MOMENTA x VOX
The Life of Things
2019.09.05 – 10.13
For the 16th edition of the biennale, which will take place from September 5 to October 13, 2019, MOMENTA presents The Life of Things. Curated by María Wills Londoño in collaboration with Audrey Genois and Maude Johnson, this edition of MOMENTA brings together 39 artists from 20 countries, in 13 exhibitions.
MOMENTA 2019 proposes a piercing look at the life of things, bringing into dialogue their consumerist and symbolic dimensions. The exhibited works testify to the different ways in which objects are experienced and what they tell us about how we think and live. Objects sometimes bear the fragments of the living, and, in other contexts, they have their own life.
Presented simultaneously at two locations—VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine and the Galerie de l’UQAM—the thematic exhibition generates a conversation fueled by the works of twenty-two artists and meshes four components: Cultural Objects and Material Culture; Thingified Beings or Humanized Objects; The Absurd as Counter-Narrative of the Object; Still Life in an Age of Environmental Crisis. At VOX are explored:
The Absurd as Counter-Narrative of the Object
Through the prism of the absurd, objects are diverted from their meaning in order to probe the weight of the real; codes are deconstructed, and contradictions emerge to disrupt beliefs and restore a capacity for wonder in contemporary societies. Staging and theatricality become strategies for generating irrational yet enchanting images and narratives that ultimately reveal a need for liberation.
Still Life in an Age of Environmental Crisis
As a pictorial genre, still life engages reflection on the way artists today represent everyday life and organize objects. It also enables a political consideration of the excessive accumulation of goods in contemporary societies and of the environmental crisis—the death in “nature morte,” or the stilling of life.
MOMENTA Creative consists of several educational activities and creative workshops developed in response to the biennale theme and based on the works on display. Designed with inclusion and representativeness in mind, these activities are free of charge.
The creative and reflective workshop Eco Still Life takes place at VOX: offered in collaboration with Éco-quartier Saint-Jacques and geared towards children 9 to 12 years old and their families, the activity invites kids to discover a few of the thematic exhibition’s artists, and then to create their very own three-dimensional still life using recycled materials! The workshop will be offered on Sunday, September 29 and Sunday, October 13, ongoing from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm (no reservation required). Eco Still Life is also intended for student groups (grades 4 to 6), and they can be welcomed (almost) anytime!
This exhibition is made possible in part by the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Government of Canada, the gouvernement du Québec, the Ville de Montréal, Tourisme Montréal, Brio, Desjardins, Éco-quartier Saint-Jacques, and Photo Service.
