Facing the door, you might lean so far into the peephole that you get stuck. Through the haze, it’s possible to make out the contours of a cockpit in which silence disperses cries of grief, where a father attempts to muffle this grief behind humour that fades upon contact with the heavy air, where two Adelphs travel, finally finding themselves reunited after almost a decade spent thousands of miles apart. They welcome a new day together. A day when the word “home” refers neither to Casablanca nor Montreal, but rather to a face, one that truly understands. This face looks straight ahead to witness a day-to-day life that will never look the same again.

Text by Jean-Guy Forget

Montreal-based painter Fiona Nguyen’s Gymnopédies employs autofiction to address the revolutionary potential of song as a tool for (collective) repair. This new body of work builds from the artist’s long standing research into the impacts of environmental warfare, particularly the impact of the US army’s Agent Orange herbicide campaign in the Vietnam War. Nguyen’s figures appear mid-song, in lush landscapes spanning regenerating forests and rolling sand dunes. Named after French composer Erik Satie’s renowned piano trilogy, Gymnopédies, which is cited as a prototypical form of ambient music, the exhibition collects narratives pushed to the margins and casts them in the spotlight.

Text by Danica Pinteric