[Winter 2026]

Uchronie
by Marcel Blouin

Cinémathèque québécoise, Montréal
13.06.2025 — 14.09.2025

[EXCERPT]

At first glance, the gallery space of the Cinémathèque québécoise seemed almost too museum-like for the exhibition Uchronie, making me feel like a privileged person from this planet taking a few minutes to familiarize himself with the problems of a different world. Then, little by little, the works by the artist duo Patrick Dionne and Miki Gingras drew me in.

Uchronie was built around the short film YULÍ. Dionne and Gingras would say of this work, presented at the end of the exhibition path, that it was made as an experiment, from a gathering of stories on the theme of identity and territory, in a neighbourhood in Medellín, Colombia. YULÍ is an account, partly fictional and partly true, of a university student who discovers the hard realities of one of the city’s districts, guided by someone to whom she has attached herself. Probing the role of the media in an urban development imbued with lies, judgment, and arbitrary stances, the work was a perfect reflection of the exhibition. I began to feel powerless as I watched the film: can people who contest the “development” of a neighbourhood “disappear” without anyone being able to do something?

[…]

[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 131 – Collecting ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: Uchronie]

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Marcel Blouin, born in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, in 1960, studied social sciences and art history, then was director of Vox Populi (today VOX), Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal (today MOMENTA) – of which he was one of the founders – and Ciel variable. From 2001 to 2025, he was the general and artistic director of EXPRESSION, Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe, and co-director of ORANGE, L’événement d’art actuel de Saint-Hyacinthe.