Marie-Josée Rousseau, At the Crossroads of Photographic Practices — Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Entrevues
Authors: Jérôme Delgado

Founder of the only gallery in Quebec devoted exclusively to photography, Marie-Josée Rousseau talks about her motivations and her role in the art market. She came to photography through digital technology – which allowed her “unparalleled exploration” – has become a spokesperson for the image as object. In her view, “photography must be embodied in an object that can be seen and touched.” She sees her gallery, La Castiglione, as a crossroads of currents, disciplines, and schools of thought. The name refers to a historical figure in photography used by Rousseau so that it “could grow outside of me” and with whom everyone would identify – “a concept that isn’t as easy when the name of the owner is front and centre.” Having become nomadic in 2020, La Castiglione and its business model have to be rethought, and Rousseau has given herself a year to consider how its activities will continue.

Alexis Desgagnés, Ammoniaque — Ève Dorais

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Readings
Authors: Ève Dorais | Artists: Alexis Desgagnés

Offering views of an industrial neighbourhood in the Montreal district of Hochelaga, Ammoniaque elegantly combines the documentary approach – “the importance of the subject and the picture taking,” as Ève Dorais specifies – and the materiality of the photograph through the use of analogue cameras and photosensitive film. In Dorais’s view, Alexis Desgagnés’s “off-axis photographic gaze” and attention to details give rise to an almost-spiritual dimension. Desgagnés – who is also an art historian, curator, and poet –explores words written on a corrugated-iron wall to uncover urban poetry. Similar to Claude Gauvreau’s Exploréen language, the words are imbued with “pain, incongruity, and euphoria.” This is an essential book, Dorais says, because it makes us aware of an urban space that falls between the cracks but is full of humanity, and it “encourages us to reconsider our conceptions of landscape and of beautiful photography.”

La fête : The People Came to Party — Dayna McLeod

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Readings
Authors: Dayna McLeod

“A feast for the heart, head, and soul,” is how Dayna McLeod describes La Fête, the perfect book to look at in the context of deprivation and isolation caused by the pandemic. The hundred photographs gathered from a call for submissions from Quebec and Brazilian artists are documentary, portraiture, and candid images. Freely associated but carefully organized, they offer a “gateway to feelings,” “a journey of party places and people,” “party and reverie … that pull on our memories, longing, and fear of missing out.” Although an audio application gives the images a sound environment, the essays give them meaning by teasing out the political momentum of the theme.

Women Street Photographers — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Readings
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly

Like the photograph appearing on the cover, the book’s intention is obvious: to direct our attention toward a woman who is looking. “That is exactly what Women Street Photographers invites us to do,” writes Ariane Noël de Tilly, “to get to know the work of women photographers and the … events that they have captured in the public space.” Noël de Tilly describes this project, compiled from a series of annual exhibitions with the same title, as offering an overview in one hundred photographs whose rather free association “highlights the great variety of approaches to street photography.” This heterogeneous organization underlines “the happy coincidences linked to our experience of the public space.” Of the two essays included in the book, one evokes the intersection since the nineteenth century of two histories: that of photography and that of the status of women.

Érika Nimis, Mutants — Christian Roy

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Christian Roy | Artists: Érika Nimis

Erika Nimis’s photographic practice, both documentary and experimental, leads her to find traces of places and abandoned objects. The body of work titled Mutants – reproductions of documents, close-ups of text excerpts, images of places, people, and objects – is the result of her discovery of the site of the University of Mutants, which no longer exists. The institution, once situated on the Senegalese island of Gorée, supported research on “endogenous alternatives” that might, in Christian Roy’s view, have resulted in a different world, developed in the Southern Hemisphere. This “uchronic utopia” is reflected in Nimis’s melancholic images. “Combining Afrofuturism and retrofuturism, Mutants offers an archaeological immersion in this site left in the planning stage,” Roy notes, concluding that this “photographic research project … is both inspiring and poetic.”

Yann Pocreau, Les Impermanents — Daniel Roy

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Daniel Roy | Artists: Yann Pocreau

Continuing Yann Pocreau’s reflections on the materiality of light, Impermanencies brought together works inspired by the celestial vault. With photographs of all types, including some produced without a camera, Pocreau ventured, as Daniel Roy notes, into a meditation on the cosmos, time, “the fleetingness of life, and the finiteness of living beings and things.” His experiments with the printing of light was redolent with homage to the pioneers of photography. And there’s more. The presence of prints not treated with fixer, “doomed to imminent extinction,” introduced thoughts about “all the creators whose names are lost to history, who have been erased by time.” As Roy observes, “The photograph is not as permanent as might have been desired. It can be altered. Memory, too.”

Chuck Samuels, Becoming Photography — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Chuck Samuels

Chuck Samuels has been delving into the mise en abîme of photography, and the photographic portrait, since 1991. Brought together under the title Becoming Photography in exhibitions in two venues, these different bodies of work arise from two paradigms, in Sylvain Campeau’s view: the now-settled issue of the originality of an artwork and the current universe of “unending ramifications.” Campeau acknowledges that the evolution of Samuels’s practice, between appropriation of the reputation of “illustrious forebears” and contestation of the “hierarchy of people and genres,” fits within the “dissolution of barriers among media,” which are now all similar, all digital. “This desire to become the photograph,” he notes, “was deployed at the very moment when it could provoke only out-and-out rejection.”

Capture Photography Festival 2021 — Karen Henry

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Karen Henry

Given the multifaceted nature of the Capture festival, Karen Henry decided to focus on the part that took place in the public space. It must be said that the 2021 edition was not without controversy after the sudden removal of Steven Shearer’s series devoted to sleep. “The sleeping subjects are inherently vulnerable,” Henry notes, “and they made a number of people uneasy.” Henry had a number of questions concerning this “debacle.” Had the organizers taken account of the fentanyl crisis raging in Vancouver? Had an advertising company decided what could be seen? Henry also reviews other projects, including those by Anique Jordan and Jordan Bennett, which, by talking about Black or Indigenous communities, “evoke the ongoing experience of loss, but also hold the promise (and challenge) of so much more to be said.”

Paul Walde, Requiem for a Glacier — Reilley Bishop-Stall

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Reilley Bishop-Stall | Artists: Paul Walde

Initially an oratorio performed in situ, then a video installation, Requiem for a Glacier originated in a natural site in British Columbia threatened by a planned (and abandoned) ski resort project. As climate change continues to warm the planet, Paul Walde’s work, evocative of both mourning and struggle, remains relevant, even years after it was first performed. In images, it enhances “temporal and visual effects that mirror the dramatic urgency of the oratorio,” writes Reilley Bishop-Stall. However, the artwork as a whole is questionable in the eyes of the Ktunaxa nation. “The projection of such a … lamentation as a Latin Requiem onto sacred Ktunaxa territory raises … issues that cannot be avoided. That being said, Walde’s rooting of the score in both ancient Euro-Christian traditions and contemporary Canadian politics is potentially productive for evaluating the divergent interests.”

