Art in Montreal

This time around, I highlight a set of interrelated concerns in four seemingly disparate exhibitions. Part of the Post-Invisibles Biennale , Histoires de disparition by Judith Bellavance was at Galerie DÈS . The exhibition involved a series of approximately life-sized photos of clothing that once belonged to the departed. Not as austere as mourning or typical funereal display garments, they were everyday or nightwear, which added to their diaphanous quality and the muted sense of illumination their production treatment infused them with. These were displayed hanging horizontally in the middle of the gallery space, suspended in clusters. Images were set back-to-back, and their presentational hanging doubled the image of the clothes hanging.  Bellavance framed it all as a counterpart to her work as an embalmer: To engage with my creative themes of loss and disappearance, I have been working in the funeral sector since 2019. This proximity constantly heightens my awareness o...

When you enter Projet Casa , you are prompted to remove your footwear. Sitting by the door is a selection of slippers that you can put on. Given the theme of the exhibition, this would seem to suggest Hugh Hefner, minus smoking jacket and pipe. But it is not a gag. It is more like visiting a bowling alley and following the rigid signs of decorum and maintenance that oddly go along with it. Utilizing what the accompanying literature references as the domestic “bourgeois” space better than most of the installations that tend to be laid out in it, Delphine Huguet ’s Les corps complexes , curated by Mylène Lachance-Paquin , is part of the international Post-Invisibles : regard sur la place des femme biennial series of shows. Huguet is based in Montréal and France and Lachance-Paquin largely works developing corporate art “democratization” programming. The exhibition notes thank “the Canada Council for the arts for believing in me.” According to the curatorial statement : The exhibi...