EXHIBITION

PHI Résidences Montréal 1920x1080 Site Web

Sep. 22 → Jan. 9, 2022 ... and room in the bag of stars

Exhibition
Free
Contemporary Art

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Free admission Reservations required

Wednesday to Sunday:
12 PM to 5 PM

PHI Foundation 451 Saint-Jean Street
Montréal, Québec H2Y 2R5

Each exhibition space can accommodate a maximum of 4 people at all times, for a minimum of 30 minutes. Your place will be held for 15 minutes following the time of your reservation, after which the spot will be released. If you are late or unable to attend, please call us at 514 849-3742.

To visit alone (without the presence of other visitors) or with a family of more than 4 people (4 and +), please contact us so that we can accommodate your request.

In order to ensure the safety and comfort of our community, we carefully follow the guidelines developed by the public health authorities. Walk-ins are accepted, but could be refused depending on the traffic. When you arrive, we will ask you to disinfect your hands and wear your mask/face covering, follow the path and remember to maintain physical distance. The mask/face covering is mandatory in our spaces for visitors 10 years of age and older, and recommended at your discretion in between the age of 2 years old and 9 years old.

Exhibition Pamphlet

kimura byol-nathalie lemoine, Salima Punjani, Dominique Sirois, Santiago Tamayo Soler, Karen Trask

Commissaire

… and room in the bag of stars is a group exhibition that presents works produced in the context of the inaugural PHI MONTRÉAL residency, launched by PHI and carried out in the summer of 2021. The five laureates of this edition of the residency, kimura byol-nathalie lemoine, Salima Punjani, Dominique Sirois, Santiago Tamayo Soler and Karen Trask, proposed projects in response to a prompt inspired by the work of science-fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin: an invitation, after a moment of prolonged social isolation, to imagine spaces, temporalities, conditions, or systems where we can all get together, again.

The resulting exhibition engages with these themes while encompassing a wide range of formal and conceptual approaches, offering insight into the ways in which artists are grappling with the urgency of this question, and how it can resonate both on individual and collective levels. The exhibition’s title stems from The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, a short essay written by Le Guin in 1986. Throughout the text, the author develops an alternative theory of the power of fiction: rather than opportunities to glorify virile and violent heroism, Le Guin sees stories as chances to reinvent our collective futures and make space for our everyday gestures and feelings. Le Guin’s thinking was profoundly inspired by the research of anthropologist Elizabeth Fisher, who posited that the most essential tool for the survival of prehistoric humanity was not the weapon, as previously believed, but the bag used to carry seeds and fruits. Following this, Le Guin reimagines bags as works of art: supple, soft and adaptable recipients, ripe for infinite future harvests.

PHI MONTRÉAL Residencies
At PHI, we value the role of art and culture in our everyday lives. The purpose of PHI MONTRÉAL is to nurture a relationship between artists, curators and visitors by inviting them to investigate the pressing issues of our time through the production and presentation of artworks. This residency explores art making and presentation through the concept of the ecosystem, a community-building network that relies on interaction and interconnectivity for its health and wellbeing.

Biographies

kimura byol-nathalie lemoine is a conceptual multimedia feminist artist and curator who questions binaries and perceptions of identities—diaspora, ethnicity, colorism, post-colonialism, immigration, gender—through calligraphy, painting, poetry, digital and video, and collaborative practice.

Salima Punjani is a multisensory artist grounded in relational aesthetics. She is particularly interested in how multiple senses can be used to expand the possibilities for people to feel welcome in art spaces as well as to create artful experiences of empathy, intimacy, and connection.

Dominique Sirois’ artistic practice takes the form of multidisciplinary installations, playing with materializations of exhibition devices through ceramics and printed images. Sirois deploys narrative devices throughout her installations using economic, archaeological, mythological, technological, and mineralogical references.

Santiago Tamayo Soler is an interdisciplinary artist working mainly in video and performance. Interested in fiction/nonfiction, narrative devices, and live action, Tamayo Soler overlays digital footage and modified video games to create pixelated universes home to Latin American, immigrant, queer stories of a radical futuristic fantasy.

Karen Trask is known for her explorations of language and innovative use of paper, whose works include installations, artist-books, videos, and performances. Trask’s multimedia work has been exhibited in Quebec, Canada, Europe, Mexico, and Japan.