Between describing an action and performing it, something slips. The work takes shape in that gap.

In this exhibition, each work is paired with a set of instructions devised by the artists. The aim is not to explain, but to suggest a way of doing things: instructions, verbs, protocols. These texts do not describe the works; they enact the conditions under which they appear. What matters is not only what is produced, but what resists execution.

Nothing is entirely fixed. At certain moments defined by these instructions, the works can be activated, moved, or modified in the presence of the public, changing their location, form, or rhythm. The exhibition becomes a space in motion, where the works are no longer merely displayed but put into circulation.

What follows is not a set of objects, but situations where forms shift, gestures repeat, and images appear and disappear. Each room proposes a way of doing, perceiving, or inhabiting the space—like a user’s manual.

***

1. The sound of dry rain echoes throughout the gallery. Machines wait patiently for us to approach. Something opens, and seeds now litter the floor. Are we the ones being rewarded?
2. On tables, fragments of fabric are carefully pieced together. The gesture is precise, repeated, recorded. Little by little, familiar shapes emerge and accumulate, with no intended recipient: letters, cards, traces of exchanges. The administrative gesture becomes a material one.
3. A sky—the last one seen by a mother—is printed by her daughter in pink and blue, over and over again. The image multiplies, overlaps, transforms until it dissolves into its own repetition. The sky cannot be pinned down.
4. In the air, abaca leaves native to the Philippines sway slowly. Each is hand-formed, dipped in paper pulp, imperfect. To repeat its form is to attempt to reach an origin that eludes us, a place passed down without ever having been experienced.
5. In the same room, suspended tufts of beach grass occupy the space, intertwined with hair; their cut ends brush the floor. The plant and the human merge there. Where do we take root? How do we adapt? Navigating this suspended field is already a journey through these questions.
6. Stoneware forms still bear the folds of the fabric that once held them. They are the frozen shadows of a body filmed in motion, translated into sewing patterns and then cast in clay. What remains: seams, folds, hollows—the petrified echo of a fleeting gesture.
7. A sheet of glass—or its imitation—barely held upright; a mirror with unreachable reflections; an image teetering on the brink of collapse. Whether they appear or fade depending on where one stands, whether they suggest one thing only to turn out to be another, all that remains of these images is the weight of their absence.
8. Two films breathe at their own pace. The wind passes through them, sounds echo one another, thought stumbles, stutters, and reassembles itself. The films watch each other as much as they listen. At two points during the exhibition, they will spill beyond the screen to become participatory conversations.
9. Outside, a large photographic print, activated by daylight, explores South Korea’s productive frenzy through dense, silent market scenes. One can almost hear the tension of what flows without pause. 빨리 빨리 [ppal-li ppal-li], they say: hurry, hurry—a phrase that expresses the unstable balance between productivity and rest, commotion and calm.

***

Come on in.

Alexia Laferté Coutu (b. 1990) lives and works in Montreal / Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang. Her practice revolves around processes of imprinting and transposition, processes during which forms become imbued with memory and reveal layers of time normally invisible to the naked eye. Her sculptures and installations have been shown in solo and group exhibitions, notably at Galerie Nicolas Robert, Toronto (2023), the Darling Foundry, Montreal (2022), Occurrence, Montreal (2022), Doosan Gallery, Seoul (2020), and Pangée, Montreal (2019). Recipient of the Prix Pierre Ayot (2023), Laferté Coutu studied at Concordia University, Bauhaus Universität Weimar, and Université du Québec à Montréal. Her works are part of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Ville de Montréal collections.