[Summer 2025]

Connecting From the Inside Out
by Jean-Michel Quirion

[EXCERPT]

The multidisciplinary artist My-Van Dam’s exhibition Connecting From the Inside Out, presented at MAI in fall 2024 and curated by Geneviève Wallen, evinces striking fragility. During an intensive month-long research-creation residency at SBC Galerie d’art contemporain in summer 2023 (with support from Atelier circulaire and Atelier CLARK) Dam asked women to vulnerably embody their personal stigmata. She and her collaborators explored gestures of individual and collective scarring in a perspective of well­being. A performance was recorded in the months following the residency for presentation at MAI. With this therapeutic intervention, Dam hoped to encourage the healing of visceral wounds, particularly among women, racialized people – many of them exiled – and individuals who advocate gender diversity. Born to refugee parents who had fled the Vietnam war, Dam takes inspiration from her family history. In her somatic art practice, she delves into the transmission of intergenerational trauma and its multiple physical and psychological impacts on descendants. She has based her most recent bodies of work on a collaborative and participatory model, and she sensitively handles the instinctive effects on her invitees by acting as a mediator of care. She conceives of the body as a space in which a combative presence is integrated and substantiated – an interstice within which interconnected forces are tested, experienced, and conveyed. Even afflicted, the body is resilient.
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[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 129 – FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: My-Van Dam, Connecting from the inside out]

Jean-Michel Quirion is a doctoral student in museology at the Université du Québec en Outaouais. He has been a cultural worker for ten years and is currently co-executive director, programming, at Centre CLARK in Montreal. A regular contributor to spe­cialized magazines such as Ciel variable, ESPACE art actuel, Esse arts + opinions, and Vie des arts, he is also involved in the research group Collections et impératif évènementiel/The Convulsive Collections.