Now in its 8th edition, IGNITION is an annual exhibition featuring recent work by students in Concordia University’s graduate Studio Arts program, and, for the first time, the Humanities doctoral program. With IGNITION, the Ellen Gallery gives students the possibility to show their work in a professional context, while offering the public the opportunity to discover a selection of Montreal’s up-and-coming artists. Working in a variety of media, this year’s artists engage with questions and narratives that are of social, cultural, and/or political relevance in artworks that often bridge documentary and fiction, the personal and the relational, performance and embodied experience.

Inspired by her time spent with senior citizens in rural Quebec, Marie-Pier Breton collaborates with members of this community in the creation of narratives that centre on aging, death, and the passing of time. The highly cinematic video in limbo uses the image of a man and a woman on a dance floor as a poetic reflection on these universal themes. More in the documentary vein, Wren Noble’s photographic series Madame, Monsieur portrays an elderly couple who, over time, as their respective physical and mental faculties diminish, dress in matching, colorful clothing. These vivid portraits function as a celebration of old age while destabilizing traditional expectations around gender performativity and old age. With reference to the Bosnian War of the 1990s, Velibor Božović’s video installation My Prisoner is a haunting exploration of memory. Combining elements of autobiography and documentary, Božović’s profoundly philosophical project grapples with memory’s malleability, raising the questions about how we remember the past and if we can know what is real?

The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery’s contemporary exhibition program is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. The Gallery and the artists gratefully acknowledge Hexagram for its technical support.