MMFA 2022-2023: TUSARNITUT

 

ᑐᓴᕐᓂᑐᑦ TUSARNITUT!

Music Born of the Cold

November 10, 2022 – March 12, 2023

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is presenting an exhibition that is a trans-historical exploration of the fundamental role music plays in Inuit life. It brings together artworks from the 1950s to the present, providing a circumpolar perspective and a unique opportunity to appreciate differences in style and content among artists from various arctic regions.

ᑐᓴᕐᓂᑐᑦ TUSARNITUT! translates literally as “pleasing sounds to the ear”. The practice of song and dance among the Inuit is linked directly to their environment, culture, and lands. The exhibition offers a glimpse into the art forms common throughout Inuit Nunaat (lands inhabited by the Inuit), the area that covers the circumpolar region spanning Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and in Russia Chukotka and Siberia. These lands are home to over 180,000 Inuit people. The exhibition offers a discovery of these musical traditions and shows how they continue to shape Inuit culture today.

The art works on display are drawn from the collections of the MMFA, the Avataq Cultural Institute, as well as from local and international lenders. There are over one hundred sculptures, prints, drawings and installations that are themed around music by such renowned Inuit artists as Karoo Ashevak, Kenojuak Ashevak, Pitseolak Ashoona, Mattiusi Iyaituk, David Ruben Piqtoukun, Annie Pootoogook, Kananginaq Pootoogook, Jessie Oonark and Niap (Nancy Saunders). The works are complemented by objects, artifacts, photographs, archival footage and music clips that allow the public to appreciate the rich Inuit musical traditions through sight and sound.

The focus of the presentation are two prominent musical genres:

qilaujjaniq (drum dancing) and

katajjaniq (throat singing)

ᑐᓴᕐᓂᑐᑦ TUSARNITUT! also highlights the cultural transformations and musical exchanges that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period when the widespread penetration of the southern populations towards north reached the traditional Inuit lands in the Arctic regions which led to Inuit adapting new instruments and musical ideas. These historical shifts provide a basis for highlighting the evolving appearance and function of contemporary Inuit artforms of expression dedicated to the flourishing of Arctic Indigenous languages, art, and musical practices integral to the processes of Indigenous self-determination today.

The exhibition’s guest curator Jean-Jacques Nattiez is also the author of La musique qui vient du froid : arts, chants et danses des Inuit. Published in French by Presses de l’Université de Montréal, this 488-page art book offers an anthropological and historical look at Inuit musical culture and a panorama of its diverse expressions. With its references to a host of online recordings, videos and archival documents, and its abundant illustrations, this book is, above all, a homage to the immense artistic talent and musical virtuosity of Inuit people who are born of the cold.

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All Photos © Nadia Slejskova

Visit the the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website to check on the opening hours and to purchase your ticket online.

McCord 2022: Disraeli Revisited

 

DISRAELI REVISITED - Chronicle of an Event in Quebec Photography

McCord Stewart Museum

Presented by La Presse

October 28, 2022 - February 19, 2023

This exhibition commemorates the 50th Anniversary of a focal chapter in Quebec’s photographic history. The public is invited to learn about the Disraeli project and the heated debate that caused a deep reflection on the ethics of photographic representation and image rights. Through 144 photographs, including over 67 that have never been exhibited before, 44 archival documents and a video, the exhibition chronicles heated debate that took place in the 1970s that sparked a deep reflection on the ethics of photographic representation and image rights.

The exhibition celebrates and revisits the original body of photograph works by bringing together images and documentation that tell the story from multiple points of view, thus focusing on the major issues and consequences that stemmed from the original Disraeli Project.

In the summer of 1972, four young photographers - Claire Beaugrand-Champagne, Michel Campeau, Roger Charbonneau and Cedric Pearson (in the photos above) - spent three months in Disraeli, a town located in the Municipalité régionale de comté des Appalaches in Quebec, Canada. Along with researchers Ginette Laurin and Maryse Pellerin, they set out to produce a collective documentary portrait of Disraeli and its residents’ everyday life. The group, officially known as the “Collectif de l’Imagerie Populaire de Disraeli,” lived in a farmhouse on the outskirts of the town. Throughout their stay, they photographed and interviewed local residents and developed certain friendships. This closeness made it possible for the photographers to take portraits of their subjects in action and posing nonchalantly in places where they lived and worked.

The Controversy

In the months and years that followed the group’s stay in Disraeli, the photographs were widely distributed in various publications and exhibitions. In 1974, controversy broke out when the popular French-language magazine Perspectives published an article and a selection of 18 images. This magazine was inserted inside La Presse, La Tribune, Le Soleil, Le Droit and other French-language newspapers and was distributed in more than 550,000 copies. Influential people from the Disraeli community expressed their disapproval in local papers, stating that the photographs unfairly and negatively represented the town.

Some Montreal journalists, including writer Pierre Vallières in Le Devoir, came to the group’s defense. This article triggered a strong reaction from prominent residents of Disraeli, creating a real media storm. While this debate brought the Montreal photography community to reflect on the social impact of documentary photography, it also raised such broad questions as the manipulation of information by the media, the idealization of rural life by the younger generation, and the subjectivity of photography as an art form.

In addition to the photos, the exhibition also includes a 16-minute video that combines audio clips and a selection of the photographers’ contact sheets creating an amplified experience of some of the better-known image. This video was produced by researchers Ginette Laurin and Maryse Pellerin.

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All Photos @ Nadia Slejskova

For more information about current exhibitions and activities, visit the McCord Museum website.

MMFA 2022-2024: SEEING LOUD-Basquiat and Music

SEEING LOUD: Basquiat and Music

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion – Level 3

October 15, 2022 – February 19, 2023

The Museum of Fine Arts of Montreal (MMFA), in collaboration with the Musée de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris, invites visitors to immerse themselves in the visual and musical landscape of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). The exhibition offers an in-depth look at the artist’s unique connection between his life, music and in his artistic creations. This is the first exhibition ever to focus on the role of music in Basquiat’s artistic practice. The show explores his art in relation to the New York music scene of the 1970s and 80s. It introduces visitors to the sounds he conjured in his paintings – from opera to jazz to hip-hop – and to the musicians who inspired him. The exhibition brings together over a 100 works in addition to many audio clips, videos exhibited for the first time, notebooks and rare archival materials.

More than merely a soundtrack to his life, music was manifest in Basquiat’s art as sign, symbol and sound. Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music offers an insight into the artist’s complex musical universe.

An American born to Haitian and Puerto Rican parents, Jean-Michel Basquiat had a meteoric artistic career. Beginning with an exploration of the music that shaped Basquiat’s New York in the 1970s and 1980s, the exhibition turns attention to the performative aspects and the extent to which music shaped his artistic output. A music lover to his core, Jean-Michel Basquiat possessed an impressive collection of more than 3,000 records and was a performing musician himself, notably with the experimental band Gray, of which he was a founding member.

The exhibition also looks at Basquiat’s compositional techniques as they relate to music, and references his ties to particular record labels, musicians, cultures and sounds, providing a comprehensive picture of how his love of music in all its forms – opera, classical, hip-hop, jazz and especially bebop – inspired and structured his artistic practice. Musical instruments abound in his works, as do references to a range of genres.

A multidisciplinary and prolific artist, Basquiat collaborated on several videos, produced a single, and designed flyers announcing concerts in New York during one of the most creative periods in the city’s musical history. Music was not only a structuring element of his art but also a means to engage with the wider themes of the African diaspora, the US politics of race, and the history of Black musicality. Basquiat absorbed the sounds and culture that were all around him and made them part of his paintings, creating a unique artistic language resonating to this day.

“The key to deciphering Basquiat’s oeuvre and understanding its evolution lies in music. The artist always surrounded himself with sounds, and found himself at the confluence of two majormusical movements of his time – no wave and hip-hop – that resonated with his creations. Jazz was a major source of inspiration for him, as were the blues and vernacular forms of Black American music, which he integrated into his paintings and which had a profound influence on his artistic practice, both formally and hematically,“ explains Vincent Bessières, guest curator for the Musée de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris.

“Jean-Michel Basquiat’s art is loaded with sonic charge,” explains Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Chief Curator of the MMFA and curator of Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music. “Words, instruments, signs and symbols collide in compositions that sound – and sound loud – as we see them. They are distillations, reincarnations and even incantations of the phonics of the New York City streets, of hip-hop and bebop, of the Black Atlantic, Beethoven, Ravel and more. Through the music in his work, Basquiat celebrated Black artistry and tackled the complexities and cruelties of history, bringing to life the sounds that inspired him and the soul of his historical moment.”

Visit the the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website to check on the opening hours and to purchase your ticket online.

Click on images to enlarge them.

