones, are placed in jars containing colourful liquids, reminiscent of a scientist’s’ collection of biological specimens.
As a whole, the exhibition challenges the viewer to try understanding objects in a different light. Instead of a mere commodity to be used at one’s convenience, technology and objects need to be understood as part of a greater picture, especially given their environmental and ecological impacts. The exhibition totally alters the FOFA Gallery space through lighting and sound, evoking the mood of a laboratory rather than an art gallery.
The FOFA Gallery is open Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. DNA/The Future Life of Objects will be displayed in the gallery until Dec. 9
To learn more about DNA/The Future Life of Objects, visit metadna.ca.
Don Giovanni is a man hungry for what he wants most in the world: women. And he goes to great lengths to get what he wants. Photo by Yves Renaud
Don Giovanni brings the story of a womanizer’s crusade to Place des Arts
Don Giovanni is no gentleman. He is a smooth-talking womanizer on a crusade to bed as many women as he can, be they young, old, married or even unwilling.
Written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Don Giovanni premiered in Prague at the National Theater in 1787. The opera is sung in Italian with English and French surtitles, and lasts three hours. It tells the story of a man obsessed with loving as many women as he can, unrepentant and unaware of the path of destruction he leaves behind.
The opera starts with Don Giovanni (Gordon Bintner) attempting to force himself on Donna Anna (Emily Dorn). Desperate, Donna Anna cries for help. Her father, the Commendatore (Alain Coulombe) comes rushing in. Drawing his sword, he challenges Don Giovanni, who pulls out a gun and shoots the Commendatore point blank in the chest, murdering him. Upon seeing her father’s body, Donna Anna swears to get revenge on her assailant.
This opening scene sets the tone for the rest of the opera. Don Giovanni is a ruthless womanizer, using his charm to get what he wants. He doesn’t care about class, weight, height or looks. So long as they are women, he is attracted to them. His assistant, Leporello (Daniel Okulitch), keeps a detailed notebook of his conquests: 1,003 women in Spain alone.
While Don Giovanni might like to bed women, he certainly doesn’t keep in touch. While lounging around a café, he spies a woman angrily searching for the lover who scorned her. Sauntering over, he tells Leporello he wishes to ‘console’ her, to which Leporello scoffs. He’s clearly done this trick before. The woman, however, is Donna Elvira and the lover she is looking for is Don Giovanni. She reprimands him for leaving her broken-hearted and pregnant.
For the rest of the opera, Don Giovanni continues on his quest for conquests, instructing Leporello to keep the notebook handy—but ultimately, not even Don Giovanni can outrun his sins forever. While he is busy chasing every woman he meets, a group, led by Donna Anna, is plotting Giovanni’s downfall.
The opera is a cautionary tale, in that it warns sinners that eventually their crimes will catch up to them. After years of lying, cheating and abusing women, Don Giovanni’s injustices finally catch up with him, as the Commendatore comes back from the grave and asks him to repent. Upon Don Giovanni’s refusal, the Commendatore claims his soul and casts him into the depths of hell.
The opera deals with very real and serious topics: revenge, murder and sexual abuse. The serious nature, however, is offset slightly by Leporello and his interactions with other characters. His wit and innocent charm, as well as his dejected nature towards his master’s activities, counter-balance the heaviness of the rest of the opera.
Don Giovanni will be performed at Place des Arts on Nov. 17 and 19 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at just under $60 for the show and are available on the Place des Arts website.
Amanda Grzelak, Family Roots, 2015, direct application of dye and block printed pigment on cotton, Styrofoam inserts, hand and machine sewn. Photo by Guy L'Heureux.
Family Works, a multi-faceted project led by a Concordia professor culminates in student work exhibited at the MMFA
PART ONE
It isn’t often that a class project is exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts—but until Dec. 5, 11 artworks by Concordia undergraduate students, ranging from video to textile installations, are on display in the promenade at the MMFA.
These works represent the culmination of a year’s worth of work which brought together different programs within the Faculty of Fine Arts in a partnership between the MMFA and Concordia University. Art history and studio arts students had the opportunity to work on a project that transcended the typical classroom experience.
Family Works: A Multiplicity of Meanings and Contexts is a multi-faceted, ambitious project led by Concordia art history professor Loren Lerner. Along with the exhibition at the MMFA, Lerner created a website that groups the collective work done by the undergraduate students in her seminar course, Here’s Looking at You Kid: Picturing Children, Envisioning Childhood.
“It was tough for them, and they were really the very best students. I was really lucky,” said Lerner. “They worked so very hard and there was no grumbling, at least no grumbling with me. But they really understood the challenge. They met the challenge head on.”
