A choral and transdisciplinary project by Suzan Vachon, artist-curator.

Exhibition produced by MAC LAU / Suzan Vachon / Vidéographe

This Atlas was first initiated in 2019 by a curatorial project at Vidéographe entitled “Questions adressées au Sphinx.” Surveying the Vidéographe collection, like an alley of Sphinxes, and guided by a perception of the visible apprehended as a mystery, this active commitment to documented wanderings gradually unfolded around open questions, fictional and existential concepts soliciting transdisciplinary encounters, leading to the choral project “Atlas, nébuleuses du Sphinx.”

“Atlas, nébuleuses du Sphinx” is structured around five distinct spaces of constellated images, five nebulae of images testing their attractions, around which satellite works gravitate. Islands of stars map an atlas of dialectical relationships in which different time-spaces meet. But also, polyglot and transdisciplinary discussions to which I have invited some timeless figures of the enigma, some artists of the dark and miraculous matter (ghosts and revenants, dead or alive…). Warburg, Benjamin, and Godard, among others, held my hand during this four-year journey, where one works in a telepathic relationship with another, and beyond the certainties of seeing, allowed us to sense the complexity of their relationships.

Faced with the uncertainty of this challenge, moved by the possible stakes of these dangerous liaisons, I invited the chimerical figure of the Sphinx into the age-old game of these fabulous enigmas.

In this setting in motion of bodies and thought, together we turned the mirror of specular and unsuspected oscillations.

Together, we composed this Atlas, nebulae of the Sphinx.

Straddling heterogeneous, multiple, and eccentric spaces and temporalities, we shook our contemporaneity.

Accompanied by communities of loners, we were the dazzled witnesses of transfigured nights.

– Suzan Vachon

Works on display

Ïsmail Bahri, Frederique Beaupré-Decoste, Nicolas Bernier, Maude Bertrand, Marie-Claude Bouthillier, Jacynthe Carrier, Isaiah Ceccarelli, Sébastien Cliche, Martin Désilets, Mélanie Dumas, Vincent Lussier, Daniel Olsen, Natacha Nisic, Alex Pouliot, Francois Rioux, Suzan Vachon, Florence Viau

This research and creation project is carried out in partnership with Vidéographe and MAC LAU, who have encouraged and supported the project at all times.

The artist wishes to thank
The Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for their financial support. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts for the loan of a work of art from the Quebec and Canadian art collection, inv.2016.146. Center SAGAMIE, Atelier des Hauteurs, Atelier Michel Séguin, Atelier de l’île, for their professional support.

To all the artists who made this choral gathering of luminous hospitality possible, thank you for your unreserved trust.