Emanuel Licha, zo reken — André Lavoie

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: André Lavoie | Artists: Emanuel Licha

After years of creating representations of war, Emanuel Licha immerses himself in a Haiti in constant struggle. His documentary zo reken, closer to linear film than his previous works, draws on both recorded and offscreen images. “This is a habitual posture for him, as he probes the subjective nature of our gaze,” notes André Lavoie. The insurrectional atmosphere in the Haitian capital is viewed through a double frame: that of the camera and that of the windows of a zo reken (literally, shark bone), as the 4×4 vehicles used by foreign powers and humanitarian organizations are called locally. “From within this vehicle, Haiti is revealed in a perfectly defined aesthetic offering, a gaze delineated as if the spectator were also shut into this closed space.”

Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Carne y Arena — Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean Gagnon | Artists: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

A fascinating voice in the growing medium of virtual reality, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s solid reputation was borne out in his installation presented in Montreal, Carne y Arena. Jean Gagnon challenges the enthusiasm shown for this “exceptional storytelling experience,” although he acknowledges its high quality in that respect. “Iñárritu’s work,” he writes, “is even more ingenious, for his installation cannot be summarized simply in narration, and the experience is not simply virtual.” This work, out the ordeal of clandestine migration, “articulates something other than simulated reality” and reaches past the phenomenon of what is perceived. “Carne y Arena,” Gagnon concludes, “questions art’s effectiveness, role, and power to generate change by oscillating between emotion and intellect, the sensory and the intelligible.”

Meryl McMaster, There Once Was A Song — Stéphanie Hornstein

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stéphanie Hornstein | Artists: Meryl McMaster

In the exhibition that Meryl McMaster organized during a residency during which she worked with the McCord Museum collection, she explored human beings’ paradoxical relationship with nature. To the birds under glass bell jars conserved by the museum, McMaster responded with works that, in Stéphanie Hornstein’s view, portray struggle and suffering related to the Dutch traditional vanitas style. Although the exhibition embraces “the transience of all lifeforms,” as Hornstein describes it, McMaster’s work is not pessimistic in tone. “Death, McMaster insists, is a natural, if disconcerting, process and instead of denying it – say, by sticking stuffed birds in bell jars – we would do well to learn from life’s cycles.”

Luc Bourdon. Playing with Images and Sounds — Nicole Gingras

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Nicole Gingras | Artists: Luc Bourdon

Luc Bourdon, a major figure in video and film, has produced some fifty works, many on the subject of culture, including La mémoire des anges (2008) and La part du diable (2017), built on material from the NFB archives. In this interview, conducted during celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of Vidéographe, with which Bourdon has worked, Nicole Gingras talks to him about his early career, his love of words, and his vision of editing. Bourdon, who adopted video in the 1980s for its “potential of saying ‘I see,’” acknowledges that he was influenced by Gary Hill and Michael Snow. He owes them the idea of using images as “a means of inserting words and phrases” into his work. After creating in the “immediacy” provided by video, Bourdon became involved in productions that required “more energy and research,” such as La mémoire des anges, an “impressionistic” film on which he spent a good deal of time.

David Tomas, Speech and silence — Vincent Bonin

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Vincent Bonin | Artists: David Tomas

Invited by Ciel variable to re-evaluate David Tomas’s practice, Vincent Bonin offers a cross section of the intellectual trajectory of artist and anthropologist Tomas, who died in 2019. Bonin discusses the importance that Tomas accorded to silence, even up to his final work, which bore the ambiguous words “No Lot.” “This ‘no’ now resonates in the posthumous space, as a last form of the resistance of silence after the interruption of speech,” Bonin observes. The creator of kinetic installations marked by “semiotic complexity,” Tomas was known for his technological innovations (he began to use strobe lights, chronometers, and automatic triggers in the 1980s). He participated in the critical reassessment of the history of photography, as did Jeff Wall and Alan Sekula, while avoiding “statements of intent,” preferring to base his work on fragmentary or performative thought, and he remained silent even “when he was present.”

Moyra Davey. The Personal Narrative and the Art of Fragmented Anti-dogma Narration — Nicolas Mavrikakis

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Essays
Authors: Nicolas Mavrikakis | Artists: Moyra Davey

In reaction to “left-wing extremism” and campaigns for “art that is moral and bland, with no grey areas,” critic Nicolas Mavrikakis offers an impassioned reading of Moyra Davey’s practice, and specifically her video i confess (2019). This work, which addresses polarizing themes, leads, in Mavrikakis’s view, to reflection “beyond the opposition between good and evil.” Unclassifiable and complex, based on plays of images within the image, the video is “a sort of Russian doll” with multiple references, and Davey quotes James Baldwin and Pierre Vallières, among others. Like i confess, and Joyce Wieland’s film Pierre Vallières (1972), upon which Mavrikakis also comments, this essay rises against dogmas and suggests that we not get bogged down in fixed, simple readings of cultural history, including when we discuss Vallières, the author of White Niggers of America.

Robert Graham, Three Montréal Photographers + — Zoë Tousignant, Robert Graham’s History of Photography in Montreal

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Donigan Cumming, Michel Campeau, Tom Gibson

A reflection on Robert Graham’s activities as a critic and collector, this exhibition of three Montreal photographers (and more) opens broad perspectives. It accounts for an approach that combines the acquisition of artworks and spending time with their creators (in this case, Tom Gibson, Donigan Cumming, and Michel Campeau) with the development of a critical vision of photography. Zoë Tousignant defends the principle that an image is appreciated as much for what it doesn’t show as what it does show. She notes that Graham, whose collection comprises works that are “visual correlatives” of his thought, is interested in the parergon, Jacques Derrida’s concept that has it that “what resides outside of a work of art is in fact fundamental.” “Telling the history of photography in Montreal cannot involve the exclusion of all that is foreign,” writes Tousignant, who sees the inclusion in the exhibition of images by Muybridge, Tichý, and Parr as reflecting “the total imbrication of the local scene with the international.”

Amandine Alessandra, Marine Baudrillard, Carole Lévesque, Katharina Niemeyer et Magali Uhl, Écran total — Edward Pérez­-González, The Absence Machine

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Authors: Edward Pérez-González | Artists: Charlie Doyon

The result of a research project around Jean Baudrillard’s reflection on the notion of the “total screen,” this exhibition brings together seven artists who comment on the omnipresence of the screen and its effects on our lives. According to critic Edward Pérez-González, “the works that form the core of the exhibition are based on the critical vision of the world of Baudrillard the philosopher … a world in which the statement becomes the screen itself.” Baudrillard the photographer, whose images are present in the exhibition, proposes, as Pérez-González writes, “to capture the value of experience … of the ‘I’ that I am.” It is this subjectivity, linked to a body of work attentive to light, that is tending to disappear in the era of screens. “Through the accumulation of sequences, decontextualization, and schematization,” Pérez-González summarizes, “a disconnected world is shown and scrutinized soullessly.”

