April 25–September 14, 2025
PHI unveils its spring/summer 2025 programming with two major new exhibitions: Nico Williams's Bingo and Lap-See Lam's Shadow Play. These exhibitions, presented across PHI’s two spaces on Saint-Jean Street in Old Montreal, mark a key step in PHI’s evolution as a unified cultural destination.
Nico Williams: Bingo
Curator: Daniel Fiset, PHI
Nico Williams’s first large-scale solo museum exhibition, Bingo, offers an in-depth look at a decade of creation. It features over 30 works, including several new pieces specially conceived for this occasion. This exhibition challenges the boundary between art and craft, showcasing how these two spheres can nourish each other.
Williams, a rising figure on the international art scene and recipient of the 2024 Sobey Art Award, explores themes of gaming, economy, and cultural dynamics through beadwork. Bingo reflects on the connections between chance and social structures while integrating references to popular culture and Indigenous narratives.
Lap-See Lam: Shadow Play
Curators: Julia Paoli and Kate Whiteway, Vega Foundation, with Cheryl Sim, PHI
Shadow Play by Lap-See Lam immerses visitors in an experience where memory, migration, and magical realism intertwine through captivating multimedia installations: Tales of the Altersea and Floating Sea Palace.
Tales of the Altersea explores the cultural transformation of the Cantonese diaspora in Europe through a video installation inspired by the visual language of shadow puppetry. Based on the story of the Sea Palace, a floating restaurant, Lam blends folkloric tales with an imagined narrative to question cultural heritage transmission and generational losses.
Floating Sea Palace is a video installation inspired by the myth of Lo Ting, a half-human, half-fish being who is considered an ancestor of the people of Hong Kong. Projected within an immersive environment made of bamboo scaffolding—an essential element of Cantonese opera and construction—this film explores transformation, translation, and the desire to return to an ever-shifting home.
A new exhibition access model
These new exhibitions mark a pivotal moment for PHI as it transitions towards a unified identity. As of today, our two venues – the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art and the PHI Centre – are unifying to offer a seamless cultural experience driven by a shared mission: to innovate in the arts while ensuring greater accessibility to culture for an increasingly diverse audience. As part of this evolution, PHI is adopting a tiered ticketing model, allowing visitors to choose the price they’d like to pay as a contribution to PHI’s mission.
With this evolution, PHI solidifies its status as a must-visit cultural destination, offering diverse artistic experiences across multiple venues in Old Montreal.
Practical information
Nico Williams: Bingo, PHI, 451 Saint-Jean Street
Lap-See Lam: Shadow Play, PHI, 465 Saint-Jean Street
To purchase tickets, visit phi.ca.
Acknowledgments
The presentation of Lap-See Lam: Shadow Play is supported by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee.
