As part of the fifth edition of VIVA! Art Action, articule presents performances by Emilie Monnet and Sandra Johnston at the Ateliers Jean-Brillant. The events will highlight the work of these artists of different generations and origins yet who share an interest in working on memory.

Based in Montreal, Emilie Monnet’s interests lie in the intersection between memory, language and imagination and how memory weaves together the symbolic realms of dreams and mythology. Her work combines performance, theatre and media art, allowing her to examine the traces of history in our present.

In the work of Sandra Johnston, a visiting artist from Northern Ireland, memory is created through actions that become relics salvaged from a forgotten moment. Johnston works in the area of site-responsive actions, video installations and durational drawings. Her art often proposes alternative approaches for considering the aftermath of trauma, particularly in relation to location, testimony and empathetic communication.

An interdisciplinary artist Emilie Monnet founded ONISHKA in 2011 to herald performance-based work created from unique collaborations between artists of different cultures and disciplines. A graduate of Ondinnok’s First Nations Theatre training program in partnership with the National Theatre School of Canada (Montreal, 2007), Monnet has also studied media arts and holds a Masters in Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution from Deusto University (Spain) and from Uppsala University (Sweden). Her artistic engagement is inspired by years of social activism with Indigenous organizations in Canada and Latin America as well as community art projects with incarcerated women and Aboriginal youth. Emilie is part Anishnaabe and French, and lives in Montreal.

Sandra Johnston has been active as an artist since 1992. Since 2002, she has held several university teaching and research posts, including a Research Fellowship at Ulster University in Belfast, investigating issues of ‘trauma of place’. In 2007, she was the ‘Ré Soupault’ Guest Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar. Currently, she is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Northumbria University (England). In 2013, she published a PhD project entitled “Beyond Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation of Doubt, Risk and Testimony Through Performance Art Processes in Relation to Systems of Legal Justice” with LIT, Munich. Additionally, Johnston has been a co-founder and committee member of various artist-run collectives in Belfast, namely Catalyst Arts, Bbeyond, and Agency.

As part of the VIVA! Art Action festival.

At Les ateliers Jean-Brillant (661, Rose de Lima).

Special projects  

Participating Artists: Emilie Monnet (Montréal) Sandra Johnston (Irlande du Nord)
Curator(s):
Credits: Image : Emilie Monnet, Marguerite Duplessis: a silenced history of slavery, 2014. Photo : Scott Benesiinaabandan.  vivamontreal.org