An exhibition curated by Mojeanne Behzadi
October 21 - December 23, 2022
Opening — Thursday, October 20, 2022 – 5:30 p.m. @ Artexte
Sonic Fields of Reflection focuses on the legacies and potentialities of sound as a carrier of information, histories, and experiences in the field of contemporary art. The exhibition highlights sound’s propensity—as document and as praxis—as a means for social engagement and to embrace a spirit of community activism. From October 21 through December 23, our exhibition space will be transformed into an experimental research room specially imagined for listening, reading, recording, resting, and meditating on sound. The exhibition draws attention to community radio practices, oral history projects, discursive approaches such as conversations and interviews, as well as music and oral poetry.
Among the motivations for this exhibition project are the many reflections and conversations that happen in the course of Artexte’s collection activities because, as a documentation centre, Artexte’s mandate is to collect documents on contemporary artistic practices to ensure their preservation and safeguard the memories they hold, as well as to promote and facilitate research. Although most of our documents are print publications, we also have an important audio-visual document collection that includes VHS tapes, DVDs, CDs, cassettes, vinyl LPs, and more recently podcasts in digital format.
This recent endeavour highlights important considerations for our librarians, as they are faced with the preservation challenges posed by the exploding field of radio shows, podcasts, and other sound documents emerging as new forms of visual arts publications. In our programming, we aim to draw the curtain and focus attention on librarians, archivists, and documentation technicians who perform the important work of preserving the traces of these practices for posterity.
— Mojeanne Behzadi, curator
Consult the exhibition booklet HERE
With sound works by/featuring: ffiles FKA xx files (Julia Dyck, Amanda Harvey and Belen Rebecca Arenas), Marilou Craft & Elyze Venne-Deshaies, Hajra Waheed & Reece Cox (Cashmere Radio), Centre CLARK, Jamie Ross, Rouzbeh Shadpey, Prakash Krishnan and two textile installations by Rihab Essayh and Jonathan Schouela, as well as the loans from Stefan Christoff and ARCMTL. For more information on specific sound works, read our index for on-site visit
Mojeanne Behzadi is a curator and poet based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. She is currently the director of Art Speaks, an international contemporary art lecture series and the curator of research and programs at Artexte. Mojeanne holds an MA in Art History from Concordia University and works as an independent curator on numerous projects. She recently developed and hosted the Trajectories podcast for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and she curated the Spillover Love exhibition at the Stewart Hall Art Gallery in Pointe-Claire in 2021. Her current curatorial research focuses on love as a radical tool for resistance, mobilization and social transformation.