‘Space fiction’ and 10-foot-tall sculptures: Concordia at the 2014 Biennale de Montréal
“Fatigues,” 2014, by Abbas Akhavan. Courtesy of BNLMTL 2014.
From taxidermy to air traffic control towers, the art at the eighth Biennale de Montréal (BNLMTL) never fails to surprise and make a statement.
The 2014 BNLMTL opened on October 21 with a diverse range of contemporary art, photographs, installations, videos, prints and much more — including circumpolar maps and a gold USB stick.
This year’s theme is L’Avenir (Looking Forward); the goal is to examine recent developments in contemporary art with an eye to what’s ahead. This fall, Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts, in partnership with BNLMTL, presented lectures by a series of artists including installation artist Thomas Hirschorn and activist-theorist Franco Berardi.
In all, the 2014 biennale features 50 international artists, including 13 attendees of Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts. The next few weeks will offer a last chance to see many of their exhibits.
Abbas Akhavan (BFA 04)
Exploring concepts of fragility and mortality, Akhavan takes a unique approach to taxidermy. His stuffed birds and mammals — placed casually throughout the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal — strike lifeless poses that encourage viewers to face the inevitability of death.
Akhavan’s second offering at BNLMTL is a new activity wherein children and teens select face-paint patterns that purposefully disable facial recognition surveillance software. How, the Toronto-based artist asks, has the myth of “safety above all” in our risk-averse, contemporary culture led us to accept individual alienation in exchange for a false sense of security?
“Fatigues” (2014) will be on display at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal until January 1, 2015.
Bramor UAS Flight preparation, Ikpik, Baffin Island, NU. Courtesy of the artists and BNLMTL 2014.
Matthew Biederman (MFA 06) and Marko Peljhan
Presenting as the non-profit transnational art, science and culture working group Arctic Perspective Initiative, this collective uses equipment, mapping devices, manifestos, open-source applications and participatory communications infrastructures to develop collaborative projects between indigenous cultures, artists, hunters, scientists and engineers concerned with the circumpolar region.
Some of the results — such as wall paintings and aeriel drone photographs — make up the seven installations by Arctic Perspective Initiative at BNLMTL this year.
See Arctic Perspective Initiative’s installations at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal until January 1, 2015. “Circumpolar-Phoenix, 2010 – present” is at Gare Central until January 1, 2015, as well as in the Quartier des spectacles until December 15, 2014.
Find out more about Biederman’s and Pelijhan’s BNLMTL exhibition.
“Eternity,” 2014, by Nicolas Baier. Courtesy of BNLMTL 2014.
Nicolas Baier (Attended 06)
Reflecting the artist’s ongoing interest in mirrors, Baier’s new work, “Eternity” (2014), is a 10-foot tall sculpture of mirror-finish stainless steel. From above, it contains a message — the word eternity — that cannot be seen from ground level.
“In the reflective but impenetrable surface of ‘Eternity,’ Baier aims to give form to the boundless mystery of the world, and to the vanity of mankind’s desire to grasp the future”, says Peggy Gale, co-curator of BNLMTL.
“Eternity” is on display at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal until February 5, 2015.
Nicolas Grenier (BFA 04)
Working between Montreal and Los Angeles, where he received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2010, Grenier explores the unstable relationship between language and form, social interaction and power relations.
“Promised Land Template” (2014), his work at BNLMTL, is a pavilion-like structure containing paintings whose acid-infused palette and late-modernist style depict schematics of dehumanized, rationalist approaches to topical societal issues. Grenier explicitly references the impact of Latin American immigration on the United States. “Promised Land Template” questions how future population movements are to be envisaged globally.
“Promised Land Template” is at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal until January 1, 2015.
“Immigration Policy (point system),” 2012, by Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen. Courtesy of the artist.
Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen (BFA 94)
Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen’s research-based installation “Space Fiction & the Archives” (2012) brings together archival documents, memorabilia, newspaper articles, photographic images, sculpture and film. To what end? To question Canada’s conception of itself as a open and welcoming society.
Born in Montreal in 1979, Nguyen is a French-speaking Quebecer of Vietnamese origin who currently lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Her personal experiences inform her interest in multiculturalism as a foundation of the Canadian identity.
“Space Fiction & the Archives,” is on display at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal until January 4, 2015.
