Charles-Frédérick Ouellet, A Book – and an Award – Sophie Mangado

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Entrevues
Authors: Sophie Mangado | Artists: Charles-Frédérick Ouellet

In this interview, conducted in the wake of two pieces of news concerning him (the publication of a book and the receiving of a prestigious award), Charles-Frédérick Ouellet talks about the backstory of the image honoured by the World Press Photo jury and about the approach behind his projects.

Maxence Croteau, L’infime (codex) – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Recensions de publications
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Maxence Croteau

In L’infime (codex), a single-copy volume, Maxence Croteau photographed one image of each of the books in a university library on every single shelf. The exhaustiveness of his approach effaces the hierarchy of the gaze, Hardy-Vallée believes, but its materiality is its most interesting aspect.

Isabelle Bonnet et Sophie Hackett, Casa Susanna – Dayna McLeod

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Recensions de publications
Authors: Dayna McLeod

The book Casa Susanna, and the photography exhibition that it accompanied, looked back at an unusual celebration of femininity that took place in New York State in the 1960s: that of a community of transvestite men, trans women, and non-gender-conforming people.

Nathalie Bujold, Métroscopies – Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Michel Campeau | Artists: Nathalie Bujold

Flowing from the video recording of the Montreal metro that Nathalie Bujold made as she rode, equipped only with her cell phone, the exhibition Métroscopies comprises eleven screens that convey both unity and diversity.

Josée Pedneault, Talle – Laurie Boivin

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Laurie Boivin | Artists: Josée Pedneault

A meditative, almost wondrous experience, in Laurie Boivin’s view, the exhibition Talle immersed viewers in the underbrush of the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region. In works produced during photographic missions developed by Les Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie, Josée Pedneault joined people picking berries in secret spots where wild fruits grow in abundance.

Simon S. Belleau, Répliques – Jean-Michel Quirion

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Jean-Michel Quirion | Artists: Simon S. Belleau

Montreal artist Simon S. Belleau’s most important exhibition in his decade-long career, Répliques, combined a film, works on paper, and an architectural intervention. Ambitious and spectacular, in the view of Jean-Michel Quirion, Belleau’s offering evoked the work in preparation or backstage in a theatre or film set, by paying attention to what is made visible and what is hidden.

Sofía Gallisá Muriente et Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, Foreign in a Domestic Sense – Didier Morelli

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Didier Morelli | Artists: Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, Sofía Gallisá Muriente

Reflecting the political and identity-related ambiguity of Puerto Rico, the artists Sofía Gallisá Muriente and Natalia Lassalle-Morillo produced a four-channel video installation, shot in Florida among members of the Puerto Rican diaspora.

De la vie au lit – Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Fanny Bieth

Unlike what capitalist customs would have us believe, beds are not made simply for rest with a view to better productivity on the job. As the exhibition De la vie au lit advocates, a bed can also be a space for creation, discussion, or action – a place where people with disabilities or illnesses express themselves. The works on display addressed the question of inclusivity and urged us to rethink our spaces and our practices.

Jeremy Shaw, Phase Shifting Index – Marie Perrault

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Marie Perrault | Artists: Jeremy Shaw

Phase Shifting Index, Jeremy Shaw’s seven-channel video installation illustrating how physical and collective rituals influence minds is so impactful that viewers may experience profound illumination, as Marie Perrault suggests. From the initial cacophony to the final rave, the work is the spectacular outcome of Shaw’s twenty years of research into sublimation and its cognitive effects.

Suzanne Lafont, Et toi, chère plante ? – Nathalie Côté

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Nathalie Côté | Artists: Suzanne Lafont

Far from the herbarium and botanical identification, the images that Suzanne Lafont produces from the wildflowers and weeds that she gathers comprise an exploration of colour and relationships between the visual and the written. Following in the tradition of conceptual art, as Nathalie Côté notes, Lafont manipulates her photographs to obtain surreal results, even as she evokes our connections with nature in a myriad of ways.

