A must-attend event for the winter season, the Art Souterrain Festival is back for a 12th edition in the heart of the metropolis. From February 29 to March 22, 2020, contemporary art will invest 5 km of Montreal's underground pedestrian network and 7 off-course venues to present, for 24 days, contemporary works of art by some 50 local and international artists on the theme "RESET". The works selected by the 4 curators, Juliette Bibasse (France) , Marie Perrault (Canada), Lynn Bannon (Canada), and Dulce Pinzón (Mexico) will be accessible at any time free of charge. In addition, the Festival will offer over 50 mediation activities and free artistic discoveries.
RESET
If you could press a button and erase everything, what would you do with this new blank page? If you were offered to start from scratch, how would you imagine the world?
Humanity is at a turning point. Should we persist in our habits or become aware of repetitive patterns to start on a new basis? Upsetting one's routine and changing one's habits can lead to intense moments of insecurity. This can lead to painful questioning or even loss of bearings.
The climatic, economic and political upheavals are at the heart of our news. Individually and collectively, if he wants to survive, the human being will soon have to change his relationship to the world, but also his interpersonal relationships.
Is Manichaeism the only solution? Should we think only in terms of utopia and dystopia in order to find paths that have never been marked?
THE CURATORS
Born in France, Juliette Bibasse has a background in artistic direction, and a taste for simple and stripped down aesthetics. Since 2009, she has been applying her skills to the digital art scene, creating connections and opportunities between artists, festivals and cultural actors. She collaborates with several international artists, touring their existing projects as well as developing and conceptualizing new creations.
Since 2013, she is the head of Studio Joanie Lemercier, based in Brussels.
She started working as an associated curator in 2016, for several festivals and cultural institutions, recently as international curator for the exhibition of STRP festival 2019 and 2020 in Eindhoven. In 2019 she co-founded SALOON Brussels, a network for women working in the art scenes. Eager to learn and to share her experience, she is giving talks about topics related to digital art.
Marie Perrault has been acting for thirty years as an author, curator and consultant in contemporary art in Quebec. She has written numerous essays and has designed several exhibitions. From 1997 to 2014, she worked in the Ministry of Culture and Communications, as a Project Manager at the service of arts integration to architecture and as a Museum Consultant at the Montreal Branch.
Lynn Bannon is an art historian with a doctorate in semiology. She also completed a Fellowship at the University of Glasgow (Scotland, 2015). Since 2005, she has taught at the Art history Department of the Université du Québec à Montréal. Her research is concerned with quotation within contemporary image-making, and the relationship between text and images. In addition to serving on various university committees, she has participated in several national and international conferences organized by the International Association for Visual Semiotics (IAVS), the French Association of Semiotics (AFS), the International Association of Word and Image Studies (IAWIS), and the Association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS).
Dulce Pinzón was born in Mexico City in 1974. She studied Mass Media Communications at the Universidad de Las Américas Puebla and Photography at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She moved to New York in 1995 and studied at the International Center of Photography. She lives and works in Puebla, Mexico city and New York.
Her work is influenced by feelings of nostalgia, questions of identity, and political and cultural frustrations. The goal that she pursues through her art activism is cultural consumption, customization, and intervention. Some of her projects are: "Viviendo En El Gabacho", "Loteria", "Multiracial", and "Real Stories of Superheroes." Her work has been published and exhibited in Mexico, the United States, Australia, Argentina, and Europe.
The 12th edition of the Art Souterrain Festival will take place from February 29 to March 22, 2020. For more details visit here
comments