Art Souterrain launches its urban component
a journey of works accessible to all
April 10-30 in the Montreal underground
Art Souterrain is pleased to launch the urban component of the 13th Art Souterrain Festival from April 10 to 30. While continuing its digital component, the festival will begin on April 10 in the underground of the city of Montreal. An urban route that will have a special flavour this year by allowing the public to (re)discover Montreal’s iconic places as well as appreciate the work of the artists of this edition. Works installed in the Montreal underground network route will be accessible free of charge in secure buildings at all times, even if the city remains a red zone.
A circuit of works accessible to all from April 10 to 30
The Art Souterrain Festival is once again taking over the emblematic places of underground Montreal. The 4-kilometre underground urban route will begin at the Palais de Congres move on through Centre de Commerce Mondial de Montréal to finally end up at Victoria Square.
More than twenty artists will exhibit their works as part of this route, including Chun Hua Catherine Dong at the Palais des Congrès, with his work Mother, a series consisting of 14 photographs and a video dedicated to the deceased mother of the artist. The artist uses reconstruction as a method to revisit the past in order to create scenarios of his mother visiting her place of birth. Also noteworthy is François Couture’s sculptural work The Source/Ingres to Deleuze at the Centre de commerce mondial which a machine starts and pours sand: once the vase is empty, the machine repeats its cycle tirelessly. This work presents itself as an enigma vis-a-vis the ontology of events. At Victoria Square, the public will be able to discover Pascale Leblanc-Lavigne’s La vitrine, an in-situ, a sound installation composed mainly of soap bottles with sprays and rags that work in vain to clean a shop window. A variety of artistic practices are presented along the urban underground route and will allow the public to discover the artistic universe of the creators of this edition.
Participating venues and artists
Centre de commerce mondial: Martin Le Chevallier, François Couture, Fanny Gicquel, Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Juan Fontanive, Philippe-Aubert Gauthier and Tanya St-Pierre.
Victoria Square: Roberto Santaguida, Cinzia Campolese, Annie Briard, Bertrand PLANES, Kitoko Diva, Julio Barrita, Pascale Leblanc-Lavigne.
Edifice Jacques-Parizeau: Megan Moore, Gild Gábor, Saulo Blanco García.
Palais des Congrès: Olivier Ratsi, Kitoko Diva, Ryan Brown, C. J. Chueca (Cecilia Jurado Chueca), Monica Muñoz Cid, Collective Bear (Elizabeth Flores and Luis Calvo), Katherine Melanon, Caroline Monnet, Amélie Laurence Fortin, Amor Muñoz
Interactive activities along the way
Throughout April, digital activities will continue in the Montreal underground. Artists, curators and special guests will wander the urban route to introduce the public to the programming of this edition. All of these activities will be broadcast simultaneously on the Festival’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
Vision focus with curators on April 9 in the underground
The circuit of the urban exhibition of Art Souterrain will be presented by its curators. A beautiful way to experience a live cultural mediation of the works and artists of this 13th edition of the Festival.
With the participation of Nathalie Bachand, Dulce Pinzon and Frédéric Loury.
An urban launch that promises – broadcast live on Facebook on April 10 at 6 p.m.
The 13th edition will be launched on April 10th. An underground tour with the participating artists will take place to introduce the public to the circuit and the places of the exhibition through several interviews with the artists present from 6pm.
Artists’ visions on April 14, 21, 18 in the underground
Several artists gather around the works to discuss their work, the threads of which all lead to three different themes: narrative, the study of time and transcendence. What is the relationship between their visions? They each wander around the works to discover what brings them together and differentiates them from the artists of Chronometia through intuitive paths in the form of video capsules.
With the participation of artists Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Caroline Monnet, Cinzia Campolese, François Couture and Philippe-Aubert Gauthier.
Influences paths on April 10, 17 and 24
Art Souterrain makes a point of generating multiple exchanges on the accessibility of the arts. For Chronomety, the limits of the democratization of art are further pushed back by organizing meetings between public figures and influencers. Together, the duo discover the underground and share with the public, in all authenticity, what they evoke in them.
Participants will be announced shortly!
The theme of the 13th edition: The Chronomes
Let us remember that this 13th edition is using the theme of Chronomety: Produce, reinvent, communicate, laugh and love in an increasingly fast swing, this is the mantra of a modernity that never ceases to shrink time, our time. Everything goes faster and faster and each unit of time concentrates more and more actions, sensations and events. The theme was born of this flight forward of new behavioral reflexes resulting in ephemeral relationships and habits of immediacy.
Is chronomety a dead end or is it a reconfiguration of the human relationships we need to embrace? In either case, would we not be on the threshold of a new era? This duality between the balance of man in his ecosystem and the pressure of our time consumption is an issue to which the artists of the 13th edition of the Festival Art Souterrain are trying to respond.