William A. Ewing et Holly Roussell, Civilization – Quelle époque ! — Julie Martin, A Photographic Mapping of the Twenty­First Century

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios
Authors: Julie Martin | Artists: Massimo Vitali

Two hundred works, a hundred and ten photographers, eight sections: this ambitious exhibition, observes critic Julie Martin, “offers a glimpse of the movements that run through today’s world: interrelations, invisible flows, influences, mobility of goods and human beings.” Martin bases her reflection on the principle of “cognitive mapping,” formulated by Fredric Jameson to evoke what escapes our gaze, our senses, and our experience. Although she sees Civilization as a descendant of Edward Steichen’s legendary exhibition The Family of Man, she underlines that this new show is a true panorama of diversity – and not a portrayal of capitalistic hegemony. “The curators do not renounce the idea of a human community,” Martin writes, “but they respect its disparities [and] make visible the mechanisms of power (hidden in The Family of Man) that shape our world.”

Exhibiting Photography

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Portfolios

[Fall 2021] Thematic presentation by Jacques Doyon The thematic section in this issue presents three exhibitions that show how photography can actively contribute to shaping a critical vision of the world. By bringing together a large number of images and points of view, the first sets out to offer an overall sense of the changes […]

Exhibiting Photography to Talk about Global Changes

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

The thematic section in this issue presents three exhibitions that show how photography can contribute to shaping a critical vision of the world. By bringing together a large number of images and points of view, the first sets out to offer an overall sense of the changes affecting global civilization. Inspired by Jean Baudrillard’s notion of the “total screen,” the second contrasts traditional photography and its mutant, digital, and interactive form, which augments the real at the scale of a screen interface. The third highlights the career of a photography critic whose vision is fed by his encounter with the works he has collected and their creators, while being attentive to the development of a photographic community.

Bertrand Carrière, Learning photography from books — Serge Allaire

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Entrevues, Interviews
Authors: Serge Allaire | Artists: Bertrand Carrière

Bernard Carrière, who has produced numerous photobooks over a forty-year career, talks about the process behind the retrospective exhibition and monograph, both titled Solstice, and reveals that he came to photography through print publications. “I really learned about photography through magazines and the LIFE encyclopedia,” he says. “And the discovery of books was fundamental. The first one I had was a short monograph on Henri Cartier-Bresson.” “I learned photography from books,” he continues, and he favours that very medium for deploying his series. Before making this choice, sequential organization of images, as if making a film, was the basis for his creative inspiration. “One creates by subtracting. If I’ve learned one thing with the editor of my films … it’s how to see the tree (the image) and the forest (the book, the film) at the same time: the unique importance of each image, each shot, in a whole that makes sense.”

Ron Jude — Louis Perreault

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Louis Perreault | Artists: Ron Jude

Ron Jude’s photobook “vibrates on the table,” according to Louis Perreault, so utterly does the sensory experience offered overflow the edges of the images. In Perreault’s view, Jude, a fundamental figure in the publishing world, has innovated once again, and he also takes a new direction in his practice: here, the landscape is the subject, the narrative thread of the images is less influential, and the strategy turns to accumulation rather than juxtaposition. 12 Hz is like “a musical composition,” Perreault writes, “each image acting as a track added to the others, each vibrating at a different frequency. Like a composer at the mixing console, Jude adjusts the levels of each track, measuring out the abstraction, the textures, the reproduction of space and place.” The reference to low frequencies in the title suggests that sound wave are forces that shape landscapes, imperceptible movements that permeate the dark-toned images.

Une histoire mondiale des femmes photographes — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Claudia Polledri

This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Rejouer le vivant – Amélie Giguère

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Amélie Giguère, Anne Bénichou

This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens, Querelle entre deux puces pour savoir à qui appartient le chien sur lequel elles vivent — Noémie Fortin

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | exhibition, Exhibition reviews
Authors: Noémie Fortin | Artists: Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens

The videos, installations, and photographs that form the exhibition arising from a residency at the Grantham Foundation offer “a sensitive, well-informed portrait of the use, contamination, and appropriation of land in rural areas,” as Noémie Fortin describes it. Here, Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens continue their approach based on the desire to materialize and make “visible” abstract concepts and even censored studies – as the case for the work L’affaire Louis Robert. They also emphasize the contrast between the “violence and care” inherent to cultivating the soil, as in the video Herber, désherber. “The pieces that they have brought together offer different gateways to the issues of ownership and exclusion … in order to provoke both an emotional reaction and a critical reflection.”

John Akomfrah, Vertigo Sea — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: John Akomfrah

The three-channel video Vertigo Sea offers an immersive and panoramic environment based on “a powerful montage” of still and moving images, as well as juxtaposed and superimposed sounds, including music, recordings of nature, songs, and texts read by off-screen voices. The narrative proposed by John Akomfrah makes the ocean, “site of history, of beauty and bounty,” into “a scene of disaster.” “Human forces” have provoked this transformation, as shown in a succession of images that evoke slavery and water pollution. Despite references to Géricault, Turner, Friedrich, Melville, and Woolf, the work, writes Jill Glessing, “prompts viewers to consider their own contemporary relationship with the savagery perpetrated within and against that watery paradise.”

Sara A. Tremblay — Paule Mackrous

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | exhibition, Exhibition reviews
Authors: Paule Mackrous | Artists: Sara A. Tremblay

Created in the context of isolation imposed by the pandemic, the visual and virtual essay Tout t’empêche, posted on Instagram, is a well-thought-out project, resonating with the reality of the health crisis and the food autonomy movement. Through a series of images of harvested flowers, fruits, and vegetables, Sara A. Tremblay displays her daily life on a farm in the Orford region. In the view of Paule Mackrous, the work forms a “ritual,” the scope of which goes beyond intimacy, by highlighting an ecosystem of light, wind, insects, nocturnal animals, and more. “A counterweight is thus offered to both the direct and indirect effects of COVID-19, such as anosmia (loss of the senses of small and taste), physical distancing, and the requirement to touch nothing – effects that prevent us from experiencing all the sensory dimensions of the world.”

Gagnon-Forest, Séquence aérienne — Élisabeth Recurt

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | exhibition, Exhibition reviews
Authors: Élisabeth Recurt | Artists: Gagnon-Forest

The duo of Gagnon-Forest, sensitive to the issues linking space and the collective imagination, produce works linked to sociological and aesthetic concerns. The six photographs that they inserted in the large windows of a municipal building alternate scientific (topographic) images and landscapes blurred by the amalgamation of points of view (using the parallax principle). The objectivity of the former, black-and-white digitized cadastral plans, is contrasted against the latter, blue-tinted images. In Élisabeth Recurt’s view, this combination of “informational quality” and “visual quality with fictive content” points to urban constraints and evokes an inaccessible elsewhere. The “sociological and poetic threads” of Séquence aérienne remind her of the practice of Melvin Charney, who reflected “on the domination of the functional dimension over the social dimension in urban planning” and blended reality and fiction in his works.

