Michèle Pearson Clarke, The Animal Seems to Be Moving – Dayna McLeod, Queer Black Masculinities: Middle-aged Boyhood

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Michèle Pearson Clarke

[Summer 2023] Queer Black Masculinities: Middle-aged Boyhood By Dayna McLeod [Excerpt] An exercise in confronting shyness, shame, and fear about singing, Quantum Choir1 is a moving enactment of queer kinship and vulnerability in which Michèle Pearson Clarke invites three other queer masculine people with no singing experience to learn to sing with her and ultimately […]

Photography and Ukraine, Keeping Eyes Open to the War – Érika Nimis

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Essays
Authors: Erika Nimis

[Summer 2023] Photography and Ukraine, Keeping Eyes Open to the War By Érika Nimis [Excerpt] Since February 24, 2022, when Russia instigated its full-scale military assault on Ukraine, there has been a constant ow of images of the conflict, both via traditional media outlets and on social networks. This is perhaps the first war to […]

Phyllis Lambert, A Way of Life – Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Phyllis Lambert

[Summer 2023] Phyllis Lambert, A Way of Life By Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] Photography is inextricable from Phyllis Lambert’s career. Architectural surveys, studies of urban space, activism, advertising, project documentation, archives, media relations, and exhibition catalogues are based on this tool, which is as essential to modern life as con- crete. Nevertheless, it is only in […]

Fiona Tan, Travel Stories – Ariane Noël de Tilly

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Essays
Authors: Ariane Noël de Tilly | Artists: Fiona Tan

[Summer 2023] Fiona Tan, Travel Stories By Ariane Noël de Tilly [Excerpt] Travel and the human relationship with time, nature, and history are among the themes that Fiona Tan most often addresses in her work. Born in Pekanbaru, Indonesia, Tan grew up in Australia and then moved to Amsterdam, where she studied at the Gerrit […]

Jessica Eaton, Mariphasa Lupine Lumina — Daniel Fiset

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Daniel Fiset | Artists: Jessica Eaton

[Summer 2023] By Daniel Fiset Bradley Ertaskiran, Montréal 10.11.2022 — 17.12.2022 [Excerpt] Although Jessica Eaton is best known for her photographic series that establish a formal dialogue between geometric abstraction and modernist painting, a new body of work presented in late 2022 at Galerie Bradley Ertaskiran introduced an entirely unexpected motif into her practice. The […]

Michel Huneault Incipit – COVID-19 — Philippe Depairon

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Philippe Depairon | Artists: Michel Huneault

[Summer 2023] By Philippe Depairon Musée McCord Stewart, Montréal 16.09.2022 — 22.01.2023 [Excerpt] How do we remember the recent COVID-19 pandemic? And what do we remember? In a recent issue of Ciel variable, Michel Hardy-Vallée underlined, behind the Legault government’s injunction to take walks (for our health) and stay home (for the health of others), […]

Isabelle Hayeur, Histoires d’eau – Baptiste Grison

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions
Artists: Isabelle Hayeur

[Summer 2023] By Baptiste Grison Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent, Rivière-du-Loup 14.10.2022 — 05.02.2023 [Excerpt] The Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent (MBSL) has built its 2022–23 program of activities, exhibitions, and workshops around different environmental issues. A high point is undoubtedly the exhibition Histoires d’eau, a survey of recent works by the Lanaudière-based photographer Isabelle Hayeur. It is worth […]

Disraeli Revisited: Chronicle of an Event in Quebec Photography — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth | Artists: Claire Beaugrand-Champagne, Michel Campeau, Roger Charbonneau

[Summer 2023] By Fanny Bieth Musée McCord Stewart, Montréal 28.10.2022 — 19.02.2023 [Excerpt] Commemorating an experiment conducted fifty years ago, the exhibition Disraeli Revisited: Chronicle of an Event in Quebec Photography is the result of an extraordinary collaboration between the team at the McCord Stewart Museum and those involved in the original project. The show […]

Angela Grauerholz, The Empty S(h)elf – Gabrielle Sarthou

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Gabrielle Sarthou | Artists: Angela Grauerholz

[Summer 2023] Gabrielle Sarthou Occurrence, Montréal 4.11.2022 — 17.12.2022 [Excerpt] Despite its title, this second iteration of Angela Grauerholz’s installation The Empty S(h)elf, presented at Galerie Occurrence in Montréal, is not at all empty: it is polymorphous and dense, at the intersection between language and image, words and thoughts. We discover it fortuitously, as we […]

Christian Marclay, A Retrospective – Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Christian Marclay

