Discipline: arts visuels

marc-alain félix

Marc-Alain Félix is a Canadian painter of Haitian origin, living in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. The artist’s favorite subject is the human being. Through his work, he explores relationships, as well as the issues of our society. He also describes the impact of the influences of popular culture on our daily lives. In his work, he uses bright colors and outrageous strokes. He paints on impulse with an intuitive approach. His work is a fusion of figurative and abstract art, which reflects his imagination and his perceptions of our times. Marc-Alain wants to convey feelings to the public, he wants to give them something to look at that they will remember. Sometimes disproportionate and dynamic, in order to give them a greater expressive intensity, the characters are placed in the foreground in his works. Navigating between reality and imagination, he makes his paintings speak through signs and symbols.

As part of the Alliance program, Marc-Alain Félix aims to improve his communication plan in order to create significant links with future collaborators, such as gallery managers, and curators. In addition, he will be accompanied by the MAI team and a network of partners for project writing and for professional development in the visual arts milieu.

Photo credits: @noiremouliom

jongwook park

Jongwook Park, a settler artist from South Korea, approaches drawing as a fundamental tool of his practice. By using it as his voice, while processing pictorial elements from various cultural references such as Korean Folk paintings and graphic novels, he attempts to discover the unique treatment of line drawing for his works within flat, dimensional, and moving formats. His work has been presented in exhibitions and publications in Canada, the United States, Finland, South Korea, and Japan. He will have a solo exhibition at the Maison de la culture de Pointe-aux-Trembles in March 2023, in Montreal. His project Breathing Words is about developing handcrafting skills with clay to create a series of ceramic sculptures that will be covered with scattered words and imagery. Through symbolic forms, he wants to explore conditions of emotional displacement and create a surreal landscape to evade negative feelings.

reihan ebrahimi

Reihan Ebrahimi is an Iranian-born ceramic artist based in Tiohtiá:ke/ Montreal. She moved to Canada in 2015 and received her BFA in ceramics in 2020 from Concordia University. The focus of her works is a reflection on notions of cultural identity, memory and dislocation. Remaking is the primary approach in Ebrahimi’s work and her research-based practice is nourished by the interplay of her studio practice, personal experiences and research on historical artifacts. 

Ebrahimi is the co-curator and co-founder of Nowruz Projects, a multicultural collective which curates events focused on the rite of Nowruz in Western Asia. The project is developed around the theme of “ritual as a space for rebirth, reunion and appreciation of diversity”.

jongwook park

South Korea-born Jongwook Park holds an MFA in Communication Design from Sangmyung University (Seoul) and a diploma in Animation Art and Design from LaSalle College (Montreal). Living in a foreign land forced him out of his psychological comfort zone, a disorientation that led him to objectively re-examine the familiar. His artwork draws on traditional art practices while adopting new techniques and is distinguished by his unique treatment of line drawing. His work has been presented in exhibitions and publications in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, as well as South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

⇒ https://jon-p.weebly.com/

hea r. kim

South Korean-born, Canadian immigrant Hea R. Kim explores overlapping technical art processes within fibers and sculptures. Visually inspired by her Korean heritage, Kim’s explorations share elements of childhood recollections and imagination. With her formal education in South Korea and her in-depth studies in material processes and contemporary art in Montreal, Kim aims to visualize the innocent period when days are filled with infinite possibility, indulgence, and mystery. Kim has exhibited her works across Canada and South Korea. She had a solo exhibition Vomiting Flowers at MAI in 2019. This exhibition will be presented again at Eastern Edge Gallery in St. John’s Newfoundland in March 2022.

tanha gomes

Tanha Gomes is the recipient of 2020-21 PWM + MAI joint support for artists* interested in working with a dramaturg.

Visual artist and cultural worker, Tanha Gomes has worked in several artist-run centres and art galleries in Montreal. Since 2011, she has been involved in initiatives that bring art to communities with people of all ages.

Born into a multicultural family in Brazil, she moved to Canada as a teenager and has since lived between these two worlds. Her immigration experience leads her to explore the links between displacement, death and memory. Fascinated by the traces of personal history on people’s bodies and trajectories, she uses photography in order to conduct intimate and delicate explorations of identity. She seeks to create contemplative works using time as raw material, often with long exposures that require bodies to remain still. Tanha’s images are marked by a performative aspect, through simple imprints or a promise of movement. Recently graduated from a master’s degree in Arts Education, she aspires to develop her artistic practice around cultural identity.

This partnership is supported by the Government of Quebec and the City of Montreal as part of l’Entente sur le Développement Culturel, and by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Photo credit: Daniele Barroso

bahar taheri

At the centre of Bahar Taheri’s work is a critical reflection on current affairs in society. The social and historical context in which she grew up has had a significant influence on her work. Originally from Iran, Bahar grew up in Tehran. Besides her curiosity and fascination with history, the experience of living in a region beset by political and cultural conflict leads her to trace the roots of these events across time.

Bahar’s choice of medium differs from one project to another, depending on the concept, though she mainly uses painting. Aesthetics and beauty play an important role in her work and she devotes special attention to detail and ornamentation in keeping with her culture baggage.

Bahar’s previous projects have addressed issues of gender, identity, collective memory and the manipulation of the mass media. She is currently conducting research on architectural structure and its relationship to power and religion.

cécilia bracmort

Cécilia Bracmort is an artist and curator with an interest in the cross-disciplinarity, the mixing of genres, and experimentation. She was born in Creil, France, has roots in the islands of Martinique and Guadaloupe, and has lived in Montreal since 2012. Her curatorial and creative work draws on her various layers of identity as much as on the notions of movement (walking, running, performance), spaces, history and memory (memorial spaces and monuments).

Cécilia holds a masters in cultural mediation and communication from Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle, a bachelors in philosophy of art from Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, and a bachelors in fine arts from Bishops University. She has participated in numerous theatre and visual arts projects both in Paris and Montreal.

In 2017 Cécilia was an invited curator as part of the Montréal/Havana exchange, in collaboration with the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Cuba. In August 2018 she became administrative coordinator at the artist-run centre articule.

hadi jamali

Hadi Jamali is an Iranian-born visual artist currently based in Montréal. Since 2003, Hadi has produced single-channel videos, photographic series, mixed-media works, and interactive installations. His most recent work uses spatialized sound and moving images to examine the link between dominant visual traditions and varying registers of contemporary (dis)location: not only geographic, but also cognitive, temporal and moral.