EXHIBITION

Phi montreal 2023 002 — Amélie Brisson-Darveau and Pavitra Wickramasinghe, *Forgotten Traces* (production detail), 2023. Photo: Kevin Delamourd

August 4 → September 3, 2023 Forgotten Traces

Exhibition
Past Event
Contemporary Art

PHI Foundation 465 Saint-Jean Street
G6 and G7 spaces
Montréal, Québec H2Y 2R6

August 4—September 3, 2023
Wednesday to Friday: 12 PM—7 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 11 AM—6 PM

Free admission

Visit Visit

• The wearing of masks is no longer mandatory.
• Masks are at your disposal, if desired.
• Gel hand sanitizing stations.

If you have symptoms associated with COVID-19, please postpone your visit.

Before visiting, please review all essential information about the visit, including details on accessibility at the Foundation.

The Education Department offers on-site group visits and online virtual animations for school, academic, community, language school and general public groups. The group visit can be combined with a creative workshop. To make a reservation for your group, please fill our online form.

The visit includes three exhibitions:
• Inhabiting the Imaginary by Moridja Kitenge Banza
• Forgotten Traces by Amélie Brisson-Darveau and Pavitra Wickramasinghe
• REMEMBER, PERFORM, FORGET: Binding Space Through Utopia

Exhibition Pamphlet

Artists in residence:
Amélie Brisson-Darveau and Pavitra Wickramasinghe, PHI Montreal

Exhibition | Biographies | Installation Views

Forgotten Traces is an exhibition by artists Amélie Brisson-Darveau and Pavitra Wickramasinghe imagined in collaboration with Secondary 3 Students from Montréal’s Lucien-Pagé school and their visual arts teacher, Audray-Ann St-Louis.

The exhibition is the result of Wickramasinghe and Brisson-Darveau’s PHI Montréal public engagement residency, realized between September 2022 and June 2023. Within the context of this residency, the artists co-facilitated a series of workshops on the waves of gentrification that can be observed in certain neighborhoods in proximity to the Lucien-Pagé school. In walks accompanied by the artists, students looked at the areas of Villeray, Little Italy and Mile-Ex, observing the different architectures that have been built there over the course of the last century, and noting the transformation of civic or religious buildings into residential real estate developments. They were also invited to reflect on the different lives of 6528-6574 Waverly, an industrial building which now welcomes artists’ studios, and is located in the middle of a neighborhood undergoing accelerated gentrification.

Varied traces collected by participants will be deployed in an installation that evokes the spectral presence of buildings whose future is uncertain. The exhibition comes with an activity booklet, offered free of charge, that will allow the public to revisit the project’s neighbourhoods and sites.

Curated by Daniel Fiset

The artists and the curator wish to thank the PHI Montreal residency program, Dominic St-Louis from the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal, Audray-Ann St-Louis and her students, Marie-Fei Deguire, Amelia Wong-Mersereau, and Paul Lofeodo for their contributions to the project.

Biographies

Amélie Brisson-Darveau

Amélie Brisson-Darveau’s artistic projects aim at offering an alternative experience of the “unseen” elements of social environments through an exploration of their tangibility and volume. She approaches her installation work through multiple dimensions by experimenting with the texture and structure of textiles that are put in relation with other materials such as ceramics, wood and light. Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions and events in Canada, the United States and Europe, particularly in Switzerland, England, Germany, Finland, Lithuania, Norway, Turkey and France. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the FQRSC and was a recipient of the Kaunas International Biennale’s Emerging Artist Award.

Pavitra Wickramasinghe

Pavitra Wickramasinghe is a multidisciplinary artist mainly concerned with new ways of conceptualizing the moving image and conventions of seeing. Her current work is an exploration of notions of travelling, fluidity of place and memory. Her work has been exhibited in numerous local, national and international venues such as Chroniques – Biennale of Digital Imagination (France), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, OBORO (Montréal), Kunstkraftwerk (Germany), Yeosu International Art Festival (South Korea), Centre des Arts Enghien-les-Bains (France), Cable Factory (Finland), Centro Cultural del Matadero (Spain) and Access Gallery (Vancouver) among others. Pavitra was born in Colombo and lives and works in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal.