This text is part of the Summer of Museums special booklet
From north to east of Quebec, contemporary art is sometimes political, sometimes designed for sunny days. From emerging artists to big names in the art world, there’s plenty to stop in the province’s institutions in the coming months. Here are the exhibitions not to be missed.
Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art
Montreal is the work of artist Mika Rottenberg that will be presented as part of an immersive exhibition designed in close collaboration with the artist. Born in Argentina, established in New York for several years, the creator will deploy three videographic installations in the company of unusual sculptural objects. Inspired by the writings of Marx, Rottenberg proposes a “social surrealism” which seems to escape any narrative logic.
Visually overloaded and hypercolored, his political and humorous works borrow from the codes of documentary and fiction in order to highlight the interactions between bodies and machines. To do this, the artist juxtaposes bodily productions (sneezes, secretions, etc.) and manufactured products.
Filmed in China, NoNoseKnows (2015) offers a subversive allegory of labor practices. Cosmic Generator (2017) offers an ironic analogy between the issue of migration and the large-scale circulation of goods. The work connects a system of tunnels between the Mexican city of Mexicali, the Californian town of Calexico and a plastic goods market located in Yiwu, China, where we discover soporific shops filled with a heap sparkling trinkets. At last, Spaghetti Blockchain (2019), a supercharged fairyland that is difficult to sum up, notably presents a particle accelerator that Rottenberg was able to film during his residency at CERN, near Geneva. Do you want more? Know that in the fall, the MAC will present Remotethe designer’s first experimental feature film.
From May 21 to October 10, 2022
Joliette Art Museum
At the MAJ, four summer exhibitions of contemporary art await the public, three of which are offered by national artists. First, Canadian artist Kevin Schmidt presents diy hifi [Hifi fait maison] (2014-2018), which transforms an exhibition hall into a listening room where the public is invited to play their own vinyl records. Quebecer Vicky Sabourin draws on her grief to work on the evocative power of smells.
The exhibition The lily of your skin proposes the creation of photographic, textile and sculptural works presented in the circulation areas of the MAJ. Finally, a dozen sculptures by Quebecer Samuel Roy-Bois, created in direct carving or formed by assembling banal objects, use materials accessible in the studio or in the immediate environment of the artist. Exhibited in Quebec for the first time, they testify materially to the possibilities offered to the artist during these few months when he made himself available to the opportunities offered by his living environment. The sculptures will be accompanied by a series of photographs taken during a residency in Germany, which presents everyday objects forming improbable and ephemeral sculptures. A dialogue of the ordinary thus takes place between the two parts of this exhibition.
From June 18 to September 5, 2022
Sherbrooke Museum of Fine Arts
Two biennials are set up in Estrie. The 6and edition of the Contemporary Native Art Biennial (BACA) will bring together sculptures, photographs and performances that will be grouped together in the exhibition Land Back stopping at the Sherbrooke Museum of Fine Arts.
The movement of the same name, which inspired the exhibition, aims to obtain governance and control of ancestral lands, thus anchoring itself in decolonization. The ten artists invited to this Eastern Townships hub of the biennial (there are seven places invested in total) offer a northern perspective on the theme. All come from or work around the Far North.
Until June 26, 2022
Alongside this initiative, the 10and Biennale des artistes des Cantons-de-l’Est, formerly the Salon du Printemps des artistes des Cantons-de-l’Est, will present the work of eleven artists from the region with varied practices and backgrounds, through the exhibition Time at work. This will be divided into two stages and will run from April 28 to September 11, 2022.
Contemporary Art Museum of the Laurentians
To the north of the metropolis, the MACLAU welcomes It was possiblea memory exhibition highlighting the 50th anniversary of the Cégep de Saint-Jérôme.
Driven by the story of demanding, transgressive teenage lives inhabited by all possibilities, the works and artefacts highlighted are all the product of college students. Visual arts graduates will exhibit their creations there on May 21 and 22.
From June 5 to August 14, 2022