vert soleil green sun at AXENÉO7, Gatineau

Pologne-en-Québec, a major video installation in two galleries at AXENÉO7 by Kinga Michalska and Sarah Chouinard-Poirier, is undoubtedly the best work of art about the pandemic that I have seen yet, tapping into the insecurities, fears, and sense of potentiality that existed during the suspended time of the lockdowns. It is in fact a product of a so-called Autoresidency at the centre, which was the method of providing support to artists they instituted during that period. Elements in the videos appear in the physical environments created for their viewing, loosening the boundaries between the two as well as contributing to the blurring of the lines between reality and fiction that occurs in them.

Kinga Michalska & Sarah Chouinard-Poirier, Pologne-en-Québec, 2025, installation view (courtesy of AXENÉO7; photo: Emma Jacques)

In a third gallery, another Autoresidency project by AM Trépanier, soif de communauté / hungry for community, presents oral, visual, and archival documentation of rural communes created by women, trans, and non-binary people in the area. At least one still from Pologne-en-Québec appears in this material, mingling fact with fantasy. The oral histories are also presented in a fanciful manner on audio cassette players resting on a low table with funky cushions, connecting again with the work presented in the other galleries. Both projects engagingly explore the pleasures and pitfalls of interpersonal dynamics and the lure of nostalgia. The complete text of my review of the exhibition was published here on the October 30 Akimblog. 

Joyce Wieland at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Pucker Up! The Lipstick Prints of Joyce Wieland is billed as a vignette exhibition, presented in association with a major retrospective of Wieland’s work, Heart On. Celebrating an acquisition that completes the National Gallery of Canada’s collection of Wieland’s so-called lipstick prints, this show is an amuse-bouche in relation to the travelling survey; nevertheless, when considered alongside works by other artists currently on view at the gallery, Pucker Up!’s limited scope still underscores Wieland’s concerns with equity and cultural sovereignty in a manner that resonates with current debates.

Joyce Wieland, The Arctic Belongs to Itself, 1973, lithograph on wove paper (© National Gallery of Canada; photo: NGC)

I recalled Wieland on the same visit while viewing the New Generation Photography Award exhibition where I encountered the work of asinnajaq, a Canadian Inuk artist from Inukjuak, Quebec.  Featuring details of nature and terrain, her prints, unframed and affixed to the wall with magnets, or on a piece of synthetic fabric bunched up in the centre of space, reminded me of the provisional and performative aspects I discerned in Wieland’s work. Through artworks like The Arctic Belongs to Itself (included in Pucker Up!), Wieland raised awareness about Indigenous rights and the threat of environmental devastation. In accordance with Inuit values, asinnajaq similarly expresses a love of the land. Her video holding piece, like Weiland's work, suggests that an act of loving care can also be an act of resistance. The complete text of my review of the exhibition was published here on the May 29 Akimblog.