Eric Tschaeppeler, Birth Order – Michel Hellman

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Michel Hellman | Artists: Eric Tschaeppeler

The order in which children are born plays a fundamental role in the construction of their identity. This notion is behind Eric Tschaeppeler’s series of portraits of siblings titled Birth Order. When Michel Hellman saw the exhibition, he appreciated the absence of artifice and was struck by the composition and intimate nature of the images.

Pussy Riot, Velvet Terrorism – Kelly Midori McCormick

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Kelly Midori McCormick

Irreverential both in its political actions and in the dissemination of its works, Pussy Riot acts with boldness and humour. Kelly Midori McCormick’s observations were made during her visit to the group’s retrospective at The Polygon Gallery, which offered a reflection of the discontent fulminating in Russia even before the invasion of Ukraine.

Bertille Bak, In the Eddies of Globalization – Fabien Pinaroli

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Essays
Authors: Fabien Pinaroli | Artists: Bertille Bak

The exhibition Abus de souffle featured a selection of works produced by Bertille Bak over the last ten years – works that Fabien Pinaroli, in his essay, calls “economic and political fabulations.” The video installations and objects on display, which were made in cooperation with communities caught up in the eddies of globalization in Bolivia, Morocco, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, can be considered tools of resistance.

Suzan Vachon, The Atlas: A Word – Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Essays
Authors: Edward Pérez-González | Artists: Suzan Vachon

Atlas, nébuleuses du Sphinx, an exhibition in which Suzan Vachon staged her own imagination, includes works by sixteen artists but is articulated mainly, as Edward Pérez-González points out in his essay, around “constellations of hyper-connected images in arbitrary arrangements of meanings and shapes.” The five sections form a nebula with “a wealth of blurry edges and imprecise, sometimes confused relationships.”

Deanna Bowen, The Artist as Avenger – Cheryl Simon

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Essays
Authors: Cheryl Simon | Artists: Deanna Bowen

In her essay, Cheryl Simon looks at two projects in which the artist Deanna Bowen examined the relations of influence and identity at the foundation of Canadian history. One project took the form of a mural that highlighted resistance to Black and Jewish immigration; in the other, an exhibition, Bowen looked back to a time when Montreal’s Golden Square Mile neighbourhood was the epicentre of the country’s (white and Anglo-Saxon) power.

Suzy Lake, Game Theory: Global Gamesmanship – Erin Silver, Queening the Pawn

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Portfolios
Authors: Erin Silver | Artists: Suzy Lake

In the series Game Theory: Global Gamesmanship, Suzy Lake presents herself, both as queen and pawn, in a chess game illustrating the power relations of our societies.

Zaynê Akyol, NÛJEN, les combattantes – Claudia Polledri, For “Better and Freer Tomorrows”

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Portfolios
Authors: Claudia Polledri | Artists: Zaynê Akyol

A documentary filmmaker known for her works showing the importance of women’s commitment to the war against the Islamic State, Zaynê Akyol also creates the NÛJEN, les combattantes photography series, which reflects women’s experiences and solidarity on the frontline.

Caroline Monnet, Sororité – Caroline Nepton Hotte, Living Here: A Voice for Indigenous Women

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Portfolios
Authors: Caroline Nepton-Hotte | Artists: Caroline Monnet

As part of her wide-ranging, shape-shifting practice, Caroline Monnet’s composite and multigenerational portraits highlight the important role of native women in transmitting values in a context of decolonization.

Theme presentation: Sisters, Fighters, Queens

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon

The works gathered in this thematic dossier tell the story of women’s affirmation and contributions in various contexts: decolonization, resistance to Islamic fundamentalism and the reconsideration of traditional gamesmanship.

Ciel variable 127 – Sisters, Fighters, Queens

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS

This issue’s dossier features portfolios telling the story of women’s affirmation and contributions in various contexts: decolonization, resistance to Islamic fundamentalism and the reconsideration of traditional gamesmanship.

Women at War

Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon

Hieratic portraits, solemn and emblematic of women in solidarity, standing tall and fighting. Figures of transmission and resistance: sisters, fighters, queens, attacking gamesmanship, fighting for a change in the actual rules of power.  

