Recent Issues - Ciel variable Magazine

Ciel variable 121 – Wanderings

[Fall 2022]

Walking in the city, travelling down country roads, discovering the country, exploring foreign capitals – in short, getting moving – we confront different perspectives, contextualize or a rm our values, and take the measure of the world we live in. Such mobility, such constant travels, are the basis for the works brought together here, which are rooted in the desire to show the underside of America, to invert the icons of planetary tourism, or to take stock of the hypertrophy of major urban centres.

Ciel variable 120 – Figures of Affirmation

Ciel variable 120 - FIGURES OF AFFIRMATION

[Summer 2022]

Indigenous culture has long been oppressed in this country, but strong proud voices are now speaking out in public and are increasingly being heard. Here, we present three of these voices: they stand out for their use of photography as a central vehicle of their approach. Together, they offer a renewed vision of Indigenous identity, drawing on both tradition and contemporary realities and stamping a presence everywhere in the territory.

Ciel variable 119 – AGAINST NATURE

Ciel variable 119 - AGAINST NATURE

[Winter 2022]

The title Against Nature might seem paradoxical, as the artists brought together for this issue’s thematic section are all defenders and lovers of nature and spend a good deal of time in it. But what their works reveal is a “naturality” thoroughly permeated by human activity and entirely shaped by it, implying that its fate is entirely in our hands.

Ciel variable 118 – EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY

Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY

[Fall 2021]

The thematic section in this issue presents three exhibitions that show how photography can contribute to shaping a critical vision of the world. The first sets out to offer an overall sense of the changes affecting global civilization. The second contrasts traditional photography with its mutant, digital, and interactive form. The third is the career of a photography critic whose vision is fed by the act of collecting.

Ciel variable 117 – SHIFTED

Ciel variable 117 - SHIFTED

[Summer 2021]

This issue features three artists, with three aesthetic positionings, who share an ironic distancing. One, more scholarly, builds on strata of cultural history; the second, more narrative, fashions, with small strokes, a self-fiction with existential echoes; the last, more direct, affirms the subjectivity of a framing, a gaze. What is it exactly about the visible and the invisible? What wisdom do we need to live better? And what do all these little things that are derailed say about the state of the world?

Ciel variable 116 – LANDSCAPES AS MIRRORS

[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 direct extension of the social body and, similarly, all of nature is a construction of culture that becomes meaningful only through the human gaze.

Ciel variable 115 – THE MARCH OF THE WORLD

Ciel variable 115 - THE MARCH OF THE WORLD, Recent issues

[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.

Ciel variable 114 – MASSES | MONUMENTS

Ciel variable 114 - MASSES | MONUMENTS, Recent issues

[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.

Ciel variable 113 – TRANS-IDENTITIES

Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES, Recent issues

[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 and, by extension, cultures…

Ciel variable 112 – COLLECTIONS REVISITED

Ciel variable 112 - COLLECTIONS REVISITED

[Summer 2019]

Three recent exhibitions oﬀer a rare look at the act of collecting. In Archipel, Serge Clément presents a collection of all the photobooks that he has made – books that can be seen as sequencings of collections of his own images. Bertrand Carrière immerses himself in the collection of the Cinémathèque québécoise, focusing on film noir, extracting paradigmatic images and exploring the plays on temporality inherent to the crossfade. Finally, the collection of Jack Lazare represents a rare example of a collection patiently assembled over the years to reflect a melancholic vision of a world in diﬃculty.