The 13^th edition of IGNITION features the work of seven artists. As a collection, these works were not selected to fulfill an overarching thematic. Rather, the exhibition provokes an engagement with performative, materially and conceptually diverse practices, inviting viewers to make their own associations with the kinds of experimental gestures that create immersive, cartographic, theatrical and photographic spaces for unexpected encounters between bodies and virtual environments, objects and storytelling, personal histories and fiction, the city and subjectivity, and more.

Collectively, each of the artists’ works is tethered to broader intersecting themes. Francisco Gonzalez-Rosas and Zinnia Naqvi query gender norms and colonialism. Boris Dumesnil-Poulin’s interactive installation plays with the performativity of virtual reality. The preservation of cultural heritage practices and notions of im/permanence are the focus of Annie Katsura Rollins and Naghmeh Sharifi’s installations, and Marion Lessard and Brett Barmby’s work explore the systems of information and the circulation of capital. All the works respectively resonate with questions and contemporary processes of archiving, narrativity, and documentation.

Commentary by Shauna Janssen, coselector for IGNITION 13

This exhibition is part of the Montreal Digital Spring 2017.