Stan Douglas, Penn Station’s Half Century — Stefan Zebrowski-Rubin

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | exhibition, Exhibition reviews
Authors: Stefan Zebrowski-Rubin | Artists: Stan Douglas

Commissioned by the Public Art Fund and the Empire State Development for a new train-station lobby, Penn Station’s Half Century returns to a historical era of New York City. The artist, Stan Douglas, reconstructed narratives around Penn Station, the demolition of which in 1963 was the catalyst for the modern heritage preservation movement. The four photographic panels, which intermingle fact and fiction, are, in Stefan Zebrowski-Rubin’s opinion, “breath-taking tableaux.” “The composed conceptual work of the Vancouver School of photography here takes on epic new ambition,” Zebrowski-Rubin writes, revealing the audacious technique behind the creative process. He notes that the mastery and scale of Douglas’s work augur well for the approaching 2022 Vienna Biennale, at which Douglas will occupy the Canadian pavilion.

Isabelle Hayeur, (D)énoncer — Jean De Julio-Paquin

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | exhibition, Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jean De Julio-Paquin | Artists: Isabelle Hayeur

An ambitious project in three cities, seventy photographs, six videos, a digital platform, and a monograph, (D)énoncer would have been a major social and political event. The triple exhibition summarizes Isabelle Hayeur’s practice and “reveals, in a dialectic relationship, the fractures between an ideal world and the real world,” notes Jean De Julio-Paquin. Although, in De Julio-Paquin’s view, it was a good idea to divide the programs into themes, the event as a whole “bear[s] witness to the degradation of ecosystems and its repercussions on the social fabric.” De Julio-Paquin dwells on each of the sections, points out Hayeur’s commitment to forms of small-scale resistance – James C. Scott’s concept of infra-politics – and observes that her quest “is not to find beauty or magnificent in devastation, but simply to capture the ambivalence of our relationship with the material world and with life.”

Sandra Brewster — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | exhibition, Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Sandra Brewster

Toronto artist Sandra Brewster, who claims the right to opacity – a concept dear to Édouard Glissant – rethinks Blackness, situating it somewhere “between visibility and invisibility.” This is the conclusion drawn by Érika Nimis in her review of this finely tuned show focused on the deconstruction and representation of racialized people. Brewster transfers images onto a variety of supports (paper, wood, video) as “a metaphor for movement – that, among others, of her family’s migration,” Nimis writes. Long exposure times, models in motion, and random effects are among the means Brewster uses to defy the weighty heritage of photographic practices and crack open the notion of a monolithic Black community. Finally, in Nimis’s view, the most effective response to the stigmatization of appearance may be found in movement.

Judith Bellavance — Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Judith Bellavance

Sensitive to memory, loss, and emotion, Judith Bellavance found the subject for her series Le goût de la durée in an Irish community in the Gaspé – more specifically, in a church basement frozen in time. According to Mona Hakim, Bellavance reconstructs “a personal story through the marks of wear that the site bears and the emblematic objects that it contains.” Favouring a form of “magnification,” she bears witness to the users’ desire to “care for” their living environment. At a time when the fate of our patrimonial and religious architecture is being challenged, writes Hakim, Le goût de la durée sensitively and poetically evokes reflections on our relationship with history and memory – on a heritage just under the surface.

Chih-Chien Wang. A Gift of Images — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Essays
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Chih-Chien Wang

In this essay, Sylvain Campeau explores a genre rarely discussed and yet essential to Chih-Chien Wang’s work: the still life – and, in particular, the theme of food. Although fruits and vegetables inhabit Wang’s photographs and videos, that’s not the whole story. Turning to theoretical reflections such as that of Anne Cauquelin and her “table gifts,” Campeau regards the still life as “a fundamental part of a gift, and this is even more obvious in Wang’s work.” The idea of the gift, of a possible “gathering of guests,” leads Campeau to dwell on the artist’s works in which sharing takes the form of speaking, of “confessions.” “Through the exchange and the giving of human beings’ formative stories, there is a question of evading what in them determines us and defines us too closely,” he suggests.

Évariste Desparois. A Disappearance Story — Sébastien Hudon

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Essays
Authors: Sébastien Hudon | Artists: Évariste Desparois

It was the discovery and acquisition of facsimiles of works by Évariste Desparois that gave the impetus for Sébastien Hudon’s essay. Hudon describes the first layer of a long-term investigation, a noble mission to bring back from oblivion an inventive artist who created photomontages that earned him ephemeral celebrity. Unknown to historians, a mysterious figure even unto his death, Desparois emerged in an era when modernity was taking off in Quebec. Based on sparse documentation, Hudon follows Desparois’s career, finding clues to his stay in Europe in the orbit of Riopelle and Borduas. “What could have happened for a contemporary artist who was among the signatories of Prisme d’yeux and Refus global to be so utterly wiped out of the history of art and photography in Quebec?” Hudon wonders. “The surprising disappearance of Évariste Desparois, and the splitting up of his body of work, bespeaks the fate of so many artists.”

Alessandra Sanguinetti, Alec Soth, Araki Nobuyoshi / Juergen Teller. Correspondence and Adventures in Book Form — Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Essays
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Alec Soth, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Araki Nobuyoshi, Juergen Teller

Four photographers, three books, two cousins, one prisoner: beyond the heterogeneous content discussed, Jérôme Delgado addresses correspondence as a source of creativity and building closeness among culturally, socially, or physically distant individuals. During the pandemic lockdown, photographer Alec Soth exchanged letters with C. Fausto Cabrera, who was literally locked down in a prison. The result of their epistolary dialogue became a book and two unusual images. For decades, photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti travelled to the Argentinian countryside to visit two cousins who, through images, became both her creative correspondents and the protagonists in their adventures. Photographers Araki Nobuyoshi and Juergen Teller, both of them drawn to flesh and to life, offer a purely visual dialogue. Their book testifies, as a correspondence would, to a deep friendship, mutual respect, and the passage of time.

Franck Gérard, En l’état — Jacques Leenhardt, Franck Gérard’s Photographic Encounters

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Leenhardt | Artists: Franck Gérard

[Summer 2021] A story, July 13, 1999, to the present (excerpts) Franck Gérard A press clipping. A few months after my fall, a patron, Löic Francheteau from Flesselles, in a bar where I hang out showed me a newspaper clipping that he had cut out for me. The article tells the story of a young […]

Vincent Lafrance, Savoir vivre — Zoë Tousignant, The Artful Life (according to Vincent Lafrance)

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Portfolios
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Vincent Lafrance

In his web series Savoir vivre, Vincent Lafrance stages an alter ego in search of meaning and renewal. Blending autofiction and reflection on creation, the artist explores isolation, failure, and the quest for a new balance with the world.

Steve Giasson, Nouvelles Performances invisibles — Didier Morelli, The Artist’s Body, a Camera, and Various Performative Interactions

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Portfolios
Authors: Didier Morelli | Artists: Steve Giasson

Steve Giasson continues his Invisible Performances with a series of actions shared on social media during the pandemic. By linking his body to the camera, he creates a poetic and critical imaginary that questions social and media codes.

Shifted

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Portfolios
Artists: Franck Gérard, Steve Giasson, Vincent Lafrance

Three artists explore, each in their own way, the visible and the invisible: through erudition, autofiction, and subjectivity, their works reveal an ironic distance from the contemporary world.

