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May we suggest

Agenda / January 14–April 30, 2021
Editors' Pick

Sak vid pa kanpe !

Francisco Gonzalez-Rosas, Marie La Vierge and Yonel Charles, Anahita Norouzi, Eliza Olkinitskaya
Anahita Norouzi, It Looks Nice from a Distance, 2020, twelve-channel video installation in two parts, colour, sound, 4h. Anahita Norouzi, It Looks Nice from a Distance, 2020. 12-channel video installation in two parts, colour, sound, 4 hours.
Galerie de l’UQAM

Online Event

Montreal, Quebec

Date

January 14–April 30, 2021

Curator

Musée d'art actuel/Département des invisibles

By adopting the Creole proverb Sak vid pa kanpe ! (An empty bag can’t stand upright!), this third act of the virtual initiative QUADrature highlights the political dimension of the body as a vehicle driven by a desire for social transformation and collective liberation.

Editors' Comment

Montreal’s curfew and lockdown closures have me thinking more about movement and privilege. Like many art writers in Canada and abroad, my access to exhibitions is different now and there is rarely, if at all, the opportunity to chat casually and share ideas with others around art. I am grateful for virtual exhibitions like Sak vid pa kanpe! that shock me back into place, into my body, through performances and artworks that reflect on freedom, safety and violence on multiple levels. While almost all these artists are working locally, their projects transport me to far away places. Marie La Vierge and Yonel Charles’ liberation ritual for example brought me to Ayiti, while Elizaa Olkinitskaya’s video looks at the recent protests in Belarus. The live streaming surveillance cameras of Anahita Norouzi’s video series eerily allow me to drop in on various locations at once across Europe and the United States. Francisco Gonzalez-Rosas’s video performance on the other hand are meant to subvert our understandings of a place, playing on cultural stereotypes of a ‘Southern’ subject. All these works are in line with this edition of QUADrature’s curators, a group called MUSÉE D’ART ACTUEL / DÉPARTEMENT DES INVISIBLES (MAAD-I). Not to be confused with the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal (MAC) most people know (though their website is modeled off of it) the MAAD-I is a fictional institution that aims to highlight the practices of marginalised groups and culturally diverse artists in Quebec and Canada. —Amelia Wong-Mersereau, editorial resident.