[Summer 2023] By Stephen Horne Centre Pompidou, Paris 16.11.2022 — 22.02.2023 [Excerpt] There is a song written and performed by Paul McCartney in 1968 that provides a succinct introduction to the work and career of Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay (b. 1955). It’s simple lyric, repeated – “Why don’t we do it in the road” – […]

Rebecca Bair and Karice Mitchell, Together/Apart – Neil Price

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews

[Summer 2023] By Neil Price Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto 03.12.2022 — 14.01.2023 [Excerpt] Black feminists have long been concerned with what Patricia Hill Collins refers to as “controlling images.” They have consistently pointed out (and called out) ways in which such images have hamper and harm Black women’s struggle for freedom by reducing their experiences […]

Diane Arbus, Photographs, 1956–1971 — Laetitia Barrere

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Laeticia Barrere | Artists: Diane Arbus

[Summer 2023] By Laetitia Barrere Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal 15.09.2022 — 29.01.2023 [Excerpt] The exhibition Diane Arbus: Photographs, 1956–1971 features some one hundred images, selected from a major acquisition of 522 silver gelatin prints by the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2017. Mounted first in Toronto, then in Montreal – after a detour to […]

Natascha Niederstrass, The Vanishing Woman / Escamotage d’une femme — Emmanuelle Choquette

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Emmanuelle Choquette | Artists: Natascha Niederstrass

[Summer 2023] By Emmanuelle Choquette Galerie Patrick Mikhail, Montréal 19.11.2022 — 4.02.2023 [Excerpt] The exhibition The Vanishing Woman, presented at Galerie Patrick Mikhail, follows on from a series produced during a residency at Centre VU. This is a new iteration of the project, which was first shown during Manif d’art 10 – La biennale de […]

Elena Perlino, Indian Time — Michel Hellman

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Book Reviews
Authors: Michel Hellman | Artists: Elena Perlino

[Summer 2023] By Michel Hellman Elena Perlino Paris et New Richmond, éditions Loco et éditions Escuminac, 2022, 176 pages [Excerpt] The expression “Indian time” has a pejorative connotation. It implies that “Indians” lack discipline and a sense of responsibility, in contrast to the supposed self-control of “Whites.” Saying that a person is on Indian time […]

Olga Smith, Contemporary Photography in France: Between Theory and Practice — Jill Glessing

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Book Reviews
Authors: Jill Glessing | Artists: Olga Smith

[Summer 2023] By Jill Glessing Olga Smith Louvain, Leuven University Press, 2022, 230 pages [Excerpt] France, as a birthplace of photography, dominated surveys of the medium until the early twentieth century. It lost its primacy when the centre of the art world crossed the Atlantic, after the Second World War. Since then, international hegemony has […]

Michel Lefebvre and Eva Quintas, From Digital Writing to Artificial Intelligence — Jean Gagnon

Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Interviews
Authors: Jean Gagnon

[Summer 2023] Michel Lefebvre and Eva Quintas, From Digital Writing to Artificial Intelligence An interview by Jean Gagnon [Excerpt] In 1993, Eva Quintas and Michel Lefebvre co-founded Agence TOPO, the original mission of which was to organize collective and multidisciplinary projects combining photography and literature. For a time, TOPO was distributing interactive and nonlinear literary […]

Ciel variable 124 – Seeing Through Images

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES

[Fall 2023] These are images that disrupt, catch our attention, and thus intensify our gaze. What they show us is clear and precise, and yet there is something we can’t place, sometimes almost imperceptible, that encourages us to look more closely and ask more questions about the context of image production. So, what we are […]

Ji-Yoon Han, Mimetic Contagions — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Interviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth, Ji-Yoon Han

[Fall 2023] Ji-Yoon Han lives and works in Montreal. In her projects, she highlights the relevance of the visual arts and their inscription in moving social, cultural, and mental contexts. She was the curator at Fonderie Darling from 2017 to 2020; currently, she is a research fellow for the Photography and Commission project at the […]

What is to be seen?

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Editorial
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Adad Hannah, Nicolas Baier, Thomas Demand

[Fall 2023] By Jacques Doyon These are images that catch our attention and intensify our gaze. What they show us is clear and precise, and yet there is something we can’t place, something that encourages us to look more closely and to question the context of their production. In Nicolas Baier’s work, it is the […]

Seeing Through Images

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Portfolios
Artists: Adad Hannah, Nicolas Baier, Thomas Demand

[Fall 2023] These are images that disrupt, catch our attention, and thus intensify our gaze. What they show us is clear and precise, and yet there is something we can’t place, sometimes almost imperceptible, that encourages us to look more closely and ask more questions about the context of image production. So, what we are […]