All Photos © Nadia Slejskova

McCord 2022: INCIPIT – COVID-19

 
Photographs by Michel Huneault:

A Look Back at the First Months of the Pandemic in Montreal

September 16, 2022 - January 22, 2023

The Montreal's McCord Stewart Museum is presenting its new exhibition of photographs by Michel Huneaul INCIPIT – COVID-19 that displays 30 works and 3 projections of photos and videos, comprising over 150 images. The exhibition documents the daily reality of the first months of the pandemic as experienced by Montrealers, healthcare workers, and patients suffering from the virus. It provides a chance to the public to reflect back on the series of events that put the world on pause.

In order to reduce the spread of the virus, a general lockdown of businesses and schools was ordered by the Quebec government in the spring of 2020 since Montreal was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Realizing the historic nature of this situation, the McCord Stewart Museum gave photographer Michel Huneault carte blanche to document this unprecedented upheaval. From April to August 2020, he attempted to comprehend and capture images of the scourge that was spreading across the planet and still continues to affect daily life.

To document the pandemic measures, the photographer investigated the city scenes in the midst of various public measures. He gathered personal statements from a number of individuals and also secured and exceptional access to three healthcare institutions enabled him to directly document the work of healthcare workers and the impact of the virus on patients and their families.

Two photos below show the photographer Michel Huneault during the exhibition's press visit.

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All Photos @ Nadia Slejskova

Activity related to the exhibition

Documented in real time – Round table

Wednesday, September 21, 6 to 7 p.m. – At the Museum

For the exhibition INCIPIT – COVID-19, the Museum is organizing a round table discussion around Michel Huneault’s photography project, which provides an early record of this historic moment by capturing the beginnings of the COVID-19 crisis. The event will examine the necessity of archiving the present and explore the roles of different stakeholders—artists, journalists, institutions, civil society—in creating a network that engages in the values of accessibility and visibility.

 Speakers:

• Michel Huneault, photographer

• Zoë Tousignant, curator, Photography, McCord Stewart Museum

• Pierre-Paul Milette, administrator who has worked in management positions within Quebec’s

health and social services network The discussion will be moderated by Vincent Lavoie, professor in the Art History Department at UQAM.

Free activity, in French. Space is limited, reservation required on the Museum website.

Framing Everyday Life: Stories of Confinement

Alongside the photographic mission entrusted to Michel Huneault, in April 2020 the Museum launched a collaborative public project, Framing Everyday Life: Stories of Confinement. This project invited the public to express, through photography, how the pandemic and confinement influenced their relationship with the outside world and each other. After more than 2 years, over 4,000 photographs with the hashtags #FramingEverydayLife and #Cadrerlequotidien have been shared on social media. The project’s success provides a portrait of the diverse realities experienced by Quebecers and the way they evolved. The tagged images can be viewed on the project’s webpage on the McCord Stewart Museum’s website.

World Press Photo 2022

 

World Press Photo 2022

Montreal 2022 - 15th Montreal Edition

August 31 - October 2, 2022

Following a two-year absence, the World Press Photo Montreal exhibition returns to Bonsecours Market in Old Montreal. It showcases this year’s prizewinning photographs, as selected by a jury that sifted through nearly 65,000 submissions by 4,066 photojournalists from 130 countries.

Often dubbed the Oscars of photo-journalism, the World Press Photo is the most prestigious international press photography contest. The Montreal edition has been presented since 2005 and is extremely popular with the public.

In line with the World Press Photo’s new approach, an independent jury of regional and global experts selected the regional entries for 2022, dividing them into four categories: Singles, Stories, Long-Term Projects, and Open Format.

Amber Bracken, WORLD Press Photo of the Year prize winner.

This year, the jury awarded its top prize to a Canadian photographer Amber Bracken for her Kamloops Residential School, a photograph taken for the New York Times.

The winning photo is presented by the photographer Amber Bracken.

Photo exhibit by Justine Latour also deserves a special attention. She captured with great sensitivity and presented to the public her photos of the Montreal's centenarian Claire Sigouin.

Claire 107 years old. Born in Montreal in 1915. An exclusive photo exhibition by Justine Latour.

Justine Latour presents her photos.

Justine Latour presents her photos to Claire Sigouin.

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All Photos @ Nadia Slejskova

About World Press Photo

Founded in 1955, the World Press Photo Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization with its headquarters in Amsterdam. The foundation is committed to supporting and advancing high standards ofphotojournalism and documentary storytelling worldwide. Each year, the exhibition travels to more than 100 cities in 45 countries and is seen by more than 4 million visitors. The World Press Photo receives support from the Dutch Postcode Lottery and PwC.