The art history students in Lerner’s seminar had the task of analyzing 82 works pertaining to the representation of family from the MMFA’s permanent collection. These analyses are hosted on the Family Works website for all to see, divided into four different sections according to the assignments for the class, which included descriptions of individual works and comparative analyses addressing broad themes of family.
What Mélanie Deveault, educational projects developer at the MMFA, found interesting about the theme of family was its universality. The strength of the website, and of the student works, lies in the diversity and new perspectives reflected on a theme as old as time. According to Deveault, this reflection showcased different ways we can approach the theme of family, and allows people to enjoy the museum’s permanent collection in a new way while discovering a new generation of artists and art historians.
The fourth section of the website hosts the works by 20 studio artists from Raymonde April, Laura Endacott and Tema Stauffer’s undergraduate courses. The studio art students were tasked with producing an artistic work inspired by a piece from the museum’s permanent collection. This work was then analyzed by the art history students.
According to Deveault, the website represents research, quality content and a different point of view from the MMFA’s neighbouring community of Concordia.
“It was over 80 works that were analyzed, discussed and interpreted by university students, so it’s really a perspective from one of our communities that brought richness to the collection,” said Deveault.
For Lerner, creating the website with her students was meant to give them an idea of what they could hope to do after graduation.
“I felt that it’s really so important to understand, because we have to be a little pragmatic—you want to get a job when you graduate, so what kind of work is out there?” said Lerner. Since the target audience for this website is the general public, this meant the tone had to be different from the academic art history essays her students were used to producing.
“I really wanted to create something that the students were working on that gave them skills that they could take into their working life after they’ve graduated,” said Lerner. “So I’m really a believer in web publishing.”
At first, there was no intention to display the student works at the museum. Space at the museum is booked years ahead of time, and there was simply no room to fit in 20 additional artworks done by the students. That changed along the way.
Deveault was impressed with the quality of work produced by this next generation of artists and art historians. So much so that she found an unused space that would be able to host the student work.
“When I received the texts from the works in the collections, and then the interpretations from the studio students… well, we’re always curious to see what’s there, but it was really a joy to see the diversity in interpretations,” said Deveault.
Of the 20 works submitted by the studio students, 11 were selected to be installed in the museum’s promenade, which leads to the education centre. Of those 11, two are videos, ten are displayed as virtual exhibits, and one is a physical work by Geneviève Grenier, displayed at the entrance to the promenade.The virtual works are presented as images on screens along the promenade of the museum. Designed as slide-shows, each of the three screens rotates between the works and includes the text analyses written by the art history students.
Geneviève Grenier, Fémelot, 2015, dyed textiles, stockings, glass, wood, cables, oil and milk. Photo by Guy L’Heureux.
“I always believed in the genius of my students. I’ve seen so many amazing things happen at these levels, so I thought yeah, let’s get on board,” said Endacott, who was teaching a 200-level fibres course, where students learned printing and dyeing techniques and how to work with different textiles. “It doesn’t matter if it’s small—it’s the validation of being within the museum’s walls that’s really exciting for a younger student, even for an experienced artist.”
Endacott hopes that the effort put in by the students comes through in the exhibit at the museum. “You don’t hear a lot of people say ‘Well anyone could be an engineer.’ There’s always this assumption that in the arts, it’s very easy,” she said.
In addition to the website and the exhibited student works, a series of videos depicting the process of assembling the website are available on YouTube.
PART TWO
Amanda Grzelak was at work when she found out her installation, Family Roots, would be displayed on a virtual screen in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA).
“I was just completely ecstatic—I was running around, literally jumping for joy. I was in shock, I was telling everyone who was around me. I called my parents right away,” said Grzelak, a studio arts student who was in Endacott’s class. “It really felt like it was an amazing opportunity, especially for an undergraduate student, and it felt like it gave me hope for doing art. Like all the hard work was finally starting to pay off.”
Amanda Grzelak, Family Roots, 2015, direct application of dye and block printed pigment on cotton, Styrofoam inserts, hand and machine sewn. Photo by Guy L’Heureux.
For the students involved in the project, Family Works was more than just an assignment. It was a portfolio-builder and an opportunity.
For Kimberly Glassman, an art history student, part of the challenge was easing into a new mindset.
“We were used to writing essays to be graded in class, but for this it was different because we were peer editing each other’s work,” said Glassman about the Family Works website. “We were more apprehensive that it was going to be read by more people than just the teacher and our peers.”
