Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental

Starting June 20, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC) will present Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental, as well as artists Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau, Nadia Myre, and Ragnar Kjartansson & The National, offering visitors unexpected discoveries and moving experiences.

Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and curated by Wanda Nanibush, Curator, Indigenous Art. The MAC presentation is organized by Lesley Johnstone, Curator and Head of Exhibitions and Education.

“Rebecca Belmore is one of Canada’s most prominent contemporary artists working at the generative intersection of art and politics. It is a great pleasure to be starting the summer at the MAC with the presentation Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental,” indicated John Zeppetelli, Director and Chief Curator at the MAC.

Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental is the largest survey of Belmore’s work to date, providing a sense of the breadth of her practice and the depth of her political engagement. The exhibition brings together a focused selection of sculptures, installations and photographs dating from 2001, as well as a compilation of ten video documents of her performances since 1991, that speak to the urgent issues of our time.

Belmore’s works address global conflicts and crises driven by climate change, access to water, land use, homelessness, and human displacement and migrations. She contends with our conflicting relationships with land, the state of women’s lives, historical events and the continuing violence against Indigenous peoples.

Within Belmore’s powerful works is a compelling duality: her poetic representations of human dignity, the beauty of youth, a sleeping subject, the power of water or the quieting effect of snow are all in contrast to the turmoil of our world. Her art asks us to consider where we are, and what we face in our future.

Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe, born in 1960) began working as a performance artist in the late 1980s. This medium of immediacy and presence continues to influence her diverse practice. Her exhibitions include: Biinjiya’iing Onji (From Inside), documenta 14 (2017); KWE: The Work of Rebecca Belmore, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (2011); Rebecca Belmore: Rising to the Occasion, Vancouver Art Gallery (2008); and Fountain, Venice Biennale (2005).

Each of Montréal based artist Nadia Myre’s projects conveys something profoundly human and are designed to raise questions about desire, loss and knowledge. In keeping with Facing the Monumental, Nadia Myre’s exhibition presents works exploring Indigenous identity and colonial history.
June 20–August 4, 2019

Presenting two installations (one sculptural, the other a video) positioned in a mutual dialogue, Québec artists Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau’s exhibition serves as a testimony to the development of the artists’ work in relation to the live arts and performativity over the last few years.
June 20–August 4, 2019

Finally, the MAC will show Ragnar Kjartansson & The National’s A Lot of Sorrow (2013-2014). The video is the result of a performance organized by MoMA PS1 and directed by Kjartansson, in which he invited The National to perform their song Sorrow repeatedly for six hours, or 105 times.
As of June 20, 2019

Information:
Roxane Dumas-Noël
Head of Public Relations
T +1 514 847-6232 / roxane.dumas-noel@macm.org