Nicolas Baier, Vases communicants — An Almost Spontaneous Appearance of the Machine in the World, Jacques Doyon

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Portfolios
Authors: Jacques Doyon | Artists: Nicolas Baier

[Fall 2023] [Excerpt] An Almost Spontaneous Appearance of the Machine in the World An interview by Jacques Doyon On the occasion of Nicolas Baier’s major exhibition held in Montreal in early 2023,1 we sat down with him to talk about its main themes. Jacques Doyon: It seems appropriate to start with the video titled Vases […]

Thomas Demand, Le bégaiement de l’histoire — Second Seeing, Stephen Horne

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Portfolios
Authors: Stephen Horne | Artists: Thomas Demand

[Fall 2023] Second Seeing Stephen Horne [Excerpt] I must be getting mixed, confusing here and there, now and then, just as I confused them then, the here of then, the1then of there. — Samuel Beckett What is this “confusion” of which the playwright Beckett speaks? He wrote this some seventy years ago, before electronic media […]

Adad Hannah, Expositions récentes — Posing Bodies and Works, Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Portfolios
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Adad Hannah

[Fall 2023] Posing Bodies and Works Sylvain Campeau [Excerpt] At Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain,1 Adad Hannah recently presented a panorama combining new works, in the first gallery, with others still underway, in the second gallery. Hence the logic of grouping them under the title Recent Exposures. There is in allusion here to one of Hannah’s […]

Décadrage colonial, Decentring the Gaze — Claudia Polledri

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Essays
Authors: Claudia Polledri

[Fall 2023] Décadrage colonial Decentring the Gaze [Excerpt] Based on a rereading of French photographic production in the 1930s, the exhibition Décadrage colonial1 underlines the contradictions of an era fascinated by cultures from “elsewhere” and concerned with redefining the image of a nation. Décadrage: leaving the frame, shifting the image, decentring the subject and, thus, […]

The Lives of Documents – Photography as Project — Edward Pérez-González

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Essays
Authors: Edward Pérez-González

[Fall 2023] Capturing the Image, Grasping What’s Human Edward Pérez-González [Excerpt] The idea that documentary photography is a neutral means of capturing reality has been utterly debunked. Photographs are not, and never were, simple recordings of reality, which is always complex and subjective. They are imbued with the preconceived ideas – values, feelings, social construction […]

Edward Hillel, Framing the Sequel — Michel Hardy-Vallée

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Essays
Authors: Michel Hardy-Vallée | Artists: Edward Hillel

[Fall 2023] Framing the Sequel Michel Hardy-Vallée [Excerpt] I would love to go to the Main for a smoked meat right now, but it’s closed. I mean: the Main Deli has just closed. It was the one right across the street from Schwartz’s. It served the same kind of sandwiches that are too fat to […]

Alain Paiement, Cosmic Blues — Sylvain Campeau

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Sylvain Campeau | Artists: Alain Paiement

[Fall 2023] By Sylvain Campeau [Excerpt] Galerie Hugues Charbonneau Montréal 15.03.2023 — 23.04.2023 Theodor Adorno wondered whether it was still possible to write poetry after the horrors of Auschwitz. The same question can no doubt be asked today, of the entire field of art, as we wait uneasily to find out how climate change will […]

Mary Ellen Mark, Ward 81 — Fanny Bieth

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Fanny Bieth

[Fall 2023] By Fanny Bieth [Excerpt] The Image Centre, Toronto 25.01.2023 — 1.04.2023 In winter 1975, Mary Ellen Mark was the on-set photographer for the shooting of Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on location at a psychiatric institution, the Oregon State Hospital, where she first met and photographed patients. She returned the […]

Joannie Lafrenière, Hochelaga – Montréal en mutation — Michel Hellman

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Michel Hellman

[Fall 2023] By Michel Hellman [Excerpt] Musée McCord Stewart, Montréal 31.03.2023 — 10.09.2023 When the director and photographer Joannie Lafrenière was approached by the McCord Stewart Museum to take part in the second edition of Evolving Montreal (a program of photographic commissions on the theme of transformation of the city’s neighbourhoods), she had no doubt […]

Goose Village, Marisa Portolese — Sophie Bertrand

Ciel variable 124 – SEEING THROUGH IMAGES | Critiques d'expositions, Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Sophie Bertrand | Artists: Marisa Portolese

[Fall 2023] By Sophie Bertrand [Excerpt] Occurrence, espace d’art et d’essai contemporains, Montréal 20.01.2023 — 11.03.2023 Once upon a time, there was Goose Village – also called Village-aux-Oies or Victoriatown – a working-class district in Montreal, adjacent to the port on one side and the Canadian National Railway train yards on the other. This enclave […]