The website hosts work by 16 art history students and 20 studio arts students. Each written assignment submitted for the class was peer-reviewed, edited, rewritten, re-edited and rewritten again before being posted.
“Above all, I was intrigued by the idea of virtual museums. […] They’re everywhere now and they’re the next step for museum development, I think,” said Glassman. “I was just so happy to hear that the unseen collections of the Museum of Fine Arts were going to be put online virtually in a place people could visit it all the time.”
When Dina Georgaros found out her work would be featured on a website in collaboration with the MMFA, she was intimidated at first—but Lerner pushed everyone to do their best and embrace the challenge.
“It gave us a voice, in a sense,” said Georgaros. “The thing with this project was that it meant something because we were going to be working in collaboration with the museum, and we worked really hard on all the papers we wrote.”
Sarah Amarica, who finished her bachelor’s in art history and has begun her masters’ at Concordia, is happy knowing that the assignments everyone worked on during the year came together to form the website.
“One of our goals was to make art accessible. So we constructed our projects knowing that it might be read by an audience that might not have an art history background,” said Amarica. “It would be great if someone read one of these papers and learned a little bit more about an artwork that they wouldn’t have known before.”
For Grzelak, her installation presented another, additional challenge: size. Her work, consisting of several “roots” intertwined and weaved together, is nine by three yards.
“Working with such a large-scale object was really time consuming and was really a big risk, because, if it didn’t end up looking like how I imagined or didn’t end up working as well as I thought, all of that time would have amounted to nothing,” said Grzelak. “And it’s hard to restart.”
Both the studio art and art history students had the support and confidence of their teachers, who pushed them to write better, produce better and surpass even their own expectations.
“Dr. Lerner puts a lot of faith in undergraduate students. She values our thoughts and our writing,” said Glassman.
South Asian films are taking over Montreal at the SAFF Festival.
The South Asian Film Festival of Montreal brings works from India, Pakistan and Nepal to the J.A de Sève cinema
You can now see Bengal, Mumbai, Lahore, Delhi and many other areas of Southern Asia without leaving Montreal.
The South Asian Film Festival of Montreal (SAFF) will be screening a specially-selected collection of intriguing, eclectic and diverse films hailing from all areas of the Indian subcontinent for the sixth year in a row, from Nov. 4 to 6.
“One of the things I’ve been saying to people is that when you attend the whole festival, from Friday to Sunday, you end up getting a virtual visual tour of South Asia,” said Dushyant Yajnik, the director of SAFF.
The festival will present both short and longer feature films, including documentaries and works of fiction. “One of our criteria is to present anything that describes the human condition and all its complexity in an authentic way,” said Yajnik. Though not all the films are in English, they will all have English subtitles.
This year, the festival will be presenting 17 films. After each screening, there will be a panel where the film will be discussed.
“Every film, we have a panel discussion because I think it’s important that we have a serious discussion,” said Yajnik. “We sometimes invite the film’s director, local experts from film studies and film critics from the local newspapers.” According to Yajnik people from the community who have background knowledge in Indian films, or in the specific issues the films raise are also invited to take part in the panel discussion.
Yajnik said the panels allow for communication between different groups, and they welcome audience participation through the question periods that take place after the discussion.
Highlights of this year’s festival include Angry Indian Goddesses, which will open the festival on Nov. 4. In this film, a group of friends take an impromptu trip to Goa, India as one member of the group has a surprise announcement to make. Directed by Pan Nalin, this is reputed to be India’s first female ‘buddy’ movie, depicting a close friendship between a group of women.
Song of Lahore tells the story of musicians determined to practice their craft, despite the strict Sharia laws that prohibit any music that is not religious. The film is directed by Andy Schocken and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who won an Oscar this year for A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness. Song of Lahore will screen on Nov. 5 at 7 p.m.
Borealis is the story of a father trying desperately to reconnect with his daughter, Aurora, who is slowly becoming blind.
Borealis, which had its premiere in Montreal last year, returns for a limited screening
Things aren’t exactly peachy. Jonah (Jonas Chernick) owes Tubby (Kevin Pollak) close to $100,000 in gambling money. His house is in shambles. His daughter Aurora (Joey King) is slowly losing her vision to a rare illness and wants nothing to do with her father who just never seems to be able to keep a promise. Yet, despite his daughter’s resentment towards him, all Jonah wants is for Aurora to see the Northern Lights once before completely losing her sight.
Borealis, written by and starring Jonas Chernick, is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. Chernick based his idea for Borealis on Blind, a short film by Borealis’ director, Sean Garrity. The film has garnered recognition at a few festivals, with Joey King winning Best Actress at both the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Canadian Filmmakers Festival, where Garrity also won Best Director.