"The Golden USB," 2014, by Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens. Courtesy of the artists; produced by La Biennale de Montréal for BNLMTL 2014.
Marilou Lemmens (BFA 04) and Richard Ibghy
Working collaboratively, Ibghy and Lemmens have a research-based practice that combines a minimalist approach to the form and construction of the art object with a desire to make ideas visible.
“The Prophets,” one of their two pieces at BNLMTL, is a table holding makeshift graphs of scholarly predictions, intended to conveys scepticism about the accuracy of the sources and a comprehension of scientific or economic models.
Their second piece, “The Golden USB,” is an installation including projected text and catalogues. It explores contemporary concerns regarding the commodification of the earth and the economization of life.
“The Prophets” is on display at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal until January 1, 2015. “The Golden USB” was on display at Vox — Centre de l’image contemporaine.
Emmanuelle Léonard (BFA 98)
Emmanuelle Léonard presents video installations and photographs that blur the lines between documentary and fiction. In “La Providence” (2014), the artist interviews retired nuns in the apartments they now call home, after having recently left their 150-year-old Mother House (now the Grey Nuns Building) in downtown Montréal.
Léonard’s second work, “Postcard from Bexhill-on-sea” (2014) contains voice-overs of elderly English couples who comment on the lack of civility and human contact today.
“These works provide an intimate portrait of the future seen through the eyes of two closely knit but very different communities,” says Lesley Johnstone, co-curator at BNLMTL.
“La Providence” is at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal until February 5, 2015. “Postcard from Bexhill-on-sea” is at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal from October 22, 2014 to January 1, 2015.
"Anna and the Tower," 2014, by Lynne Marsh. Courtesy of the artist and Donald Brown Gallery, Montréal; co-commissioned by the Goethe-Institut Toronto and the Toronto International Film Festival.
Lynne Marsh (BFA 92)
Lynne Marsh — known for investing specific sites and architectures through location-based filming — is presenting “Anna and the Tower” (2014). This three-channel HD video installation features a young woman working as an air traffic controller in a desolate German airtower.
“The work relays a sense of absence, latency and speculation as a way of describing an unsettled political landscape,” says Marsh, whose work often evokes the complex relationships between complicity and participation, camera and subject and the individual and the social.
“Anna and the Tower” is at Arsenal Art Contemporain until November 24, 2015.
Skawennati (BFA 92, Gr Dip 96)
New media artist Skawennati is screening her animated sci-fi project “TimeTraveller™” (2008-2013), which runs 75 minutes in nine episodes. It covers more than 600 years, from a pre-Columbian America to a “present” well ahead of us.
Grounded in fact, the science-fiction series addresses Skawennati’s interest in history, future and change. Born in Kahnawake, QC, Skawennati lives and works in Montréal. Her previous pioneering New Media projects include “CyberPowWow” and “Imagining Indians in the 25th Century.”
“TimeTraveller™” is at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal until January 4, 2015.
David Tomas (MFA 75)
Montreal-born artist and anthropologist David Tomas explores the nature and functions of different forms of knowledge that are produced at the interface of the history of contemporary art, the history and anthropology of media and the cultures and transcultures of imaging technologies.
“Tomas wants to raise questions about the future form of the artwork in the context of a global art system and market economy,” says Johnstone, referring to his BNLMTL installation “This is Tomorrow” (2014), which focuses on the recent auction sale of two display panels designed by the British pop artist Richard Hamilton.
“This is Tomorrow” is at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal until January 1, 2015.
"Stills from Preuzmimo Benčić," 2013-2014, by Althea Thauberger. Courtesy of the artist, Musagetes and Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto. Photo: Milica Czerny Urban.
Althea Thauberger (BFA 00)
Althea Thauberger presents her new film Preuzmimo Benčić (2014), which is set in a Croatian port city that’s been flagged for redevelopment as a cultural hub. Thauberger, a Vancouver-based artist, cast her film with more than 50 local children to heighten the absurdity of social, political, institutional and aesthetic power relations.
“Although grounded in the highly complex political and economic reality in Croatia, the film is… embedded with the constant tension between late capitalism and socialism,” says Johnstone.
Preuzmimo Benčić is at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal until February 5, 2015.
Find out more about Thauberger’s BNLMTL exhibition.