Repérages or À la découverte de notre monde or Sans titre is a multi-titled exhibition presented as part of Dominique Fontaine's curatorial research residency titled Scènes de la vie quotidienne à Montréal (on belonging and the politics of belonging). The following questions served as a framework for the residency’s activities: migration, belonging, alienation and issues faced by cities with diverse immigrant populations. 

This exhibition considers what it means to inhabit a place through the concept of ‘belonging’. It provides an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of concepts that characterise the instability of our time. The goal of this exercise is to show how intellectuals and artists re-imagine specific characteristics of contemporary life: mobility, remoteness, belonging, and marginalisation. The title Repérages is a reference to Émile Ollivier’s book, which puts forward ideas about our current reality: globalisation, ethics, the right to intervene, migration, identity, and cultural pluralism.

As its starting point, the exhibition considers our contemporaneousness. Through the eyes of the participating artists, it seeks to shed light on art’s function as a tool for understanding our world, discovering reality and experiencing time. This exhibition gives shape to the initial research phase and presents itself as an accumulation of passages, a collection of moments or another way of thinking about the world in which we live.

The exhibition also includes contributions from: Cécilia Bracmort, Livia Daza-Paris, Adeola Enigbokan, Stéphane Martelly, Myrlande Pierre, and Ronald Rose-Antoinette.

Natacha Clitandre holds a bachelor's degree in visual arts from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and a master's in theory and practice of contemporary art and new media from Université Paris 8 and École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (ENSAD). She also studied at both Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the U.S. Her work centres on the ubiquitous nature of technology in everyday life. As she investigates the link between artist and viewer, Natacha uses mobile devices with video and photographic capacities, along with printed media, to infiltrate and comment on the public sphere. Her artwork has been exhibited in Europe and North America (Montreal, Quebec City, Pittsburgh, New York). Also working as a curator, she currently lives in Montreal. www.natachaclitandre.net

Born in Argentina and raised in Mexico, Maria Ezcurra currently lives in Montreal, where she is a PhD Candidate in Art Education at Concordia University. Having studied Visual Arts at the National School of Fine Arts (ENAP) in Mexico, she later completed her studies at the Chelsea College of Art & Design (London, UK) before pursuing an MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. A recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholarship and the FRQSC award, Maria Ezcurra is also a member of the National System of Art Creators (SNCA) in Mexico. She has taught art in a number of universities and schools over the past 15 years and is currently artist-in-residence at the Faculty of Education of McGill University. www.mariaezcurra.com

Romeo Gongora is a visual artist whose work explores questions of representation and the perception of difference. In 2005, he graduated in media arts from UQAM (Montreal). He has collaborated, amongst others in Canada, with Dare-Dare (Montreal), 3e Impérial (Granby), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Galerie de l'UQAM (Montreal), Centre Optica (Montreal), Centre VU (Quebec City), Gallery 44 (Toronto), Centre Dazibao (Montreal), Mackenzie Art Gallery (Regina) and Pari Nadimi Gallery (Toronto). In 2007, he did a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam). In 2009, he represented Canada as an artist in residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin) and the Acme Studios (London), in 2016. www.romeogongora.com

Olivia McGilchrist is a Jamaican-French visual artist who’s alter-ego whitey explores physical expressions of emotional states in the search for cultural identity. She troubles her post-colonial white Creole female identity by remapping it within the tropical picturesque through photographs, multi-screen video installations and more recently with virtual reality. whitey‘s placement in the Jamaican physical and cultural landscape questions the role of racial, social and gender based categorization, classification and discrimination in the contemporary Caribbean space. Her work has been shown in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, Brazil, Canada, the US, the UK, Germany and France. Born in Kingston, Jamaica to a French mother and a Jamaican father, Olivia grew up in France and studied in England. She recently completed a Graduate Certificate in Digital Technologies in Art & Design at Concordia University, and is currently working on several projects in Montréal and the Caribbean. oliviamcgilchrist.com

Dominique Fontaine is a curator and Founding Director of aPOSteRIORI, a non-profit curatorial platform – researching, documenting, developing, producing and facilitating innovation in diverse contemporary art practices. Fontaine graduated in visual arts and arts administration from the University of Ottawa, and completed De Appel Curatorial Programme (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). Since 1992, she has curated and organized several contemporary art events in Canada and abroad. In 2014, she curated Between the earth and the sky, the possibility of everything for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Toronto. She is a member of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT). Born in Port-au-Prince (Haïti), she has lived most of her life in Canada. Dominique Fontaine currently lives in Montréal. 

Exhibitions  

Participating Artists: Natacha Clitandre (Montréal) Maria Ezcurra (Montréal) Romeo Gongora (Montréal) Olivia McGilchrist (Montréal)
Curator(s): Dominique Fontaine (Montréal)
Credits: Image : Enstranging the City, Adeola Enigbokan & Ronald Rose-Antoinette, 2015, Photo : Olivia McGilchrist