Underground Art | Resilience as a last refuge

The 14th^and Underground Art festival will begin Saturday in Montreal, for three months of exhibition. Exploring the theme “ Resilient Ways-Voices”, the contemporary art event will present, until June 30, the works of some forty artists who have worked on the subject of resilience, but also on memory and social justice.

Eric Clement
The Press

A contemporary art festival that returns each year with a new theme must, as much as possible, succeed in re-engaging art lovers. This permanent challenge of underground art since 2009, its organizers manage, once again this year, to meet it brilliantly, with striking works scattered in the corridors and underground spaces of the city center.

Montrealers are all the luckier this year as the event, for the first time, will last three months. Three months to cover 6 km of an exhibition of artists from here and elsewhere, some known, others less so, but we understand why they were selected when we see the relevance of their work.

Visitors will be able to appreciate works by Nadia Myre, David Garneau, MeyerMétivier DesignHaus, Maria Ezcurra, Marcella França, Shantal Miller, Charles Campbell, Catherine Blackburn, Kassandra Reynolds, Jean-François Boclé and Richard-Viktor Sainsily Cayol. A diversity favored by the curators of the event, the artist of Caribbean origin Eddy Murphy and the curators of Intervals, Caroline Douville, Maria Ezcurra, Miwa Kojima, Romeo Gongora and Dominique Fontaine.

Intervals – whose mission is to promote the expression of artists from all walks of life – titled its contribution stories of pluralityto show several points of view on the theme of resilience.

This theme thus led My-Van Dam to create We Are All Essential, an installation that brings together testimonies from people bereaved by COVID-19 or affected by the pandemic. Testimonials in the form of words hanging on the end of a thread. The luminous and delicate installation, which is located near the basin of the World Trade Center of Montreal, is evolutionary. Each visitor can add their own message.

Other facility of community interest, survival mode, from the MeyerMétivier DesignHaus collective, consists of clothing and accessories (backpacks, furniture) linked to the reality of citizens who live like nomads in urban spaces. Clothing and accessories created from plastic sheets whose patterns are made of images of advertisements plastered on the construction sites of condo buildings. A humanist and militant way to put your finger on social disparity in Montreal.

Very interesting work as well How Can We Dance While the Earth Is Burning? by Brazilian-born Montreal artist Marcella França. A video on global warming, the melting of the poles and the increase in forest fires on the planet, especially in the Amazon. This scoop of ice cream melting between three fingers sends shivers down your spine.

Among works of a social nature, sculpture Brownscape 4: Accompong Now, installed in the Tour de la Bourse. A fine example of the materialization of an idea. The 20-foot tree evokes pulmonary arteries (in reference to the ” I can’t breathe spoken by George Floyd when he was killed by a police officer in May 2020 in Minneapolis), but also the anti-leakage collar intended for slaves in the Caribbean in the 19^and century.

Sophie Aubry signs a magnificent corpus on the living conditions of people in wheelchairs. Showing that there is still a lot to do to make their lives easier. Same thing with Kassandra Reynolds and her photographic report Enough space inside, produced in September 2020 in the heart of the homeless encampment on rue Notre-Dame Est, in Montreal. Brilliant photos of humanity.

In Everything must disappear !Jean-François Boclé uses blue plastic bags to talk about the maritime deportation of Africans to America, their commodification, current consumerism and the pollution of the oceans, spaces as little protected as those who pledge their hopes for freedom and survival.

In the same vein, Richard-Viktor Sainsily Cayol exhibits a highly narrative sculpture with its wooden barrels dotted with brass spikes that tell the story of the black slave trade and its incredible violence. A historical reflection on the despicable exploitation of human beings, but also current on the consequences of our consumer choices on the living conditions of the people who create, manufacture or package the products we buy.

Here is a very consistent underground Art this year. A good vintage that enriches our knowledge of the realities, near and far, thanks to detailed labels, arranged near the works. The underground Art site indicates where the works are and offers guided tours. Don’t miss them, because the explanations enrich the experience of this festival rooted in the challenges we face today: equity, memory, education and sharing.