What Is It Exactly about Human Life?

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

In the feature section of this issue, we encounter three artists, three aesthetic approaches that converge in a certain ironic distance. One, more erudite, draws on the layers of cultural history; another, more narrative, unfolds an autofiction through subtle touches and existential resonances; the last, more direct, affirms the subjectivity of a framing, of a gaze. What, in the end, of the visible and the invisible? What kind of knowledge helps us live better? And what do all these small things that go off track tell us about the state of the world?

Chuck Samuels. Gales, nez qui coulent et défaillances de garde-robe — Chuck Samuels

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Entrevues, Interviews
Authors: Chuck Samuels | Artists: Chuck Samuels

[Hiver 2021] An Interview by Chuck Samuels Chuck Samuels is an occasional freelance critic who lives and works in Montreal. This is the third in a series of interviews with Chuck Samuels appearing in Ciel variable. He has also published articles in such Canadian contemporary arts magazines as MIX, Fuse, and Vanguard (co-written with Moira […]

Ouvrages à souligner — Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Jérôme Delgado | Artists: Bertrand Carrière, Geneviève Cadieux, Isabelle Hayeur

[Hiver 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Par Jérôme Delgado (En français seulement)     Buy the issue  

Laurence Hervieux-Gosselin — Gabrielle Sarthou

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Gabrielle Sarthou | Artists: Laurence Hervieux-Gosselin

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Fenêtre oubliée Galerie la Castiglione chez Produit Rien, Montréal Du 3 au 26 septembre 2020 By Gabrielle Sarthou (En français seulement)     Buy the issue  

Berlin Biennale für zeitgenössische Kunst — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Biennale de Berlin pour l’art contemporain Du 5 septembre au 1er novembre 2020 By Érika Nimis (En français seulement)     Buy the issue  

Bertrand Carrière — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Bertrand Carrière

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Dans les années – Photographies 1996–2019 Galerie d’art Antoine-Sirois de l’Université de Sherbrooke Du 8 septembre au 17 octobre 2020 By Sylvain Campeau (En français seulement)     Buy the issue […]

Photographie et société : L’Autre Amérique — Jérôme Delgado

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jérôme Delgado

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Photographie et société : L’Autre Amérique Maison de la culture Claude-Léveillée, Montréal Du 26 août au 4 octobre 2020 By Jérôme Delgado (En français seulement)     Buy the issue   […]

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf — Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Dédales d’almanachs Festival Art souterrain, Montréal Du 29 février au 22 mars 2020 Par Alexis Desgagnés (En français seulement)     Buy the issue    

Virginie Laganière — Nathalie Bachand

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nathalie Bachand | Artists: Virginie Laganière

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Derrière l’horizon Circa art actuel, Montréal Du 8 juillet au 22 août 2020 Par Nathalie Bachand (En français seulement)     Buy the issue    

Rachel Echenberg — Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Rachel Echenberg

[Winter 2021] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Conversations avec ma famille Galerie B-312, Montréal Du 3 septembre au 3 octobre 2020 Par Charles Guilbert (En français seulement)     Buy the issue    

Gathering Clouds. A History of Photography Through Clouds — Bruno Chalifour

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Essays
Authors: Bruno Chalifour

[Winter 2021] By Bruno Chalifour After months of a world pandemic, being surrounded by clouds may sound like a reprieve: fluffy, light, ethereal, and flying higher than the contemporary political discourse in the United States, clouds may provide temporary solace in our dark, sometimes ignorant, times. The exhibition Gathering Clouds, Photographs from the Nineteenth Century […]

Les Années Musicales : 1920–2020. The Space-Music Dimension Becomes Multiplicity — Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Essays
Authors: Edward Pérez-González

[Winter 2021] Par Edward Pérez-González The Single and the Multiple. Briefly, multiplicity can be defined as a condition that amplifies things and phenomena; a state of abundance, of potentialities, that enables us to perceive and comprehend the world through different and heterogeneous dimensions – from another dimension. This mode of the single and the multiple […]

Ewa Monika Zebrowski, Le livre photographique comme espace de collaboration — Zoë Tousignant

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Essays
Authors: Zoë Tousignant | Artists: Ewa Monika Zebrowski

[Winter 2021] By Zoë Tousignant It stands to reason that much thought, time, and energy go into the making of a photobook. Fortunately, the work that it involves is usually shared by several individuals who, each expert in their own field, contribute to creating the end product. These individuals most often include a photographer, a […]

David K. Ross, Children of Kaos — Jeanne Randolph, Sometimes a Name Is Just a Name

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Portfolios
Authors: Jeanne Randolph | Artists: David K. Ross

[Winter 2021] By Jeanne Randolph   Vain Pillaging – I told him I was thinking, “Vain Pillaging.” – As in futile? my friend responded. – As in gall-darn hubris, I said. Any one of us can do what we want with names, even four-thousand-year old names. – And, said my friend, who is familiar with […]

Chloé Beaulac, Ces lieux qui nous habitent — Dominique Sirois-Rouleau, Territories of Memory

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Portfolios
Authors: Dominique Sirois-Rouleau | Artists: Chloé Beaulac

[Winter 2021] Dominique Sirois-Rouleau Chosen to take part in the Missions photographiques des Laurentides project,1 Chloé Beaulac set herself the objective of finding the family cottage that had been part of her childhood. This quest motivated the month-long residency, during which her recollections tied to the Laurentian landscape were confronted with reality. For days, she […]

Alain Lefort, Résonance des silences — Yannick Marcoux, The Pixel: A Fragile Mirage

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Portfolios
Authors: Yannick Marcoux | Artists: Alain Lefort

[Winter 2021] Par Yannick Marcoux Looking back upon our origins, it was a long time ago – a very long time, ten thousand years in fact – that the last ice age ended on Earth. What remains of that epoch seems to fasci­nate Alain Lefort, who, after making his series Eidolôn on drifting icebergs, has […]

Landscapes as Mirrors

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Portfolios
Artists: Alain Lefort, Chloé Beaulac, David K. Ross

[Winter 2021] What do the most distant, wild, silent landscapes tell us? How do landscapes of our childhood, those that awoke us to the world, shape us? What reflections of our own future do we find in the chaos of urban sites? Landscapes are like mirrors, utterly shaped by human presence. The city is a […]

Projecting Ourselves into the World Around Us — Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 116 — LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2021] By Jacques Doyon What do the most distant, wild, silent landscapes tell us? How do landscapes of our childhood, those that awoke us to the world, shape us? What reflections of our own future do we find in the chaos of urban sites? Landscapes are like mirrors, utterly shaped by human presence. The […]

Robert Walker, Griffintown / Montréal en mutation — James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Entrevues, Interviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Robert Walker

[Summer 2020] An Interview by James D. Campbell Robert Walker was born in Montreal in 1945. He graduated in visual arts from Sir George Williams University in the late 1960s. In 1975, he attended a workshop given by American photographer Lee Friedlander that would be transformative, and he embraced colour street photography as an aesthetic […]

