Des horizons d'attente

Jen Aitken ▪ Lorna Bauer ▪ Pierre Bourgault ▪ Hannah Claus ▪ Marie-Michelle Deschamps ▪ Myriam Dion ▪ Cindy Dumais ▪ Michael Flomen ▪ Yan Giguère ▪ Nicolas Grenier ▪ Kapwani Kiwanga ▪ Luce Meunier ▪ Caroline Monnet ▪ Zanele Muholi ▪ Anne-Marie Proulx ▪ Andrée-Anne Roussel and Samuel St-Aubin ▪ Skawennati ▪ Jackson Slattery ▪ Andrea Szilasi ▪ Ashes Withyman

This exhibition highlights the practices of twenty-one artists whose works, recently acquired by the Musée, are being shown here for the first time. They speak of political, feminist, social, aesthetic, material, conceptual, spiritual, ecological, poetic, linguistic and identity-related concerns specific to our time.

For several months now, we have been feeling an anticipation and uncertainty such as humanity has not known in a long time. Responsible as we are for a present burdened with ecological debts and social inequities, we have many legitimate expectations with regard to the future. And the potential that our actions hold is conditioned by the range of our experience and our horizon of expectation. It is not a matter of standing up to the crisis, but rather of seizing it to effect a transformation in ourselves. What we are going through must be an opportunity to reframe how we represent the world to ourselves in a significant way, more horizontally. These works provide us with the chance to reflect on the paradigm shift we are living through, as we move toward this necessary social and ecological transition.

Building a collection plays a part in creating a plural history that never ends, like a rhizome that grows, not just in time with the present, but over an extended period, without interruption and over as wide a territory as possible. The exhibition Des horizons d’attente is intended to offer a portrait of recent acquisitions in the MAC collection and, in so doing, promote works by artists who are influencing and defining the art of our time.

Marie-Eve Beaupré, Curator of the Collection, with the collaboration of Maéli Shan Leblanc-Carreau