“For me, the genesis of the feature film came from when I started to imagine who the characters would be in my version of the story. I immediately saw a father and a daughter who each had a crutch or an addiction,” said Chernick. In the film, Jonah’s love of playing cards creates tension and resentment between him and Aurora, ultimately fraying an already fragile relationship.
Having written the script, produced the movie and played the main character, Chernick was intimately involved in nearly every aspect of the film—from conception to post-production. According to Chernick, writing the script made it easier to portray Jonah, as he understood the psychology of the character and the motivations behind the choices he was making since he had orchestrated them in the writing.
The strength of the film comes from the strength of the characters and the wide spectrum of emotion they display. However, there were also challenges associated with Chernick’s role, as he had to go to some dark places while portraying the lying, gambling-addicted father. According to Chernick, “playing a shitty dad” was one of the toughest challenges of portraying Jonah.
Chernick, who has two daughters himself, described Jonah as a reckless father who has no idea how to connect with his daughter. “He’s a mess. And he makes terrible choices for most of the movie. It was difficult to tap into that, as someone who takes great pride in the choices he makes as a father,” Chernick said.
The film is not only beautifully scripted and portrayed, but it is also visually strong, with well-composed and interesting shots throughout the film. A recurring visual cue is that of smudged or dirty glass or reflections. Since the movie deals with the issue of blindness, Garrity wanted to use this concept of skewed sight in the visual composition.
“Shawn really liked the idea of blindness as a metaphor,” Chernick explained. “Not just visual blindness, but blindness to yourself, to your emotions, to what is right in front of you.”
As the film progresses, we slowly begin to see the characters through dirty glass or reflections less, as these characters finally see each other more clearly than they have ever before, according to Chernick.
Borealis returns to theaters in Montreal for a week, starting Oct. 28. in English at the Cineplex Forum, and dubbed in French at the Quartier Latin Cineplex.
Cinderella brought magical comedy to Place des arts for four showings.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella offers a fresh take on a beloved story
When you think of a knight in shining armour, it typically doesn’t mean an actual knight in sparkly armour—but that’s exactly what Prince Topher (Hayden Stanes) wore as he strutted on stage. Not long after his entrance, he began to fight a gigantic monster while simultaneously looking rather dashing.
Rodger and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, the 2013 Tony award-winning Broadway musical, was at Place des Arts last week for a limited showing. Featuring a talented cast of singers and dancers, the magical show had a hopeful lightheartedness about it—while also featuring very real, self-reflective moments of social commentary.
The show recounted the fabled and beloved story of Cinderella (Tatyana Lubov)—a handmaid-turned-princess who wins the heart of the dashing prince with the help of her fairy godmother, a pumpkin carriage and a handful of white mice-turned-horses.
Although the plot focused on the prince’s search for his princess, Cinderella was so much more than just a love story about two characters destined to find each other. While keeping the classic essence and framework of the fairy tale, the Broadway musical brought a witty and comedic twist to it and delved into the characters’ hopes, dreams and fears.
Beneath the traditional romance lies the story of a lost prince who must rule his kingdom while keeping his parent’s legacy alive; of a bureaucrat trying to ensure the prince’s comfort and way of life at the expense of the citizens; of a mother who wants the best for her daughters; and of a hopelessly unromantic guy who just wants to take the girl of his dreams out on a date to serve soup at the soup kitchen.
Cinderella is hopeful, despite being used and abused by her stepmother and stepsisters. She is a young woman trying to find herself in a world that keeps putting her down, and she maintains an overt optimism and kind spirit despite her plight.
Prince Topher has just returned from university and wants to rule his kingdom as his parents did before him—in a just and fair manner. His associate makes it easy: hand over the signet ring and he’ll take care of the boring, dreary paperwork. The prince’s naïve trust for his advisor, Sebastian (Ryan M. Hunt), leads to political corruption—unbeknownst to the prince. After a lifetime of being molded by the people around him, he is eager to try and find himself.
The cast included a multitude of zany characters, including the passionate political activist Jean-Michel (Chris Woods) and Marie, a sometimes crazy and eclectic friend who ends up being Cinderella’s fairy godmother (Leslie Jackson). The characters’ witty dialogue and funny interactions all added to the comedic element of the show.
The strong cast, relatable characters and fantastic quips and dialogue were all brought together by the incredible set design. Without missing a beat, the stage transformed from a forest to a town square to the interior of a palace. These switches were so well executed that they were almost invisible—as if by magic.
Be sure to check out Place des Arts’ website for updates and information about other upcoming shows.
