[Fall 2025]

Oma-je
by Marcus Miller

PHI, Montréal
01.11.202 — 09.03.2025

[EXCERPT]

Step into Laure Prouvost’s bohemian tea room and enjoy a “cuppa.” No pinkies-up here. This room, crowded with the detritus of departed loved ones, is at once claustrophobic, disorienting, and strangely familiar. Although it seems to be in a state of great disarray, it’s also exquisitely quaint – a museum of sorts, with a fool’s collection of objects and memories that only a hoarder could unravel.

Wantee (2013), Prouvost’s Turner Prize–winning piece, was the establishing installation in her exhibition at PHI, Oma-je. It was set up as a tea room, with old tables, chairs, and attendants as servers, and you sipped as you watched hand-held, glitch-edited scenes of a small, abandoned, subterranean space – grottier and more cave-like, but comparable to the one you’re in.

[…]

[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 130 – PLANTS AND GARDENS ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: Oma-je]

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Marcus Miller works as a curator, teacher, writer and artist. He holds an MA in social history of art (Leeds University) and a BFA (NSCAD University). He has taught university courses in the history, theory, and practice of modern and contemporary art and has published critical reviews and articles in journals throughout Canada and internationally. In the late 1990s, he was an art critic for the Montreal Hour.