[Summer 2025]
Thematic presentation:
by Jacques Doyon
The three artist books that we feature in this issue were founded on a quest for identity rooted in duality, encounter, and memory. They bear testament to a search for self, built from life stories, diasporic links, transmission of heritages. Photographic portraits and self-portraits are central to these illustrated narratives that trace back origins, the passage of time, and an experience of alterity.
Mallory Lowe Mpoka
Architecture of the Self: What Lives Within Us
This book is an apt reflection of its creator’s complexly constructed identity; she is of Cameroonian and Belgian descent, was born in Montreal, identifies as queer, and has become, since her grandmother’s death, the matriarch of her Bamileke family. Photographic archives, self-portraits, and the palpable presence of traditional materials (terracotta, banco, textiles), combined with the materiality of the pages (which include cut-outs, transparencies, inserts, and foldouts), are central to the work, which is imagined as both palimpsest and kaleidoscope.
with an essay by Érika Nimis
Fatine-Violette Sabiri
Kiss Landing
Smoothly moving back and forth between Montreal and Casablanca to find friends and family in places that are fundamentally different but brought together by friendship and intimacy: that’s the subject of an imposing book that contains the traces of a decade of discovery of photography and navigation between two layers of identity that seamlessly melt together. Its pages contain many portraits and interior views, as well as landscapes, often animated by the presence of relatives.
with an essay by Fanny Bieth
Ed Pien
Presente: Pasado/Futuro
Ten years ago, Taiwan-born Toronto artist Ed Pien undertook a unique project with a group of elderly people living in Cuba: to have conversations with them about the passage of time. The end of the project is undefined, dependent only on the death or voluntary withdrawal of the participants. The two-volume book (with portraits, video stills, excerpts of exchanges, and essays) is a keepsake of the highlights of these encounters. The project’s long duration and singular location, underscored by the predominance of Spanish, speak of a real engagement around universal questions.
with an essay by Bernard Schütze
[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: : Ciel variable 129 – D’UN CONTINENT À L’AUTRE ]
[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Introduction ]