press release

MOMENTA 2021
Biennale de l'image
Sensing Nature
17th edition September 8–October 24, 2021

MOMENTA Biennale de l’image is delighted to announce the full list of artists participating in the 17th edition from September 8–October 24, 2021. Under the title Sensing Nature, curator Stefanie Hessler in collaboration with Camille Georgeson-Usher, Maude Johnson, and Himali Singh Soin consider environmental justice and its intersections with social justice as a matter of sensing and feeling as much as of analysis and grassroots activism. The biennale doesn’t offer a toolkit for action but considers various love potions from which we can think and feel different arrangements of planetary coexistence.

The artists in Sensing Nature invite us to forge intimate kinships with nonhuman life-worlds that dwell in the blurred boundaries between technology and ancestral wisdoms. They propose that we listen—and observe, smell, touch, speak—to the land, the water, the air not with the aim of distantly understanding, grasping, or exploiting, but to resonate, to vibrate, to be together.

The biennale will gather 51 artists from 24 different countries through 15 exhibitions, including an Indigenous-led garden project and an outdoor circuit of augmented reality artworks.

Artists: Frances Adair Mckenzie (b. Canada), Abbas Akhavan (b. Iran), alaska B (b. Canada), Scott Benesiinaabandan (Anishinaabe, b. Canada), Jen Bervin (b. United States), Anna Binta Diallo (b. Senegal), Charlotte Brathwaite (b. United Kingdom), Carolina Caycedo (b. United Kingdom), Julien Creuzet (b. France), Léuli Eshrāghi (Sāmoa, b. Australia), Maryse Goudreau (b. Canada), Ayesha Hameed (b. Canada), Taloi Havini (Nakas Tribe Hakö, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea), Ts̱ēmā Igharas (Tāłtān, b. Canada), Lisa Jackson (Anishinaabe/Aamjiwnaang, b. Canada), Anne Duk Hee Jordan (b. Korea), Hamedine Kane (b. Mauritania), Adam Khalil (Ojibway, b. United Snakes), Zack Khalil (Ojibway, b. United States), Kite (Oglála Lakȟóta, b. United States), Lara Kramer (Oji-Cree/Mennonite, b. Canada), Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (Metis), Kama La Mackerel (b. Mauritius), Candice Lin (b. United States), Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau (b. Canada), Malik McKoy (b. Canada), Alex McLeod (b. Canada), Caroline Monnet (Anishinaabe/French, b. Canada), Peter Morin (Tāłtān), Sandra Mujinga (b. Democratic Republic of the Congo), faye mullen (2S/Queer mixed Anishinaabe/Irish/Italian), Thao Nguyen Phan (b. Vietnam), Jeneen Frei Njootli (Vuntut Gwitchin), Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache, b. United States), James Oscar (d. Trinidad, b. Canada), Jackson Polys (Tlingit, b. United States), Sabrina Ratté (b. Canada), Tabita Rezaire (b. France), Jamilah Sabur (b. Jamaica), Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (b. Porto Rico), Susan Schuppli (b. Canada), Tejal Shah (b. India), Erin Siddall (b. Canada), Miriam Simun (b. United States), P. Staff (b. United Kingdom), Eve Tagny (b. Canada), Joce TwoCrows Tremblay (Greak Lakes métis), Tania Willard (Secwépemc), Susanne M. Winterling (b. Germany), T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh/Stó:lō/Hawaiian/Swiss, b. Canada)

Exhibition partners: Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Centre CLARK, Darling Foundry, Diagonale, Galerie B-312, Galerie de l’UQAM, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, McCord Museum, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Occurrence, OPTICA, PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art, Toronto Biennial of Art, VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine

Sponsors: Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Conseil des arts de Montréal, Gouvernement du Québec, Government of Canada, Ville de Montréal, Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (Germany), Institut français, Consulat général de France à Québec, Office for Contemporary Art Norway