This exhibition brings together three artists who live and work in Montréal, and for whom this is the first museum presentation of their work. Their digital art pieces (film, filmed performance, website) in the process of being acquired by the Musée address the doubts and insecurities that are seeping into our different relationships and dynamics through various filters and screens.
The frantic pace of our contemporary society, coupled with our isolation and overuse of social media, produces many harmful effects on our mood, our consumption and our perception of ourselves and others. Although we can now reach and connect with people in every corner of the world, we are becoming much more selective, we are quick to pass judgment. We are looking for perfection, and that is making us distrustful. How can we form interpersonal bonds in that kind of ecosystem, without drowning in it, without being burned?
Put together, the works on display prompt us to be mindful of different communication tools—inquiry, online meeting apps, social media—and the contexts in which they operate.
This selection, part of the MAC’s initiative to acquire works by emerging artists, demonstrates their innovative use of digital technologies and features pieces that are both critical and sophisticated. An important criterion in this exercise was to choose artists from a variety of cultural communities representative of the city of Montréal.
Eunice Bélidor, guest curator for the Salon des émergents
