EXHIBITION

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.