The Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery offers outreach programming that supports engaged, self-reflexive and critical forms of viewership on site, online, and beyond the Gallery and University. Working with our local communities in Montreal and circulating our exhibitions abroad, the Gallery’s outreach programing privileges and amplifies the critical angles that context, standpoint and experience can bring to thinking about and engaging with art and exhibition making.

PROGRAM FOR THE ARABIC SPEAKING COMMUNITY | برنامج باللغة العربية

Chantal Partamian, Collection Katsakh, 2023, digitized Super8 photogram

Mediterranean Explorations: Evolving archives and varied perspectives is a public program initiated by the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, examining the visual archives of the region around the Mediterranean Sea. Inviting artist-archivist Chantal Partamian to explore the constantly evolving nature of archives, the program proposes looking beyond their traditional representation as mere static collections of documents. The program questions the preservation of the integrity and completeness of archives, taking into account the challenges of displaced archives, particularly in former colonized territories and during periods of armed conflict. It also aims to broaden understanding of archives as dynamic entities, highlighting the multiple affiliations and diverse interests of stakeholders. Starting on December 5th and throughout the winter three presenters will participate.

In its first iteration, Chantal Partamian will present her research around collecting amateur films on celluloid, containing images of towns and villages in the eastern and southern Mediterranean between the 1930s and 1970s.

Program participants over the next months include Dhakira Collective, an independent research, archiving and curatorial platform, highlighting art, film and music outside the Western canon, with a particular focus on cinema from the Southwest Asian and North African region (SWANA). A conversation will also take place with Sevan Injejikian, whose multidisciplinary project includes an online database aimed at rectifying the historical oversight of certain Armenian women writers of the Ottoman Empire, due to their gender and ethnicity. Inejikian’s work highlights the issues of contact, erasure and historical risk. The conversation addresses the urgency of locating, documenting and sharing these archives within a feminist and decolonial framework.

Twelve Faces of Armenian Feminism: Archiving, between preservation and erasure

Sevan Injejikian in discussion with Chantal Partamian

Monday, March 4, 6 pm
In French, English and Arabic
Free, at the gallery

For the second iteration of Mediterranean Explorations: Evolving archives and varied perspectives, filmmaker and archivist Chantal Partamian will be in conversation with researcher Sevan Injejikian. The event will draw on Injejikian’s collaboration in the digital exhibition and educational platform Twelve Faces of Armenian Feminism that documents the intellectual output and activism of Ottoman Armenian women from the 1860 to the 1960.

The discussion will consider questions regarding the accessibility of displaced and dispersed archives that have been shaped by a history of material, territorial and cultural loss after the Armenian Genocide in 1915. How can one retrieve and (re)engage with some of these archives, and what are the potential advantages of, and limitations to, using a digital platform as a space of encounter? What does it mean to present these archives digitally and deprive the viewer/researcher from their physical presence, when they have physically crossed geographical borders, carried against the bodies of displaced people, in order to survive? Building on feminist and decolonial frameworks, the conversation will address the urgency in being able to locate, document, critically intervene in, and share these archives with a wider audience, especially when they are still at risk of historical erasure.

Sevan Injejikian is a researcher, educator, and independent curator. Her research focuses on politically engaged new media art practices from MENA, and the use of digital technologies during political crises by artists and activists working towards social justice. From 2019 to 2021, Injejikian was a lecturer at the American University of Armenia (AUA). She has worked as an Assistant-Curator in Education and Cultural Action at the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University. She has also acted as a Guest Curator for Women in Action Projects (WIA projects) as part of the Jackman Humanities Institute’s programming for the arts at the University of Toronto, among other projects.

Chantal Partamian is an experimental filmmaker and archivist. Her work explores themes of migration, identity, conflict and obsolescence, using mainly Super 8mm and found footage. Her archival activities focus on the preservation and restoration of reels from the Mediterranean basin, combined with research into archival practices in regions of conflict. Partamian’s films have been presented and awarded at numerous festivals. They are distributed by Vidéographe, Groupe intervention Vidéo (GIV) and the Canadian filmmakers distribution center (CFMDC).