Andrea Kunard, La photographie au Musée des beaux-arts du Canada — Hélène Samson

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Entrevues
Authors: Hélène Samson

[Summer 2024] by Hélène Samson [EXCERPT] The current photography collection at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) was built from various sources. The original international collection was established by curator James Borcoman in 1967. After the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) closed, in 2009, the NGC incorporated its collection, which included the Still Photography […]

Mirement/Towering — Marie Perrault

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Recensions de publications
Authors: Marie Perrault

[Summer 2024] by Marie Perrault Mirement/Towering The book Mirement/Towering continues a reflection based on Geneviève Chevalier’s homonymous exhibition project, which was presented in three parts between 2021 and 2024 at Dazibao (the installations Towering/The Menagerie and Towering/The Herbarium), the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University (Mirement/Trissements), and the Galerie de l’Université du Québec en Outaouais […]

Facing Black Star — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Recensions de publications
Authors: Fanny Bieth

[Summer 2024] by Fanny Bieth 291,049: that’s how many prints are in the collection of the Black Star photo agency, acquired by Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) in 2005. The Image Centre, a museum dedicated more broadly to the photographic image, was created to receive, conserve, and promote this immense collection. For anyone with […]

Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Jaida Grey Eagle et Casey Riley, In Our Hands – Native Photography, 1890 to Now — Sophie Guignard

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Recensions de publications
Authors: Sophie Guignard | Artists: Casey Riley, Jaida Grey Eagle, Jill Ahlberg Yohe

[Summer 2024] by Sophie Guignard In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now is the catalogue for a major exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art that featured Indigenous photographers who worked between the late nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. The co-curators guest curator, photojournalist Jaida Grey Eagle (Oglala Lakota); the museum’s associate curator of Indigenous […]

Sylviane Van de Moortele, Femmes photographes – Dix ans de luttes pour sortir de l’ombre — Sophie Mangado

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Recensions de publications
Authors: Sophie Mangado | Artists: Sylviane Van de Moortele

[Summer 2024] by Sophie Mangado [EXCERPT] “When a feminist is accused of exaggerating, she’s on the right path.” The epigraph announces what is coming. In Femmes photographes. Dix ans de luttes pour sortir de l’ombre, Sylviane Van de Moortele describes the battle fought by women in France against the erasure of their sex in the […]

Sophie Jodoin, d’un seul souffle – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Sophie Jodoin

[Summer 2024] by Michel Hardy-Vallée [EXCERPT] Sophie Jodoin is an artist of grey nuances. Her range of tones is predictable and her textures are matte – diametrically opposed to the canons of black-and-white photography, in which the world is projected through a scale of contrasts from deep shadows to brilliant reflections. By restraining her palette, […]

Fabiano Kueva, Archive Alexandre de Humboldt Montréal – Gabrielle Sarthou

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Gabrielle Sarthou | Artists: Fabiano Kueva

[Summer 2024] by Gabrielle Sarthou [EXCERPT] The exhibition Archive Alexandre de Humboldt Montréal, organized in collaboration with the independent curator Emmanuelle Choquette, is part of a project built over more than ten years by the Ecuadorian artist, curator, and director Fabiano Kueva, whose works combine sound art, installation, and experimental video. It was presented as […]

Manon de Pauw, Lueurs oniriques – Maxence Croteau

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Maxence Croteau | Artists: Manon De Pauw

[Summer 2024] by Maxence Croteau [EXCERPT] In a rather paroxysmal context in which human-made destruction is scaling up to a hecatomb, the digital interface is inescapable in our lives. Some see it as a mutilated and mutilating way of life in which we are inter-isolated in a totalizing connectivity, reduced to being powerless spectators stupefied […]

SMITH, Outre — Jessica Ragazzini

Ciel variable 126 – TRAJECTORIES | Critiques d'expositions
Authors: Jessica Ragazzini

[Summer 2024] by Jessica Ragazzini [EXCERPT] Outre. In the French-language dictionary, the word outre has several definitions. First, as a common noun, outre is an animal pelt sewn into a bag and used as a receptacle. As an adverb, it designates going beyond something. Finally, as a preposition, it signifies an addition. The works by […]