Arles, Les Rencontres de la photographie — Bruno Chalifour

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Bruno Chalifour

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Une histoire française Françoise Denoyelle Paris, Les Rencontres d’Arles / Art Book Magazine 2019, 320 p. (ill. n&b) 50 ans d’histoire Françoise Denoyelle et Sam Stourdzé Paris, La Martinière, 2019, 278 […]

David McMillan — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Book Reviews, Readings
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: David McMillan

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Croissance et Dégradation Pripiat et la zone d’exclusion de Tchernobyl David McMillan essai de Claude Baillargeon Göttingen, Steidl, 2019, 262 p., 200 photographies Par Pierre Dessureault (In French only) Buy the […]

Sarah Wendt et Pascal Dufaux | Alexis Bellavance — Nathalie Bachand

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Nathalie Bachand | Artists: Alexis Bellavance, Pascal Dufaux, Sarah Wendt

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Axenéo7 Du 18 septembre au 26 octobre 2019 Par Nathalie Bachand (In French only)   Acheter ce numéro 

Rencontres photographiques de Guyane | 6e édition — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Léa Magnien

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Parenthèse(s) Du 6 au 30 novembre 2019 Par Sophie Bertrand (In French only)     Acheter ce numéro

Szilasi & Szilasi — Fanny Bieth et Clément Willer

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews, Recensions d'expositions
Authors: Clément Willer, Fanny Bieth | Artists: Andrea Szilasi, Gabor Szilasi

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie Deux Poissons, Montréal Du 17 octobre au 23 novembre 2019 Par Fanny Bieth et Clément Willer (En Français seulement)   Acheter ce numéro

Jocelyn Philibert — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Jocelyn Philibert

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Dimension Lumière EXPRESSION. Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe Du 9 novembre 2019 au 26 janvier 2020 Par Sylvain Campeau (En Français seulement)   Acheter ce numéro

Normand Rajotte — Mona Hakim

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Mona Hakim | Artists: Normand Rajotte

[Summer 2020] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Sur les lieux La Castiglione, Montréal Du 2 octobre au 9 novembre 2019 Par Mona Hakim (En Français seulement) Acheter ce numéro

Monique Moumblow — Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Monique Moumblow

[Fall 2019] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Compositions | Pale Shadows Centre VOX Du 1er novembre 2019 au 29 février 2020 By Charles Guilbert (In French only) Acheter ce numéro

Hito Steyerl, This is the future — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Hito Steyerl

[Fall 2019] Art Gallery of Ontario October 24, 2019–February 23, 2020 By Jill Glessing Artist and cultural critic Hito Steyerl, widely recognized for her writing and video works, explores the mostly invisible relations among contemporary art, networked digital technology, and the power structures that aim to control them. In her exhibition This is the future […]

Isaac Julien — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Isaac Julien

[Fall 2019] This article was originally published in French only. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Isaac Julien Frederick Douglass: Lessons of the Hour SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah Du 3 octobre au 15 décembre 2019 By Ariane Noël de Tilly (In French only) Acheter ce numéro

3e Biennale des photographes du monde arabe contemporain. Regards sur le Liban, l’Égypte et le Maroc – Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Essays
Authors: Claudia Polledri

[Summer 2020] By Claudia Polledri The third edition of the Biennial of Contemporary Arab World Photography,1 curated by Gabriel Bauret, was held in Paris in 2019. Inaugurated in 2015 on the joint initiative of the Arab World Institute (AWI) and the Maison européenne de la photographie (MEP), the event is important because it showcases works […]

Zoom Photo Festival Saguenay. Overview on the Tenth Year of the Photojournalism Festival – Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Essays
Authors: Sophie Bertrand

[Summer 2020] By Sophie Bertrand For the last ten years, the Zoom Photo Festival been a mid-autumn feature in Chicoutimi, in Quebec’s Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region. La Pulperie de Chicoutimi, a national historic site and regular partner of the festival, serves as headquarters and hosts most of the exhibitions, with La Zone Portuaire, and other shows are […]

MOMENTA 2019. Listening to Things – Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Essays
Authors: Charles Guilbert

[Summer 2020] By Charles Guilbert For the second edition of Momenta | Biennale de l’image1 (it had fourteen editions under its previous name, Le Mois de la photo), co-curators María Wills Londoño, Audrey Genois, and Maude Johnson chose an evocative and seemingly paradoxical title: The Life of Things. It was a title that might bring […]

Mary Kavanagh, Daughters of Uranium – Blake Fitzpatrick, Embodied Politics

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: Blake Fitzpatrick | Artists: Mary Kavanagh

[Summer 2020] By Blake Fitzpatrick Uranium is an unstable element. It breaks down over time – a very long time. Naturally occurring uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years, meaning that it takes that amount of time for half of the uranium to transform into other elements in a radioactive decay chain. The elements […]

William Kentridge, More Sweetly Play the Dance – Érika Nimis, La marche du monde

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: William Kentridge

[Summer 2020] By Érika Nimis Interdisciplinary artist William Kentridge (born 1955 in Johannesburg) is internationally celebrated for his animated films composed of charcoal drawings and as a director of live shows. Born into an activist family intimately involved with the anti-apartheid struggles of the 1980s, Kentridge works in media as varied as printmaking, sculpture, performance, […]

Benoit Aquin, La dimension éthérique du réseau par Anton Bequii – Alexis Desgagnés, Anton Bequii : A Spiritual Uprising

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Portfolios
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Benoit Aquin

[Summer 2020]   [Technology] is no longer opposed to human beings but is being integrated with them and gradually absorbing them. — Jacques Ellul By Alexis Desgagnés I was asked to write about Benoit Aquin’s La dimension éthé­rique du réseau par Anton Bequii.1 It’s not the first time that I’ve been asked. I haven’t said […]

The March of the World

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Portfolios
Artists: Benoit Aquin, Mary Kavanagh, William Kentridge

[Summer 2020] The works in this special section address dimensions of human activity that have considerable significance in today’s globalized society in view of the role of technology, the use of energy resources, and respect for human rights. These complex works combine multiple voices to reflect ethical issues and their impacts on individuals and communities. […]

Pandemic Vertigo — Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Summer 2020] By Jacques Doyon I’m writing this editorial at a time when, to general surprise, paralysis of a significant portion of human activity is gradually spreading across the globe (with some 2.5 billion people in confinement right now). Suddenly, the unthinkable has happened. The immutable rumble of economic activity spurred on by the desire […]

Traces of Virgil as a Chalk Giant: Ewa Monika Zebrowski’s Meditations on Cy Twombly — James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Readings
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Cy Twombly, Ewa Monika Zebrowski

August 11, 2022 [originally published in CV114 in Winter 2020] — By James D. Campbell. Since 2014, noted Canadian artist Ewa Monika Zebrowski has been exploring the universe of artist Cy Twombly on both sides of the Atlantic…

The Walther Collection: The Way She Looks — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin, David Goldblatt, Guy Tillim, Jodi Bieber

