GROUP EXHIBITION: Mode d’emploi pour habitation invisible (User’s Manual for an Invisible Home)

Miri Chekhanovich is a multidisciplinary artist whose work blends cooking, film and installation. Born in Armenia, Chekhanovich grew up in Jerusalem and immigrated to Canada in 2013. She now lives and works on the unseeded indigenous lands of Tiohtià:ke / Montréal, QC. Miri holds a BA in Philosophy from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and MFA from Concordia University. Her five-channel video installation Être avec was presented at Phi Center (Montréal, QC) and at Ca’ Rezzonico gallery during the 58th Venice Biennale. Her biodegradable sculptures have been exhibited internationally, including at the Centre Pompidou’s 2021 Hors Piste festival (Paris, FR). Since 2019, she has been working as a duo with film director Edith Jorisch. Their first collaboration, Plastispaines, premiered at Tribeca (New York City, US), received the New Creative Technology award at IDFA festival (Amsterdam, NL) , an Impact award at New Images Festival (Paris, FR) and the Quebec Numix prize for best XR experience.

Currently based in Kjipuktuk / Halifax, Nova Scotia, Jazz Keillor recently graduated with an MFA from NSCAD University, class of 2023. Her graduate studies were supported by an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, and a Canada Graduate Scholarship through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Jazz’s current painting practice explores contemporary notions of home, wilderness and placemaking. Her fictional, strange and often humorous imagery examines the tensions that exist between the personal systems of value experienced by the individual, and the capitalist/ colonial forces that shape our collective understanding of the land and our place within it, Jazz completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Mount Allison University, in Sackville, New Brunswick with a major in painting and sculpture and a minor in art history. Upon graduating in 2015, she was chosen as the New Brunswick provincial winner of the BMO 1st Art Invitational Student Art Competition. Keillor has been a recipient of two grants from the Canada Council for the Arts (2021 and 2020), an Alberta Foundation for the Arts individual project grant (2019), and a Sparkbox Studio Emerging Artist Residency Award (2016).

Lindsay Lion Lord (she/ her, B. 1985, USA) is a neurodivergent Art Witch originally from the rural state of Kansas in the Bible Belt of the US. She holds a BFA in Visual Art from The University of Kansas and is an MFA candidate in the Fibres & Material Practices program at Concordia University (2024). The current focus of her research is around the intersections of science (neuroscience, astrophysics, ecology), magic, religion, belief, and the body. As a chronically ill autist and synesthete, Lord seeks to translate her sensory experience of the world while addressing issues of memory, dreams, trauma and healing, family, care, and loneliness. Lord is engaged in disability justice and holds an abolitionist, anti-capitalist, eco-feminist ethic, and is perpetually inspired by Holon theory, which is a way of thinking about the interconnectedness of all things, tangible and psychic. Her practice is rooted in drawing, and she invites the Sun (which is a star) to collaborate with her through making cyanotypes. Lord’s personal witchcraft practice guides and grounds her work, which most recently finds its form in dye work, quilting, weaving, and felting. Her work has been shown in Canada and the US, and she currently divides her time between her homestead in Wichita, Kansas, and Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.

Laïla Mestari is a Moroccan-born artist who lives and works in Montreal. Anchored in a logic of collage and assemblage, her interdisciplinary practice examines themes around diasporic identity, cultural hybridity and belonging. Recipient of several grants and awards such as the Joan Livingstone Merit Scholarship (2021), the FRQSC Research Scholarship (2021), the Irene F. Whittome Prize in Studio Arts (2017) and the Ada Lovelace Award (2016), Mestari showed her work in several group and solo projects across Canada, Europe and the US. In 2022, she was part of the UCLA New Wight Biennial in Los Angeles, the Images Festival in Toronto and presented a solo show at Galerie 3 in Québec. Mestari’s work is part of the CPOA Collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Québec, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Hydro-Québec Collection and the Art Volt Collection. She holds a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University (2017) and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2023).

Born from an Anishinaabe mother and a French father, Caroline Monnet lives and works in Montréal. After studying Sociology and Communications at the University of Ottawa and the University of Granada in Spain, she pursued a career in visual arts and cinema. His work is regularly presented internationally and is also found in prestigious museum collections. His works have been presented at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Toronto Biennale and the Center International d’Art de Vassivière. Abroad, she exhibits notably at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in Germany, at the International Art Center of Vassivière, in New York at the Arsenal Contemporary as well as at the Whitney Museum Biennial. Winner of the 2020 Pierre-Ayot Prize, she is also one of the 25 artists who have been selected for the 2020 Sobey Prize. In 2016-2017, she participated in the Cinéfondation residency at the Cannes Film Festival in Paris and released her first feature film in 2021. Her practice is often minimalist while being emotionally charged. Monnet became known for his work with industrial materials, combining the vocabulary of popular and traditional visual cultures with the tropes of modernist abstraction to create unique hybrid forms. She is represented by the Blouin Division gallery.