Audrey Genois, MOMENTA 2019: Broadening the Field for the Biennale — Jacques Doyon

[Fall 2019]

An interview by Jacques Doyon

[Excerpt]
Audrey Genois has been the executive director of MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image (formerly Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal) since 2016. She was assistant curator at the Galerie de l’UQAM from 2002 to 2016. Over fifteen years, she organized more than sixty exhibitions and ten national and international touring exhibitions, edited and coordinated forty publications on contemporary art, and managed the UQAM art collection. Among her curatorial projects have been the exhibitions Guillaume Simoneau. Murder (Les Rencontres d’Arles), Expansion. Les 40 ans de l’UQAM (with Louise Déry), Vidéozoom. L’entre-images (presented in twelve venues in Canada and abroad, with the curatorial collective La Fabrique d’expositions), and Motion (in collaboration avec HEAD–Genève and La Fabrique d’expositions). She was associate curator for the exhibition David Altmejd: The Index, presented in the Canadian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007. For the 2019 edition of MOMENTA, she was a member of the curatorial team with María Wills Londoño (guest curator) and Maude Johnson.

JD: This year’s biennale will be the second since the name change and repositioning of the organization in 2017. Can you remind us of what motivated you to proceed with this repositioning after you became executive director in 2016?

AG: I wouldn’t say that the biennale is being repositioned. It’s more a strategic reflection to contextualize the developments planned for the organization and, above all, to think about how we can raise the biennale’s visibility on the local, national, and international levels. We want to maintain continuity while trying new things to spread awareness of our activities and multiplying collaborations. It is important to mention that Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal (MPM) and MOMENTA should not be compared or contrasted, as it is all one and the same organization. This organization is thirty years old, so I think it’s healthy to ask ourselves questions about its future and the next chapters in its history…

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