[Winter 2020] Ryerson Image Centre, Guest curator: Sandrine Colard September 11–December 8, 2019 By Jill Glessing Photography extends the gaze, making material its spectrum of desires and subject positions – whether violence, control, submission, negotiation, or resistance. Once etched as image – on plate, print, or screen – the momentary exchange circulates and is entrenched […]

Le projet Polaroid — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: André Kertész, Bruce Charlesworth, Ellen Carey, Kunihiro Shinohara, Paolo Gioli, Toshio Shibata

[Winter 2020] Le projet Polaroid – Art et technologie Musée McCord, Montréal Du 13 juin au 15 septembre 2019 Par Sophie Bertrand (French only) Purchase this issue

Territoires II — Christian Roy

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Christian Roy | Artists: Andreas Rutkauskas, Gagnon-Forest, Hua Jin

[Winter 2020] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Galerie La Castiglione, Montréal Du 28 août au 28 septembre 2019 Par Christian Roy (French only) Purchase this issue

Michel Depatie — Alexia Pinto Ferretti

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Alexia Pinto Ferretti | Artists: Michel Depatie

[Winter 2020] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Ashu-Takusseu : la traversée photographique Centre d’exposition de Val-David Du 22 juin au 8 septembre 2019 Par Alexia Pinto Ferretti (French only) Purchase this issue

Biennale de Venise 2019 — Daniel Fiset

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Daniel Fiset | Artists: Isuma, Mari Katayama, Tamás Waliczky, Voluspa Jarpa, Zanele Muholi

[Winter 2020] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. May You Live in Interesting Times May 11 to November 24 2019 By Daniel Fiset Purchase this issue

Janick Burn — Marie-Ève Leclerc-Parker

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Marie-Ève Leclerc-Parker | Artists: Janick Burn

[Winter 2020] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Plein sud, Longueuil Du 18 mai au 22 juin 2019 Par Marie-Ève Leclerc-Parker (French only) [See the printed or digital version of the magazine for the complete article. On sale throughout […]

Rebecca Belmore — Sophie Guignard

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Guignard | Artists: Rebecca Belmore

[Winter 2020] This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page. Braver le monumental Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal Commissaire : Wanda Nanibush Du 20 juin au 6 octobre 2019 Par Sophie Guignard (French only) [See the printed or digital version of […]

Dakar, From the Studio to the Sidewalk — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Babacar Traoré (Doli), Boubacar Touré Mandémory, Bouna Médoune Sèye, Élise Fitte-Duval, Fatou Kandé Senghor, Ibrahima Thiam, KhéraBaba, Mabeye Deme, Malick Welli

[Winter 2020] Par Erika Nimis Dakar, a cosmopolitan capital city and crossroads on the Atlantic coast, open to all creative currents, has grown under the gaze of its photographers. An independent field of professional photography emerged in the 1990s, and the institution of the Mois de la Photo has contributed to legitimizing an increasingly engaged […]

Stephen Gill, Gill and the Birds: A Photographic Code of Ethics — Alexis Desgagnés

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Essays
Authors: Alexis Desgagnés | Artists: Stephen Gill

[Winter 2020] Par Alexis Desgagnés On the threshold of my teenage years, my greatest passion was to observe birds. I spent countless hours, binoculars hung around my neck, prowling slowly, silently, through woods and meadows, looking out for a rare gem! When I was thirteen, a camera, a gift from my stepmother, replaced the binoculars, […]

Mélissa Pilon, Foules — Claudia Polledri, What Is a Crowd? A New Approach to the Photojournalistic Image

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Portfolios
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Mélissa Pilon

[Winter 2020] By Claudia Polledri What is a crowd, and how can a photograph teach us about this protagonist of twentieth-century history? In her photobook Foules, Mélissa Pilon underlines the visual complexity of crowds as living organisms, casting an original gaze upon them. In this work, defined as photojournalism, Pilon aims to offer a new […]

Gisele Amantea, Aleppo, Syria, December 17, 2016 — An interview by Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Portfolios
Authors: Gisele Amantea, Jacques Doyon | Artists: Gisele Amantea

[Winter 2020] An interview by Jacques Doyon Jacques Doyon: What is the origin of the work Aleppo, Syria December 17, 2016? How did the idea emerge? Why Syria? And what prompted you to work from an existing image of a disaster? Gisele Amantea: I was invited by curator Emily Falvey to participate in the group […]

Alain Paiement, Masses / Particules — Alain Paiement, Crowds

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Portfolios
Authors: Alain Paiement | Artists: Alain Paiement

[Winter 2020] Demonstrations. From Occupy Wall Street to Extinction Rebellion actions, popular resistance demonstrations have become an integral part of international news over the last decade. We are almost accustomed to seeing, over and over, spectacular images of uprisings against dictators, altercations among citizens, identity-related confrontations, movements of crowds in war and in desperate migrations. […]

Dominique Blain, Déplacements — Louise Déry, A Painful Beauty

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Portfolios
Authors: Louise Déry | Artists: Dominique Blain

[Winter 2020] By Louise Déry As Dominique Blain’s exhibition Déplacements was being presented in Paris,¹ Venice was suffering a flood so terrible that we were once again anguished about the possibility of seeing this incomparable treasure of world heritage disappear. Not so long ago, it was Notre-Dame de Paris that was severely damaged, this time […]

Masses | Monuments

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Portfolios

[Winter 2020] In this issue’s thematic section, we look at collective action in society. Against a background of social conflict and war, the artists evoke the impact of collective actions on the common good by re-examining and recontextualizing images plucked from the mass of media images that form our relationship with the world. DOMINIQUE BLAIN […]

The Aesthetics of the Political

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

[Winter 2020] In the thematic section of this issue, we take a look at collective action in society. Against a background of social conflict and war, the artists evoke the impact of collective actions on the common good by scrutinizing multitudes of media images that help to form our relationship with the world. Through re-examination […]

Intimate Portraits — James D. Campbell

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Andrea Szilasi

April 23, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By James D. Campbell. Intimate Portraits brought together works by four artists whose preoccupation with the human body is a longstanding one: Donigan Cumming, JJ Levine, George Steeves, and Andrea Szilasi. Their works interrogate the nature of portraiture itself…

Denis Rioux, D’abord, ne pas photographier — Fanny Bieth et Clément Willer

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Clément Willer, Fanny Bieth | Artists: Denis Rioux

April 16, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Guy Tillim — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Guy Tillim

April 4, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Myriam Jacob-Allard, T’envoler — Charles Guilbert

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: Myriam Jacob-Allard

March 22, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Ansley West Rivers — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Ansley West Rivers

March 22, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Martin Bureau. Borders and Walls — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Martin Bureau

March 7, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — Par Sophie Bertrand. “The number of walls has tripled since the Cold War, and it has kept growing since 2001; it now consists of almost 30,000 km of armed borders.”¹ This observation, made in 2013 by the researchers of the Chaire Raoul-Dandurand en études stratégiques et diplomatiques at the Université du Québec à Montréal, during a conference on issues around walled borders, conveys much more than a malaise inherited from history…

CONTACT 2019. Violence — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Carrie Mae Weems

