Curator: Marie-Eve Beaupré in collaboration with Camille Bédard and Alexandre Major-Forest
This exhibition is rooted in the Quebec of the sixties and seventies. It is embroidered with historical material and family archives, with works based on handwritten letters, typed texts, photo albums, posters and publications that make up the abundant personal archives of two men who became fathers over these decades, and whose political positions diverged.
The project stems from an invitation extended to Nadia Myre, a brilliant multidisciplinary artist born of an Algonquin mother from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation and a Québécois father whose cultural and intellectual professional life was driven by social and political engagement. At the intersection of their heritage, culture and values, Nadia developed a discerning and sensitive approach. For over twenty years, she has been addressing important issues linked to identity, language, the politics of belonging and resilience. Bold and eager to create new works that draw on the archives bequeathed by her father after his death, she has brought as many archive boxes to the Guido Molinari Foundation as she has social and political issues. Her gesture is already, in and of itself, political.
The exhibition’s narrative thread situates two views of nationalism that were in tension at the time, one emphasizing a national art based on stylistics, and the other, an art defined by its public and political actions linked to the issues of the Québécois people.[1] While the protagonist Guido Molinari (1933-2004) was preparing for international acclaim by representing the creative vitality of the Canadian nation at the 1968 Venice Biennale—an edition steeped in the May 68 atmosphere of political activism, protests and demonstrations—the protagonist Robert Myre (1942-2020), a printer, publisher, journalist and trade-union educator, campaigned for the reinvention of social organization and produced Poèmes et chants de la résistance, a series of shows that where presented to aid political prisoners and to protest against the War Measures Act passed during the October Crisis.
This exhibition is primarily a personal project for Nadia, who like many of us, is entrusted with the archives of a dear family member. This responsibility sparked the desire for a research and creation activity that adopts the historical distance of a generation to focus on the ramifications of a period galvanized by a collectively asserted will for social change and an aborted revolution.
Through interviews and research into the historical, social and cultural context in which her father worked, and by retracing key elements of Quebec’s social and cultural history, the artist addresses several fundamental historical questions. What stories will History record? Politics, paternity, abstraction, writing, struggle, justice, anarchy, power, capitalism, decolonization, resistance and the rituals of family meals are all on the table of contents of the collected works and archives.
In proposing new narratives, defined by some thinkers[2] as counternarratives, the stance taken by this exhibition favours the creation of works and sharing of narratives that serve as a site of resonance and dissonance between the respective archives of Robert Myre and Guido Molinari, who like Nadia, was a professor at Concordia University. Grounded in history, this exhibition opens up new perspectives on the respective practices of Nadia Myre, Robert Myre and Guido Molinari.
– Marie-Eve Beaupré
Nadia Myre is a Quebec artist and Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation. A graduate of Camosun College (1995) and Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver (1997), she holds an MFA from Concordia University (2002). For over twenty years, her practice has been rooted in a participative approach that seeks to stimulate discussion around themes of identity and the heritage narratives of Indigenous peoples and the colonizers. Her multidisciplinary work weaves together stories of belonging and resilience, notably through beadwork, video art and installation.
Robert Myre (1942-2020)
Father of artist Nadia Myre, Robert Myre focused his life on social and political engagement. Active as a union educator for the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) and the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec (FTQ), he is also a journalist for the dailies Le Soleil and La Patrie. From 1968 onwards, he devoted himself to printing and publishing. His publishing credits include Jusqu’au cou, the official organ of downtown Montreal citizens’ committees, the underground newspaper Le Voyage and the magazine Participation for social facilitators. A publisher for Les Éditions K, Parti-Pris and La Barre du jour, he helped set up the Village Carré Saint-Louis printing plant.
Guido Molinari (1933-2004)
Regarded as one of the ambassadors of contemporary Canadian art, Guido Molinari contributed to the development of non-figurative painting. A painter, professor, poet, critic and art theorist, he took part in the debates that raised the fundamental question of abstraction and laid the groundwork for a reflection on the specificity of pictorial space. In 1955, he and Fernande Saint-Martin founded the L’Actuelle gallery in Montreal, which was devoted exclusively to non-figurative art. In 1965, he was present at The Responsive Eye, the major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, before representing Canada at the 34th Venice Biennale in 1968, where he won the major prize of the David E. Bright Foundation.
