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ÉSERY MONDÉSIR: CHOUBLAK
Ésery Mondésir, Choublak #3 (detail), 2024. Courtesy of the artist
Opening of the exhibition Choublak by Ésery Mondésir and poetry reading by the group Les Voix Itinérantes at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal, 2024. Courtesy of the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery. Photo: Laurence Ly.
Ésery Mondésir. Crédits : Polina Teif. Miryam Charles. Crédits : Claudie Ann Landry
Tahani Rached, Haïti (Québec), 1985. Image from the video.
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Public Programs

Evening of poetry + Opening event

With the participation of the group Un soir disant

Readers: Ketsia Vaïnadine Alphonse, Edmond Wilson, Coutechève Lavoie Aupont and Staloff Tropfort

Thursday, September 26, 2024, 5:30 PM
In French and Haitian Creole
Free, at the Gallery

Facebook Event

View event documentation here

Join artist Ésery Mondésir for an evening of poetry in tribute to the group Haïti Littéraire and poet Anthony Phelps, followed by a reception to celebrate the opening of his exhibition Choublak. For the occasion, members of the group Un soir disant will read texts of their own and by Haitian authors.

Poetry evening and performance by Les Voix itinérantes

Readers: Ketsia Vaïnadine Alphonse, Coutechève Lavoie Aupont, Miracson Saint-Val, Miraclin André, Staloff Tropfort, Pierre Hector Nazon

Thursday, November 14, 5:30 PM

In French and Haitian Creole
Free, at the Gallery

Facebook Event

For a second evening, the group Les Voix Itinérantes will perform a blending of poems from the prominent voices of the 1930s Négritude movement and the 1960s Haïti Littéraire, paying tribute to these key figures of Haitian literature.

Postmigration, Temporality, Fact and Fiction

Conversation between Miryam Charles and Ésery Mondésir

Thursday, November 21, 5:30 PM

In French and English
Free, at the Gallery

Facebook Event

Join artists and filmmakers Miryam Charles and Ésery Mondésir for a conversation on postmigration, temporality, and the tensions between reality and fiction in their respective practices.

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Miryam Charles is a Canadian director, producer and cinematographer of Haitian origin. Her shorts films have been showcased in various festivals worldwide. In 2022, her first feature film, Cette maison, was premiered at the Berlinale also screened at the AFI, IndieLisboa, Viennale, Art of the Real, TIFF Top 10 and was named one of the best films of the year by Sight and Sound. The same year, she premiered the short film Au crépuscule at the Locarno Film Festival. She is currently working on her next feature, Le Marabout.

Ésery Mondésir is a Haitian-born video artist and filmmaker based in Toronto. Before earning his MFA in cinema production from York University in 2017, he worked as a high school teacher and labour organizer in the US and Canada. His work draws on personal and collective memory, official and vernacular archives, and the everyday to generate a reading of our societies from the margins.

His recent projects, in collaboration with members of the Haitian diaspora in Havana and Tijuana, have been exhibited worldwide, including at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the George Eastman Museum (Rochester), the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach), the Third Horizon Film Festival (Miami), as well as the Open City Festival (London). In 2021, he joined the art faculty at OCAD University as an Assistant Professor, where he continues to research process cinema, artisanal/handmade moving images, and migratory movements in a “postmigration” context.

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SCREENING & DISCUSSION: HAÏTI (QUÉBEC) (1985) WITH FRANTZ VOLTAIRE OF CIDIHCA

Friday, January 17, 2025, 5:30 PM

In French and English
Free, at the Gallery

The compounding socioeconomic effects of Canada’s recession in the early 1980s coupled with the mass migration of Haitians fleeing the dictatorship of the Duvalier dynasty resulted in rising prejudicial discrimination against Haitians with taxi drivers as a recurring target of racist hostility. The 59-minute-long documentary Haïti (Québec), directed by Tahani Rached in 1985, spotlights the experiences of Haitians living in Montreal and their obstacles and strategies to create new lives and dreams in Canada. The screening will be followed by contextual commentary by Frantz Voltaire, founder and director of Centre International de Documentation et d’Information Haïtienne, Caribéenne et Afro-Canadienne (CIDIHCA).

Event Notes:

  • Film is presented in French and Haitian Creole with English subtitles
  • Content Notice: Certain scenes include racist, anti-Black remarks shared
    by interviewees. An active listener will be present.
  • Event will be bilingual French/English
  • Refreshments provided

Choublak

This series of public programs is part of the exhibition Choublak, presented at the Gallery from September 17, 2024 to January 18, 2025.

Stay tuned for more on the screenings, talks and hands-on image-making workshops that will be taking place throughout the Autumn.