February 28, 2023 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Jill Glessing. Violence runs through our lives, experienced directly or through media representations. We are subject to its power to varying degrees depending on our geographical location, race, class, gender, and access to high-speed internet. We are well acquainted with the variety of ways that humans inflict harm – whether physical, social, or psychological – upon one another…

About the Face: The Photographs of Dave Heath — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault

February 13, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Pierre Dessureault. In a body of work accumulated over more than sixty years, Dave Heath (1931–2016), a Canadian photographer born in the United States, challenged the qualities of the photographic medium and its techniques. He constantly probed, through images, Montaigne’s dictum that “every man carries the entire form of the human condition.”¹…

Luigi Ghirri. Flatness and Its Frame — Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Essays
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Luigi Ghirri

February 6, 2024 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Stephen Horne. The Map and The Territory is a large and intricate exhibition of colour photographs by the late Italian artist Luigi Ghirri at the Jeu de Paume in Paris.¹ No doubt the curator of the exhibition, James Lingwood, adopted this title following up on a note that Ghirri wrote in 1970 in which he explained that “his aim was not to make photographs, but rather charts and maps.”²…

Erasmus Schröter, Contest — Andreas Höll, A Crisis of Masculinity? The Gradual Liquefaction of Identities

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Portfolios
Artists: Erasmus Schröter

November 15, 2023 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Andreas Höll. Our image of the world has always been very fragile, and it has severely jolted on several occasions. Sigmund Freud, for example, cited the three insults to humanity that overturned our view of the world: Copernicus expected us to believe that we weren’t at the centre of the universe; Darwin proved we were descended from apes and warned us not to assume we were the pinnacle of creation; and Freud himself revealed that, following the discovery of the unconscious, we were no longer master even in our own house…

JJ Levine, Family — Charles Guilbert, Beyond Borders

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Portfolios
Authors: Charles Guilbert | Artists: JJ Levine

November 8, 2023 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Charles Guilbert. What strikes the eye in JJ Levine’s work is a unique way of challenging gender norms. But when we look more closely, we discover that Levine wants to erase many borders – in both photography practice and in addressing subjects such as family, time, and space…

Kent Monkman, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle — Dayna McLeod, Disrupting Colonial Comforts and Settler Sensibilities

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Kent Monkman

October 25, 2023 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Dayna McLeod. Miss Chief Eagle Testickle is the muse and alter ego of Kent Monkman, a Cree artist who confronts the violent and systemic consequences of colonialism on Indigenous peoples in North America, with attention to Canada and Quebec.

Trans-identities

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Portfolios
Artists: Erasmus Schröter, JJ Levine, Kent Monkman

[Fall 2019] The artists brought together in this issue’s thematic section explore different issues related to the boundaries of sexual identity and their transgression. Personas, transvestism, and role mutations are core to these artists’ approaches, as they address various issues fundamental to establishing a society based on inclusion rather than on narrow concepts of identities […]

New & Worthy

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Book Reviews, Readings

October 18, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — From June 2018 to September 2019, the project The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea is offering a series of exhibitions, publications, and public events in Mississauga, Ontario, based on the Beaufort Scale of Wind Force. Organized by Christine Shaw, director of and curator at the Blackwood Gallery, the undertaking challenges the complexity of the current environmental crisis through the prism of art practices and social, cultural, and political mobilizations…

Martha Rosler, Irrespective — Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Martha Rosler

September 6 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page…

Basma Alsharif — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Basma Alsharif

August 16, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Jill Glessing. Basma Alsharif asks a question for our time. Increasing human migration prompted by wars and climate change means, for many, an experience of cultural displacement. Born in Kuwait to Palestinian refugee parents who had fled Israeli occupation, Alsharif migrated first to France then to the United States…

Valérian Mazataud, Grand Nord — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand

August 2, 2023 — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Velibor Božović, In seeing, there is no right no wrong — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Velibor Božović

June 28, 2023 — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Thomas Kneubühler, Absence | Landing Sites — Patrick Brian Smith

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Patrick Brian Smith | Artists: Thomas Kneubühler

June 21 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — Thomas Kneubühler has always been concerned with developing new ways of visualizing – and critiquing – power formations and their related infrastructures in the late-capitalist, globalized world…

Denis Farley, Aux confins du visible — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth | Artists: Denis Farley

June 14, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Vincent Meessen, Blues Klair — Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Erika Nimis | Artists: Vincent Meessen

June 7 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Elena Perlino — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Elena Perlino

April 26 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — This article was originally published only in French. You can read it by switching over to the French version of this page.

Julian Rosefeldt — James Campbell

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Exhibition reviews
Authors: James D. Campbell | Artists: Julian Rosefeldt

April 19, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By James Campbell. Whether playing a senior CIA agent (Hanna, 2011), Elf Queen Galadriel (The Lord of the Rings, 2001 2002, 2003), or a formerly rich New York socialite on the move (Blue Jasmine, 2013), Cate Blanchett has demonstrated her acting chops and established herself as one of the wiliest and most brilliant chameleons in contemporary cinema…

Nathan Lyons, An Exploration of Photography as Visual Language — Bruno Chalifour

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Bruno Chalifour | Artists: Nathan Lyons

April 12, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Bruno Chalifour. Some two years after Nathan Lyons’s death, on August 30, 2016, the George Eastman Museum (GEM) is presenting an overview of the life’s work of one of the central influencers of American photography in the second half of the twentieth century…

Anthropocene Fatigue: Edward Burtynsky’s Strategy of Collapse — Bénédicte Ramade

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Bénédicte Ramade | Artists: Edward Burtynsky

April 5, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Bénédicte Ramade. From the start it seems taken for granted: Edward Burtynsky’s Anthropocene at the National Gallery of Canada will be technophilic.¹ At every opportunity…

Paris Photo, A Game of Memory — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Daido Moriyama

March 28, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Claudia Polledri. Context. The 22nd edition of the Paris Photo international photography fair took place November 8–11, 2018, in Paris. During the four-day fair, crowds of artists, gallery owners, collectors, publishers, curators, journalists, and photography lovers bustled through the Grand Palais, which had become a labyrinth of images organized by Paris Photo director Florence Bourgeois and artistic director Christoph Wiesner…

Milo Rau, Truth and Justice: The Congo Tribunal — Pierre Dessureault

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Essays
Authors: Pierre Dessureault | Artists: Milo Rau

22 mars, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Pierre Dessureault. The International Institute of Political Murder was created in 2007 by Swiss director, artist, and filmmaker Milo Rau. Since then, Rau has produced more than fifty plays, films, performances, and video installations on social and political realities, most of them complex and controversial…

Collection Lazare : États d’âmes, esprit des lieux — Colette Tougas, Portraits of Families with Nature (Still Life or Other)

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED | Portfolios
Authors: Colette Tougas | Artists: Nicolas Baier

March 15, 2023 [originally published in CV112 in Summer 2019] — By Colette Tougas. One purpose of the exhibition devoted to the Lazare collection at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was to highlight thirtythree photographs that have been donated to the institution by Montreal collector Jack Lazare…